There's actually, at the end of the day, an even simpler reason why the stranded girls' stories on "The Wilds" don't compel and move to the same degree as the ones on "Yellowjackets" — they're just not as interesting.
To put it another way, watching "The Wilds" feels like watching exactly what you'd expect to see happen in a show about teen girls stranded on a deserted island. The actresses are all wonderful, and the characters are well-defined enough, but the way that they bond, cope, fight, push on through adversity, reflect, lash out — it all feels not far-fetched or badly-written, but strangely plain. To be clear, the very same applies to the Season 2 boys; although they're also played by a wonderful, committed cast of young stars, their problems and dynamics ultimately go a very similar route to the one you might expect based on the general ensemble outline, and most of the surprise in their storyline is reserved for just the base "reveal" that teen boys are also vulnerable human beings driven by other things than pure meathead instinct. Which, well ... shocker?
"Yellowjackets," meanwhile, is a show that almost immediately became legendary for its sheer gutsiness and unending catalog of shocks, surprises, and twists that nevertheless feel entirely of a piece with all the narrative groundwork that has been laid out. It's a show that's actively thrilling to watch, in a way that "The Wilds," despite being a thriller, isn't.
