The Wilds – Season 2 Episode 5 “Day 45/16” Recap & Review

Day 45/16

Episode 5 of The Wilds Season 2 starts with Dean confronting Leah about her little stunt with Raf. He knows about the game she’s playing, including something stashed away in her room. He claims it’s a knife but in reality, it’s actually a phone she’s smuggled in, kept in the toilet basin.

Meanwhile, Gretchen heads down to the beach where she talks to Daniel Faber about failure. Specifically about her operative on the island. And who is that? Well, as we jump back in time we learn that it’s actually Seth.

Back on the island, Seth feeds back to the operatives via a hidden camera what’s going on. Back in the office, the guys talk about the difference between the guys and girls. Specifically, how the guys have already cracked food preservation ahead of the girls.

Our focus this time is not Seth, it’s actually spread among almost all the boys; Bo, Henry, Josh and Kirin. This episode we see snapshots of all of them across the episode’s run-time.

We’re a day after the death of the jaguar and Bo immediately notices something is up with Josh. After Seth’s incident with him last episode, he’s understandably shook up. When Kirin heads out with Josh to find fresh water, Kirin teases him about being a buzzkill and a “problem.” Josh snaps, rasping that he’s not the problem and actually, that accolade falls to Seth.

Josh tells Kirin what happened and the latter is absolutely livid. He believes Josh and promises that if Seth comes near him again, bad things are going to happen. Josh doesn’t want to rock the boat though and pleads with him to stay quiet.

When Seth races over to Josh and tries to hug him on the beach, Kirin loses his temper and tackles him to the ground. The team end up divided over what happened, with Bo taking Josh’s side. He’s seen abuse before and knows what it looks like.

The guys all vote on kicking Seth out and it’s pretty unanimous, minus Raf who is the only one who believes him. With Seth gone, all the kids promise not to tell anyone else about the assault.

Meanwhile with the girls, Shelby hands over her cross to Rachel. The latter wants some sort of new awakening and she eventually settles on the idea of a funeral for Nora. After they all say their goodbyes, Rachel asks for some time alone to process this.

The other girls though, discuss funerals in general in their new camp. The conversation naturally steers across to their lives, with Dot admitting she met with Gretchen prior to this and had doubts over whether she was a real doctor. Given they also saw her on the retreat video on the plane, the girls realize that something is awry but can’t put their finger on what.

Little clues hidden all over the place culminate in the girls realizing that there’s going on than first meets the eye. Down on the beach, Rachel looks out at the water and excitedly chips up that Nora is out there. And as we jump across to the control room, we see that yes, Nora is actually there. She’s still alive!

The Episode Review

While the reveal that Nora is still alive serves as a nice little twist, it also puts everything we’ve seen so far with the girls into perspective of being a monumental waste of time. All that grief, sorrow and reflection ultimately amounts to nothing because she’s still alive.

Meanwhile, the boys do have a good moment, banding together to kick the real predator out of their group, Seth. As I said before though, it comes at the expense of actually know who these boys really are, with the run-time split between the girls and boys. The result is that most people will want to spend more time with the girls.

This episode only exemplifies the problems this second season has had, given we have no flashbacks and Kirin, Josh, Bo and Henry are all lumped up together. Hopefully the upcoming episodes are an improvement.