The benefit of The Wilds treading so much of the same glittering narrative water this season as it did in the first is familiarity, one that gives viewers a rock-steady structure to hold onto as they work to make sense of what are (now that Leah’s in on at least some of Gretchen’s sociopathic secrets in the post-island timeline) even twistier games of cat-and-mouse. ... I’m telling you now: it’s magic.

While adding boys into the mix takes away some of the singular magic of the first season, The Wilds remains an extremely entertaining and beautifully performed series.

A very watchable, hyper-paced eight-episode second season. Some of the magic has been diffused, however, largely because the show basically doubles its cast, feeling like it’s just getting more crowded instead of developing on the foundation of the first year. There’s still enough to like here, but the parallels to “Lost” are strangely more prominent than ever.

The good news is that the women of The Wilds are still intriguing, dynamic, frustrating, and accessible. The bad news is we get way less time with them.

It has to balance them [the girls from season one] with all the boys. A lot of boys. It doesn't balance very well, and the second season seems to undo a lot of the good of the first and muddle its message.

We don’t need the boy version of Lord of the Flies! It already exists. It’s called Lord of the Flies. ... Overall, the result is less time with the characters we already know and love, and half-baked backstories for the new guys, who never get the chance to evolve beyond their crude caricatures the way their female counterparts did.

By starting from scratch with a whole new group of characters, The Wilds bifurcates its focus and renders everything more shallow as a result. It is ill-conceived from the jump, digging itself into a narrative hole that it spends far too long trying to get out of.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]