‘The Wilds’: Shelby and Toni’s Romance Surprised Mia Healey and Erana James
The new Amazon Prime Video show is full of interesting characters who struggle to work together as they’re away from civilization. There is a surprising romance that blossoms between Shelby (Mia Healey) and Toni (Erana James). One of the actors talked about how it became a surprise for them too. [Warning spoilers for the end of The Wilds!]
‘The Wilds’ showed Shelby and Toni growing closer
The first season started with Toni being really aggressive around Shelby. That’s because Shelby was becoming close friends with Martha (Jenna Clause) and Toni didn’t like that.
As time went on that tension grew. Shelby revealed her homophobic views and tied them to her religion. But fans found out Shelby kissed her female best friend in the past. Once her parents found out, she turned on her friend out of fear.
Shelby and Toni eventually kiss and have sex. Toni then gives Shelby time to figure out how she’s feeling about their growing relationship. But there seems to be hope for the young couple.
Season 1 leaves a lot of questions for them
Season 1 included some scenes flashing forward. We see multiple girls from the island getting interviewed about their experiences while being quarantined.
One of them was Toni, but we didn’t see her at the end of the season. Then we saw Shelby with a shaved head and she’s been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. We did see her in the last episode coding because she was going through anaphylactic shock. Gretchen (Rachel Griffiths) and a nurse went into her room to save her.
This all helped distract them for Leah (Sarah Pidgeon) to escape. She made it into a security room with multiple screens. She sees a note about the control group call The Twilight of Adam. Leah then sees boys who are also stranded on an island.
There are many questions with this. Fans still don’t know how the girls got off the island. We also don’t know if Toni and Shelby are still a thing.
Mia Healey and Erana James were surprised by the love story
Sometimes an actor knows where their character’s story is going, but that’s not always the case. Healey and James had no clue Shelby and Toni were going to fall for each when they started the season.
“We received the scripts once every two weeks as we were filming, so we didn’t know from the get go,” James told Cinema Blend. “We had an inkling.”
She continued, “Mia and I are super close off screen and have a lovely connection so we sort of hoped, like maybe a little connection will spark. But yeah, I think when we read the script for episode six, we were like yep, we’re building to something here and it built and it grew.”
There will be a second season of The Wilds. Fans will have to wait to see what will happen to Shelby and Toni.
