Day 50/33
Episode 7 of The Wilds Season 2 starts back with the girls as Gretchen narrates that the relationship between mother and child is so important. Unfortunately it was never felt by Seth, whom Gretchen speaks to and believes deserves a second chance. We begin with moments prior to the island, as we jump back further and see the relationship Seth had with his mother. It all seems great on the surface, but a fight with Niall, his father, leads to her leaving. Seth watches her drive off and in doing so, drives his own knuckles into the porch floor. Things are rough for Seth, especially as we fast forward to his time as a teenager. His girlfriend heads over wasted. Henry is obviously in the house too, but he switches off from the world, keeping his headphones on and sticking to himself. The crux of Henry’s issues here stem from his mum, whom he’s worried is drifting away from him. She has a much closer bond with her step-son, Seth. With the girls, Rachel has changed her tune and encourages the others to have some hope and faith in their current situation. With bedsores on Martha, who’s now practically catatonic, they decide to take her up to the hot springs. The journey there is perilous though, especially when they realize they need to try and pass a running river. Of course, everything goes awry. The girls slip on the rocks, Martha ends up in the water and it’s almost a complete mess. The gang eventually do make it to the hot springs though, where Rachel tells Fatin again that she needs to have patience and faith. Leah has enough and leaves the group, unwilling to indulge in this any longer. Shelby catches up with Toni, who has been standoffish with her since the reveal that Shelby let the boat go. Here, Shelby airs out her concerns and apologizes for what happened. She leaves her jumper as a peace offering before walking away. Shelby heads into the woods, where she cuts her hair. Fatin shows up and throws her arms around Shelby “madness loves company right?” she says. While together, Fatin shows off the journal, joking that she’s gone “full on Leah.” With the boys, Seth arrives on the beach to says hey to the others. He’s managed to catch a fish and offers it as a peace offering. Scotty thanks him and eventually walks off, telling them that he’s there if they need him. When he leaves, Scotty brings the fish back to camp but Kirin is not happy. Scotty points out that on his watch they don’t have loads of food and their constant tomfoolery is causing issues. Josh starts poking fun of Bo, telling him he never skips a meal. This toxicity has the knock-on effect of the whole camp falling apart. Bo and Scotty decide to move camps and head over to see Raf and Seth. The latter decides they should try and make a peace offering and settle things to become one group. Seth speaks up for them all and gives a big speech about how death is the real enemy. However, it soon becomes apparent that Seth’s lies stretch further back than we thought. The truth is, he abused his girlfriend Julia and stole her cat. The lies he’s spun to the different boys on the island sees all of them turn on him… again. So Seth is kicked out of camp… again. It’s well and truly over this time, with Seth picked up on the boat and taken out after asking to be extracted. Off the island, we cut to Gretchen who shows up in Josh’s room with a bowl of sweets. According to Gretchen, the problems on the island stem from “bad male behaviour.” As the episode closes, we cut to DJ in his apartment. A knock at the door brings Ian over, who admits he’s received this address courtesy of a retreat called Dawn of Eve. He opens the door and lets him in.
The Episode Review
The penultimate episode of The Wilds continues to sloppily handle all the characters in this show, who receive little snippets of flashbacks but nowhere near enough to actually make for compelling viewing. It would have been great, for example, to get a whole episode dedicated to seeing Seth’s decline in the past. How his mother leaving has caused him to psychologically break down; how he can’t form relationships with women because of this, worried that they’ll leave him. This would have made for a really interesting episode, but instead we get teasing flashes of what happened, interspersed around separate visions including Henry, It’s a shame actually because this show could have done with at least 15 episodes or more to really allow all these characters to grow. As it stands, everything feels rushed and spread out. With the finale up next, it’ll be interesting to see if this one ends on a cliffhanger or not.
