A "theory" About The Wilds Girls/boys Rosters

a "theory" about the wilds girls/boys rosters

so it was said at the beginning of season 2 that the girls and the boys were intentionally put in the same situation, and leah also implied it when she said to raf "i'm you." which got me thinking about how they actually chose the lineup of boys based on the girls.

rachel/seth: sporty, responsible older sibling with mental health issues, tends to go out on their own (this ends up being a bigger problem for. ehem. one of them)

nora/henry: autistic-coded younger sibling who resents the other for being the golden child.

notable that one sibling from each pair (seth, nora) was the mole, and the other sibling in each pair was the one more visibly struggling with mental illness, to a point where their sibling felt they needed to step in.

toni/scotty: outspoken protector in the best friend pair, main trauma is external/systemic

martha/bo: reserved one in the best friend pair, main trauma is personal/domestic, lots of repressed anger

leah/raf: quiet and mysterious, knows things others don't (these two also end up going in different directions)

fatin/josh: acquaintance counterparts of the previous two, well-known in their schools (popular or unpopular), appear weak at first but eventually prove themselves (albeit in opposite ways)

shelby/ivan: stuck in their ways and confident in their own superiority. also rich and gay

dot/kirin: misunderstood counterparts of the previous two, deal with absent parents, greatest physical strength of their respective groups, leaders on the island

there are also parallels between shelby and josh, toni and kirin, and fatin and ivan, discussed below.

i also have some theories about the different roles gretchen wanted filled on the island.

the leader (dot, kirin): as above, a physically strong kid with experience making hard decisions who can take charge.

the wild card (leah, seth): that one kid who can be relied upon to throw everything off at some point by sheer probability. terrible idea, by the way, to also make seth the mole. what are you doing here gretchen.

the lit fuse (toni, kirin): someone who will blow up at the first sign of confrontation. heightens conflict and makes sure that issues between the kids either resolve to make them stronger (as with the girls) or break them apart (as with the boys).

the peacemaker (martha, raf/bo): a kid who will always choose neutrality in fights. what's interesting is that they designed the experiment so that the peacemakers would lose their core quality by the end of it.

de nial (fatin, ivan): rich kid who doesn't quite settle in as fast as the rest of the group. makes the others super annoyed and forces them to at some point confront the direness of the situation and accept shared responsibility for their fates.

i actually think that this was a horribly designed experiment because from my understanding, they created it as basically a crucible to heighten conflict and force the kids to become more independent and drastically change. in BOTH scenarios this led to the experiment being completely derailed because both the mole and the cameras/mics were compromised. bad design gretchen. bad design.