'The Wilds' Boss Breaks Down Season 2's Cliffhanger and That Ben Folds Cameo

Warning: This story contains spoilers for Season 2 of The Wilds,

streaming now on Prime Video

. Read at your own risk!

If you were one of the viewers who watched The Wilds' first season on Amazon Prime Video and thought, "Hmm, not enough Lord of the Flies," well, you just needed to wait until the boys' island experiment was introduced in Season 2.

While there were some squabbles on the girl's island after Dr. Gretchen Klein (Rachel Griffiths) put together a group of (mostly) strangers, faked their plane crash, and marooned them together, there were also new friendships and even a love connection made. Additionally, with the absence of external, judgmental influences, such as their parents and peers at school, many of the girls began to come into their own in a stronger way.

That was what Gretchen had been hoping for all along: Take some troubled kids, have them survive a terrible trauma, and let them fend for themselves to show how capable they were, to build self-esteem and other kinds of strength.

She put together a similar group of troubled kids for a boys' island as a comparison, only with them, it didn't take long for things to turn very violent.

After being humiliated by a pantsing incident, the trying-too-hard-to-be-everybody's-friend Seth (Alex Fitzalan) showed his true colors by sexually assaulting Josh (Nicholas Coombe). The neurotic but good-natured Josh had tried to reach out to Seth to make him feel better about the pantsing, but sharing his own story of being on the receiving end of such an act set Seth off. Determined to prove he is nothing like Josh, Seth acted out of menace and violence, and then tried to cover his tracks the next morning by telling the other guys (and Gretchen's hidden cameras because — surprise — he was her eyes inside the group) that he was worried about Josh because of how much he had been drinking. (The boys found beer on their island and didn't question how or why it would be there.)

The truth did come out relatively quickly, although not everyone could agree on what to do about it, in part because Josh didn't want to talk about it. Even when they made it back to Gretchen's compound and were being interviewed by her team, they still remained tight-lipped, although, just like the girls in Season 1, it was clear they were very changed by their experience on the island.

The season split its story on the girls' island, the boys' island, and that compound, where Leah (Sarah Pidgeon) confronted Rafael (Zack Calderon) almost immediately. While it at first appeared she was suddenly, surprisingly, working with Gretchen to get him to open up about what went down (which included him eventually savagely beating Seth), she was actually using her new position as a fake informant to get new access, and she tried to rally everyone else together.

Her plan of only letting the adults see her as a "lovesick child" (as advised by her own psyche disguised as Ben Folds, who guest-starred as himself) worked, and they underestimated her — to a degree. She was able to get messages to the others, and they met up in the compound. But unfortunately, Gretchen managed to scramble to get her team out, leaving the kids behind, in a coed group this time and on a new island — and with Seth pulling the strings from a much more authoritative position.

What a blow to them all.

Here, The Wilds showrunner Amy B. Harris talks to Metacritic about the new power dynamics created by the events of the season finale, how that Folds guest appearance came to be, what's up with Nora (Helena Howard), and what purposely ambiguous pieces in Season 2 will be answered in Season 3.

Although the season is spent with Gretchen and her team trying to find out what happened on that boys' island, she did know what Seth was capable of because she knew what he did back at home to land him in a position to need to be sent to this experiment in the first place. Yet she let him be her operative. How do you feel that further shows what kind of person she is and what she wants for this experiment?

One of the things we talk a lot about with Seth in particular is, what is the damage that is done to you that changes who you are, and which of those things should you be given second chances for because you're a teenager? And I do think deep down, initially, she thought, "Oh he's a smart, funny, charming kid who lost his way when it came to a woman because he'd been broken by the mother in his life," and she felt like she could save him. With this experience with other boys and becoming a leader, which she knew we would naturally do, I don't think she actually had ill intentions on that front. I actually think she thought he might be able to rise above and, "Maybe I can even help him move past that."

And then of course, and we talk a lot about this with Alex, who plays Seth, what are the things that shaped you? Some people don't go to the next level and hurt other people, and why is he a kid who does that? And what does that mean? And is he redeemable? I think those are all really legitimate questions when you're looking at teenagers, like, what's the line between unforgivable, cannot come back from that, and should we give this kid a second chance? And then he obviously proves in so many ways he's not worthy of that.

But with how tight-lipped the boys were all being on what happened, at the end of the day, she doesn't know the extent to which that latter part is true.

At the very end, I think she's just in a panic, and she's got to get somebody who was there who can potentially get anything she's left behind because they ran out in a pretty big rush. I think that was a panic move on her part.

We still don't know what Josh told her when she went into his room with the candy, but she came out seeming like she got some information. Was that more about making a deal to have him as another operative inside the new group?

We want that to be very ambiguous. For us, he is really up in the air whether he's working for her or he just opened up his heart because he wanted to be truthful. Constantly he kept hearing from Ivan, "Your truth is what's most important," and so, we've left that very much open to interpretation, and hopefully people will wonder, "Is he part of it? Is he not part of it? What has she gotten from him?"

But do you already those answers as a showrunner? Because I feel like what the answer is would greatly affect how Nicholas will have to play certain things if you get renewed.

Yes, very clearly.

Speaking of the other operatives, Shelby's dream sequence flash-forward technically could have been her PTSD or guilt over a few things, but cutting to her face after Gretchen is talking about leaving people in place to assist her plan solidifies she is one of them. Was it always the plan for it to be Shelby, or did that decision come in editing, and what made her the right person for this?

We are going to reveal a lot if we get a Season 3, but that was something we talked about while we were pitching Season 2 to get our Season 2 pick up. We knew it was going to be her. This is a girl who let a boat go by because she doesn't want to have to go home and admit who she is to these people. Because even though she can now maybe look at her parents and think, "They're wrong," they're still your parents, [she's] still 17 years old. And so, I think she was ripe for indoctrination of some sort. And you'll find out the whys of that down the road.

Can you address the Nora of it? Gretchen claims she is alive, but how much can we trust what Gretchen says?

I can't speak to what will happen to Nora, but I do not believe that Gretchen was lying when she says, "Nora is out there in the world."

Gretchen calls this new combined group a "control group," but what are they being compared to? Is there another group out there we haven't met yet?

The entire world is the coed control group at this point. I don't think she planned on [having to do this] coed group, but when she goes to her benefactors, it's, "We're now showing a microcosm where we saw the girls do much better than the boys, and now this group, let's see what happens. Maybe they'll prove that these girls were so special, and then my idea actually falls apart, or maybe women smushed together with men will be very chaotic and bad choices will be made." And I think she's obviously betting on that.

I would argue that her idea can't really fall apart because she's always going to stack a deck.

She'd gotten lucky in that she hasn't really had to stack the deck yet, but I think she would stack a deck if it served her. I think she's got some bizarre sense of moral code, which is like, "No, I've done everything right. Jeanette passed, which was an unfortunate accident, so I gave those boys the same opportunity to coalesce around grief." So, she's constantly seeing herself as a very fair, impartial scientist, but she's very hopeful for which way it will go. And she's very personally invested in the women doing well. And so, she's always looking at it through that lens.

Which is really interesting considering she has a son who is a criminal and who she went to great lengths to get out of trouble. How did you work out what kind of inherent bias she would have toward the boys versus the girls in this experiment?

She's a warped person. She cares about humanity but not humans, so she's making choices all of the time to protect this very important — she thinks — experiment. She's had collateral damage — Jeanette is gone, what happens to Josh — but if it proves that men are toxic and women should be in charge, then at the end of the day, it's worth it. And I think in an attempt to save her experiment and to keep it going, she has left a dangerous person behind and probably should not have. But she cares so much about making sure this experiment does what she needs it to do, she's losing perspective. And that's scary. What we love about her she's a live wire; she's not making choices that are necessarily good for anybody but her.

Was it always the plan for her son to just play a small part in the experiment? Because if she really believes these kids can be rehabilitated, it feels like leaving him on the island would have been an important test.

We knew that she was going to have to leave somebody there to "die," so that she gave them the same [experience] as the girls, and we talked about Tom, her young TA that's always in the Dawn of Eve, but what we came to was that we thought it was very interesting she would put her son through that. We never imagined he would be one that would stay on past that. This was just their agreement: She helped him get out of prison, he would do her bidding. The sad thing, obviously, is that he sees her for who she is in that moment, which is a psychopath. Until he's there he can't even understand how awful what she's doing with these kids is.

Going back to Gretchen not planning on this coed group, where does that leave the parents?

We'll find out how much they know in Season 3, so we'll see how much blame those parents have.

They definitely have some blame for signing these kids up in the first place.

I get it: You're desperate, you think your kid' in very difficult shape, or they're going to go to juvie. These kids have gone through so much and their parents think they're sending them to this camp in Montana where they're going to be Outward Bounding, and [they think] better this than the psych ward for Leah, juvie for Scotty and Bo. When you're desperate for your kid, what are the bad choices you make in an attempt to keep them safe?

To switch to a lighter note, we have to talk about the Ben Folds cameo. What inspired that, how did you get him to agree to it, and did your actors understand the importance? They are all very young.

I know, they're very young! They have no reference points. [Creator and executive producer] Sarah Streicher, I think, wrote Ben Folds lyrics on her arms, paper, everywhere. So, she loves him, his music has been inspiring for both of us, and then we really started talking about Leah as this old soul. We had other ideas — we had been playing with, should Jeff come back? But what we wanted the person to give her was that information at the end about actually using her strengths and if other people want to see her as lovesick, let them, so it felt like to have it be Jeff was the wrong choice. We did talk about how quirky she is, so we talked about a lot of different ideas — that she loves Sam Neill and the original Jurassic Park, and should he show up but it's Sam Neill from today? We had all sorts of conversations, but we kept coming back to Ben Folds. There's something about music that presses memory buttons in the mind, and the more we started to think about the piano on the beach and in the forest, we were like, "Oh, it's Ben."

And then it ended up he was living in Australia, which was just crazy. We were like, "Let's just go for it." And he was unbelievably wonderful and excited and game. We pitched it to him, and he was like, "I'm not gonna have do anything super physical or anything, right, because that's not my thing." And we were like, "Oh we're putting you in a tank of water for three days straight and you have to swim and jump." And he was like, "All right, I'll see how I do."

He was so incredible because we obviously wanted to use his music and he did different, beautiful arrangements of it for us that are just slightly dissonant in a way that the originals aren't. So, his presence and just everything about him, it was a dream. 

It also makes where Leah ends up a bit more tragic. Because she finally finds this strength — and within herself, really, because he's just a manifestation of her own subconscious — and she thinks she's going to have this big win, but Gretchen manages to be one very important step ahead.

But she could only have gotten to the place where she held her own against her because she allowed her mind to work in ways to bring the right person to her to say, "Be powerful. And if people want to think you're broken and a lovesick child, use it." I call it the Keyser Söze moment where we see how she unfolded that, but she got bested at the very end by Gretchen, for sure. I mean, what a painful realization to know you're just stuck on another island. But, as I like to say, they're on an island with running water and food and drink suddenly, so it's a little different.

And they have the awareness of what's happening to them, even if they don't fully understand why. So, how therapeutic do you feel this experiment will be across the board for some of these characters? We've seen some of them make great strides, but I'm curious how you balance that with all of the adversity and with the fact that if they do have breakthroughs, Gretchen, who you previously called a psychopath, will have her methods validated.

We talk about this a lot because a lot of them are gaining strength and a better sense of self and friendships and relationships, and understanding where they're rigidness lies. I was just thinking of Ivan and the way he and Kirin come to this new relationship, it's actually very beautiful and touching, and that could never have happened in the real world, I think. I certainly think that's an argument that she's trying to make to Leah, which is, "You're stronger, you're better." This has always been a metaphor for us for coming of age, so it's like, "I may be better, but adults aren't supposed to make the choices for teenagers on how they come of age." The agency with which teenagers do not get to choose how that happens is so deeply frustrating. So, you have a terrible experience and the adult's like, "Well, it'll make you stronger." Sure, but it would have been nice not to go through that in the first place. Gretchen will 100-percent argue that she's made these kids stronger, more self aware. more capable. But the choice of how that went down was robbed. And I think you can't take away from those kids that the damage that may do down the road is exponentially bigger than the strengths they found. For some. And some may be better. The sh---y thing is that Gretchen isn't wrong.

Get to know Amy B. Harris:
Before The Wilds, Harris was best known as a writer and producer on Sex and the City (Metascore: 64) and the creator and showrunner of the Sex and the City prequel The Carrie Diaries (58). She has also worked as a writer and producer on the original Gossip Girl (59), The Comeback (64), and Wicked City (33).