One show that has established Amazon Prime Video’s reputation as a streaming service is Sarah Streicher’s The Wilds. The series is a unique take on the cast-away narrative, featuring eight teenage girls who find themselves stranded on a deserted island after their plane goes down. Their arrival on the island turns out to be no accident, and is instead a part of an elaborate social experiment.

While the show’s premise is intriguing, as all great survival narratives are, The Wilds has been praised more for its excellent character-building and thoughtful casting. On Rotten Tomatoes, the show has scored an impressive 92% with critics. Top critic Richard Roeper says in the Chicago Sun Times that the writing and “the deeply talented young cast members immerse us in the world so quickly and create an almost instant interest.” In an interview with Liz Shannon Miller of Collider, Streicher explains that she spent a lot of time developing the character’s “personalities and shapes and quirks,” some based on people she knew in reality.

Streicher also credits casting director Deanna Brigidi for selecting “lightning in a bottle performers.” The Wilds creators and producers aimed to create a “heterogeneous mix” and “cast their net far and wide” to form the incredible cast they did. That being said, each character and performer has a complex backstory, and it can be difficult to keep their experiences straight. This is especially true with the additional eight characters introduced in Season 2. To help you get the most out of watching The Wilds, MovieWeb has complied a simple character and description guide.

Leah Rilke (Played by Sarah Pidgeon)

Leah’s story draws us in with the very first episode and establishes her as withdrawn and secretive. She clings to one particular novel, which she continues to read when the plane takes a nose-dive and refuses to use the book to fuel their signal fire. We learn quickly that the book was written by her love interest, Jeffery, an author in his 30s who ended their relationship when he learned Leah was not yet 18. In the beginning, Leah often puts her fixation with Jeffery ahead of survival.

Rachel Reid (Played by Reign Edwards)

Although Rachel’s story isn’t explored until episode two, we learn immediately that she is very intense. Rachel is a competitive diver and sister to Nora Reid, who is also stranded on the island. Rachel is committed to flagging down help only so she can return to her toxic relationship with athleticism, which has driven her towards an eating disorder and an unhealthy fixation with exercise.

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She struggles to have a genuine relationship with her sister and people in general, often unwilling to work as a team. Reign Edwards does a phenomenal job of making Rachel simultaneously likable and hostile.

Dot Campbell (Played by Shannon Berry)

Dot is particularly useful and a good leader on the island because of her knowledge of survival shows. She is dependable, resourceful, and rarely cracks because of her experience caring for her sick father. Because her father didn’t like oxycodone, she sold the oxy pills he was prescribed to other high schoolers. In particular, she sold to Andrew, Shelby Goodkind’s boyfriend. Shelby is another survivor on the island. Dot is one of the strong female leads in the show, and Shannon Berry is emotionally intuitive in the role.

Shelby Goodkind (Played by Mia Healey)

Shelby is an optimistic pageant queen and Christian from Texas. At the start of the series, she is very hopeful and attempts to keep the other girls’ spirits high. She is very clear about her devotion to God. Her father is a conservative pastor who runs a conversion group for gay men. Her exterior often leads the other survivors to feel suspicious of her, especially when she often wanders off alone. It turns out Shelby is harboring a couple of secrets, including her false teeth and her true sexuality.

Fatin Jadmani (Played by Sophia Ali)

Fatin behaves as the comedic relief and is a self-proclaimed girly girl. She is proudly promiscuous, has bold style, and was a professional cellist before being stranded on the island. Fatin’s suitcase is the only luggage to wash up onshore, and so she shares her clothes with the other girls.


Related Link: The Wilds Season 2 Trailer Introduces a New Group of Test Subjects

At home, Fatin’s family lived an expensive lifestyle due to her mother’s real-estate success. Fatin was sent on the retreat by her parents because she sent one of her father’s nudes to multiple contacts and revealed that he was being unfaithful. The other survivors often accuse her of being lazy, but Fatin is a fun character nonetheless.

Toni Shalifoe (Played by Erana James)

Before the island, Toni was captain of her school’s basketball team and had a girlfriend, Regan, who broke her heart. Toni is particularly aggressive, standoffish, jealous, and unwilling to let people in. This is due to her absent parents, one of whom is a struggling addict. At home, Toni has consistently moved around in the foster system and eventually ends up living with her best friend, Martha, who also ends up on the island. The other survivors sometimes have trouble communicating with Toni because she is so confrontational. Erana James does a great job infusing a lot of fury and pent-up rage into Toni.

Martha Blackburn (Played by Jenna Clause)

In comparison to Toni, Martha is very sweet and open. She is particularly caring about animals and is proud of her Indigenous North American heritage. She suffered a spinal injury as a child and had to go to physical therapy in order to walk again. She has trouble seeing the bad in people, especially a former mentor, but as a result she can provide great emotional support. Martha’s connection to animals is useful later when she learns to hunt and provide for the group.

Nora Reid (Played by Helena Howard)

Nora is quiet, quirky, and reserved in comparison to her sister, Rachel Reid. Nora has some intellectual knowledge of the environment that is often helpful for the group’s survival. She cares deeply for Rachel, but her sister doesn’t often return this affection. Before the island, she dated a boy named Quinn, who also had a quirky personality, but ended the relationship because Rachel didn’t approve.

Gretchen Klein (Played by Rachel Griffiths)

Gretchen, the organizer of the retreat and social experiment, and a former college professor, is an intellectual driven by the struggles of modern women. She sees her experiment as showing a way to solve big-picture problems and smash the patriarchy, but her drive often clouds her judgment between right and wrong. She is quite indifferent and sees the girls’ struggles as a game more than anything else, a sociopolitical test to see if women can create a better society than men. Gretchen selects all the participants thoughtfully and with purpose, and watches them even more closely.

Rachel Griffiths is arguably the most famous person in this series filled with fresh new faces; her talent as an Oscar and Emmy-nominated and Golden Globe-winning actor (from Six Feet Under, Brothers & Sisters, and much more) helps give her gravitas and authority as the quasi-villain of The Wilds.

Rafael Garcia (Played by Zack Calderon)

Rafael is one of the boys introduced in Season 2. Off the island, he lives in Tijuana but often crosses the border to go into a school in San Diego. He feels torn between the world his parents live in and life with his girlfriend in San Diego. His girlfriend often seems distant, and he is too passive to discuss why. Like Martha, he often has trouble seeing the bad in people and spends time around more confident personalities. He tries to mediate between the others on the island.

Seth Novak (Played by Alex Fitzalan)

Seth is the personality Rafael gravitates toward most on the island because of his confidence. Seth is chatty, charismatic, and in the beginning, attempts to help the others stay positive. He is the adopted brother of Henry Tanaka, another boy on the island. Seth’s biological mother is shown to be neglectful. Henry often avoids Seth, and later it is revealed that he does this for good reason. Seth quickly betrays the others’ trust with an unforgivable act that permanently divides the group. Alex Fitzalan does a great job of revealing subtle insecurities and menace beneath the mask of amiable confidence.

Henry Tanaka (Played by Aidan Laprete)

Henry is particularly reserved and prefers to drown the world out with his noise-canceling headphones. He has a rocky relationship with his step-brother, Seth, and their arguments on the island quickly become physical. Henry tends to dwell on the negative, like the panther that hunts the group at night, but he does offer some knowledge about the environment and how best to kill a panther. Aidan Laprete is phenomenal as Henry, balancing and hiding multiple complexities with charm.

Josh Herbert (Played by Nicolas Coombe)

Josh is a chatty hypochondriac from a well-off, athletic family. He describes his siblings as being impressive and fearless, while he is always socially awkward and stressed. He brings a variety of alternative remedies for his illnesses to the island. He is also the victim of Seth Novak’s assault. After being hurt, Josh quickly attaches himself to Kirin O’Connor, another aggressive but protective character in the group.

Kirin O’Connor (Played by Charles Alexandra)

Kirin comes off as a stereotypical toxic male and, before the island, relied heavily on his skill in lacrosse to make it into a good university. However, his opportunity was ruined by his drinking habits and by uttering homophobic things to a fellow castaway, Ivan Taylor, who he went to high school with. Kirin is hot-headed and lacks patience for any kind of weakness. His fearlessness makes him a good leader but his personality often makes him an awful character.

Ivan Taylor (Played by Miles Gutierrez-Riley)

Ivan is a witty activist and playwright who is very fixed on his ideas about ethics and morality, and is focused on discerning the difference between right and wrong. Before the island, he loses his best friend and boyfriend, Luc, because Luc feels Ivan has no identity outside of activism. While Luc believes Kirin’s words were wrong, he also believes the lacrosse player shouldn’t have lost his scholarship. Ivan’s motivation to seek justice is challenged on the island.

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Scotty Simms (Played by Reed Shannon)

Scotty is another chatty teenager with a big personality and a drive to become one of the richest Americans in the United States. Before the island, Scotty and fellow cast-away and best friend, Bo, embarked on various schemes to make money. His focus on the American Dream is questioned, and his intellect and values seem to develop throughout the second season.

Bo Leonard (Played by Tanner Ray Rock)

Bo, thoughtful and soft-spoken, is less about money and more about friendship. He has a difficult home life but would do anything to help his best friend Scotty. Tanner Ray Rock is extremely endearing in the role.

Daniel Faber (Played by David Sullivan)

Daniel is a trauma psychologist hired by Gretchen to interview each survivor after their return from the island. He sometimes purposely creates turmoil for the survivors and is subtly manipulative. Sullivan is excellent in the role, coming a long way from his masterful debut in the low-budget but realistic time-travel movie Primer, drawing from his ensemble work in television shows like Flaked to play off the numerous characters in The Wilds.

Dean Young (Played by Troy Winbush)

Dean is an FBI agent also present to interview the survivors. He has more sympathy for the survivors than Daniel, and often feels like an audience surrogate, someone who is learning the details mostly alongside the viewer. Troy Winbush isn’t often present in the show, but when he is, his calming but firm presence (established over decades in countless television ever since The Cosby Show) is always reliable. Winbush is a true professional at inhabiting the mind of an officer, as seen in Law & Order: True Crime and his role as Officer Puchinski in The Goldbergs.

So far, The Wilds has two seasons streaming on Prime Video. A third season has yet to be announced, but if its two seasons are any indication, it will likely expand its massive, excellent ensemble cast even further.