The Wilds: Is Nora Dead? What We Know Ahead Of Season 2
Warning! Major spoilers for The Wilds season 1 ahead.
Amazon Prime's The Wilds had a development-packed, question-generating conclusion to its debut season in 2020, but here's what's known so far about whether Nora Reid's character will truly be dead for season 2. After The Wilds' first ten episodes come to a close, a lot more has been revealed than the mere backstories of the show's leading ladies. Still, it isn't definitively revealed whether Nora's (Helena Howard) flawed-yet-intrinsically-sweet character will be dead or alive in The Wilds season 2 (which is set to premiere on May 6th).
The Wilds season 1 drops a group of adolescent girls, all of whom have their own set of deeply painful issues in their young lives, in a situation of survival that pushes them beyond their limits - reaching places inside them they didn't even know they had. They boarded a plane that would supposedly take them to Hawaii for a female-only, feminism-infused retreat. Of course, there's a lot more to Gretchen Klein (Rachel Griffiths) and her symbolically named Dawn of Eve retreat than what's presented on the girls' itineraries. They're all being watched and studied as Gretchen uses their largely simulated situation to prove her theory that women should lead society in place of men.
The Wilds season 1 has a narrative with two layers: flashbacks from the past as they're remembered and retold by the girls, as well as present-day survivor interviews for investigative purposes. And in the season 1 finale, the island flashback timeline is left at the moment Rachel (Reign Edwards) is attacked by a shark and her twin sister, Nora, is shown running to save her. It's rather vague, but when you tie this scene together with the way Nora is talked about in the present day (with Rachel remarking on something having "happened to her" and ruefully recounting her harsh treatment of the now-absent twin), it looks as though she may very well be dead when The Wilds season 2 continues the story of what took place. After all, Nora and Martha are both the only girls missing during the present-day interviews. Rachel is also missing one of her hands in the present, and although it's not specified that she lost the body part during the shark attack, it seems to be the most likely option. This helps imply the magnitude of danger that was present during the attack too; it must have been a notably gory and brutal scene. Not to mention, Rachel can be seen in The Wilds season 2 trailer lamenting (presumably about Nora), "She's gone and it is my fault!"
Even so, despite every direction pointing toward Nora having died in the past, there's also a good deal of evidence that she may turn out to be alive when season 2 of the Amazon original show drops. In January 2021, E! News quoted Helena Howard about her character Nora, "I have no spoilers. She is alive." That information within itself seems quite clear-cut, and it does seem to confirm that the world will see Nora's character again - in one way or another. At the very least, her fate will be revealed. Still, Howard may have been referring to Nora's character as "alive" in a more figurative, artistic sense than a literal one. As E! News pointed out in the aforementioned article, "This may be a trick answer as The Wilds uses a flashback storytelling narrative. So, Nora may be alive in a flashback but not in a present-day scene."
In addition, season 1 of the Amazon show reveals that, like Jeanette (who dies in The Wilds' very first episode), Nora set off on the Dawn of Eve retreat as a "confederate" for Gretchen. It's a sad component of the series, as Nora comes across as a good-natured and gentle soul. But still, she was definitely aware of the morally bankrupt manipulation that Gretchen had in store for the girls - even if the details weren't 100% clear. Even with supposedly good intentions, she's complicit in the problematic social experiment; her death would make a degree of sense. Regardless of whether Nora is alive or dead in The Wilds season 2, there's no going back to the life or relationship with her sister that she once knew.
The Wilds is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and season 2 premieres on May 6th.