Amazon Prime cancels The Wilds

Amazon Prime announced today that it’s just cancelled that other TV show about a bunch of high school-aged kids surviving a plane crash and being forced to survive in the wilderness, revealing that it’s putting an end to The Wilds after two seasons on the air.

The YA-focused series, created by Sarah Streicher, starred Sophia Ali, Shannon Berry, Jenna Clause, Reign Edwards, Mia Healey, Helena Howard, Erana James, and Sarah Pidgeon as the survivors of its central crash, eking out life on a wilderness island after their plane goes down. (And, once again, we’d like to remind you that this show debuted nearly a full year before Showtime’s Yellowjackets.) Rachel Griffiths also stars, as a mysterious woman who runs the empowerment retreat the survivors were headed to when their plane crashed. (Does she have a strange connection to their lives, and the crash, and a big ol’ conspiracy? Yes: That’s revealed in the first episode, so it doesn’t feel like much of a spoiler, really.)

As we noted above, The Wilds ran for two seasons on Amazon Prime, with the second season (which aired in May of this year) expanding the focus to another group of teens stranded on an island, this one made up of young men. As noted by Deadline, the series was the first YA-focused show to run on Amazon Prime, which has made a series of strides to attempt to capture that market in recent years. (See also the short-lived I Know What You Did Last Summer show, which was canceled back in January.) The Wilds picked up a swift renewal and some strong attention when it debuted back in December 2020, but by the time that second season came along a year and a half later, much of the online enthusiasm seemed to have fled.