The Wilds showrunners explain how the boys' island drama compares to the girls' in season 2

If you thought the girls had it rough on the island during season 1 of The Wilds, you haven't seen anything yet.

Season 2 of Prime Video's teen "dystopian slumber party" turns back the clock to day zero as a new group of guy castaways dubbed the Twilight of Adam — a.k.a. the control group in mad scientist Gretchen's (Rachel Griffiths) experiment — end up on their own island after the fake plane crash simulation. While the beginning of their experience mirrors the Dawn of Eve's exactly (right down to that drugged chocolate cake), things immediately take a hard left turn as the young men handle their "marooning" much differently than the women did in season 1, leading to a different kind of trauma for these unsuspecting teens.

But if you're worried that the boys will pull focus away from the original group of girl castaways, don't worry! The Wilds creator Sarah Streicher and showrunner Amy B. Harris promise that's not the case. In fact, they tell EW that they're going even deeper with the female castaways this season than before. This is still the girls' world — the boys are just guest starring in it.

EW got Streicher and Harris to reveal how the boys' island drama compares to the girls' and what else fans can expect from season 2.

Kane Skennar/Prime Video The new group of guys on 'The Wilds' season 2

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What story did you want to tell by adding the Twilight of Adam group for season 2?

SARAH STREICHER: Obviously, we wanted to continue the stories of the girls because they are the soul of the show. They're beloved. And this began as a meditation on their coming-of-age journey and it will remain a meditation on their coming-of-age journey, but we had to follow Gretchen's story, and she is enmeshed in this experiment and needs a control group. She has this binary perspective on the world, which is a rotten, sadist perspective, but she has it nonetheless, so of course, she would establish this control group of boys.

From the storytelling perspective, that gave us an opportunity to have this new lens on a different kind of coming-of-age experience — that of men. What was particularly exciting for me was that we started with women as our baseline and then we're pivoting to men as our counterpoint and that is not something that you see necessarily. It's usually the other way around. From that angle, it was just this thrilling possibility so we ran with it.

How do the dynamics of the group shift when we see a coming-of-age story on the island for young men compared to women?

AMY HARRIS: It's interesting, the boys are going through, at least initially, some of the how do you find water, how do you find food, how do you build shelter... these frightening survivalist issues that the girls went through in season 1, and what we were most excited about is that it really allowed us, on the girls' island, to be exploring what we like to call "survival of the psyche." We got to dig even deeper into these girls' emotions and what they were going through. Grief and trauma are a big part of season 2 for the girls. It really allowed us to dig even deeper into the women's stories while also giving us the exciting counterpoint of the boys who are, at least for the first half of the season, really just hoping they can survive from a physical standpoint.

Prime Video The girls on 'The Wilds' season 2

What is going to surprise fans about where you take the story in season 2?

STREICHER: Among the girls, people will be most surprised by Leah's [Sarah Pidgeon] odyssey of the mind that she is traveling. Her mind, we always talk about it as this double-edged sword. It's so powerful but it can also be a liability. We really devote a lot of narrative to exploring that dynamic and I think people will really be pleasantly surprised by that odyssey.

Then among the boys, I think there's a certain expectation that it's wall-to-wall barbarism — and that could be because of some of the clips that have been shown, it looks like Lord of the Flies turned to 11. But it's not that. There's this huge fracture [among the boys' group], which is going to be the pivotal surprise of the season. That's going to be the big talking point. But beyond that fracture and when that fracture starts to heal, you really get a sense that this could have been quite a beautiful community among those men if what had happened had not happened.

The series has such a passionate fanbase on social media — shout-out to the #Shoni fans! — so did you take into account the reaction to the first season when you were planning any part of the story for season 2?

HARRIS: Because I worked on a show like Sex and the City where the fandom was so dedicated and beautiful, I have always really tried to appreciate, love, and honor the fans, but also to figure out… In my mind, as writers, our job is to build in a vacuum. That's how you build your first season, just chasing what we were interested in, the truths we wanted to tell, the big stories, the twists we wanted to go for. Obviously, you can go on Twitter and see good, bad, whatever, and you can get flipped one way or another depending on the day. For me, it's always very important for season 2, if you're lucky and blessed enough to get one and to have fans who care, is to really remind ourselves to be authentically true to the stories we want to tell and not get overwhelmed by any outside influences. That goes for, by the way, even executives who have different ideas.

You just have to always hold on to the idea of why you're writing the story. For Sarah and I, it's these beautiful, specific coming-of-age stories and the metaphor of this deserted island as the life-or-death stakes of that experience. We obviously always want to honor the fans because we're so grateful, but we also know we just have to keep our focus on the journey we want to tell. Sarah and I felt very lucky in that we were working on season 2 ideas before the show even came out — we knew certain things anyway, so we were already on that journey.

The Wilds season 2 premieres Friday, May 6, on Amazon Prime Video.

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