Prime Video’s ‘Hunger Games’ Replacement Is the Perfect Weekend Binge

Published Sep 28, 2026, 5:26 PM EDT

Taylor Vollman is a contributor at Collider. She has long quipped, “T.V. is my name, TV is my game.” Fortuitous initials aside, at the heart of a tired joke is a simple truth — she has a lifelong passion for television. And along with it, an affinity for movies, music and pop culture. 

In a childhood time capsule, she had listed Friends, PB&J Otter, and Days of Our Lives among her favorite shows. But her tastes have not narrowed with age. Her viewing habits span TV Land classics, network hits, buzzy reality shows and streamer critical darlings. 

Hoping to merge this passion with her love of writing, Taylor earned a bachelor’s in media arts and design with a minor in film studies from James Madison University. After working in marketing for years, she wanted to sharpen her skills and went on to graduate with a master’s in journalism from Georgetown University. Taylor has since pursued entertainment writing and reporting. 

For nearly two decades, Suzanne Collins’ dystopian franchise The Hunger Games has captivated readers and moviegoers thanks to its blockbuster film adaptations. At its center, Katniss Everdeen has become one of the enduring characters of the twenty-first century - a reluctant martyr who explores the complexities of adolescence against the backdrop of a deadly game. Touching on many of the same themes, Prime Video’s The Wilds is the perfect binge for fans biding their time until The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping releases in November.

The Wilds premiered in 2020, following a group of teenage girls en route to a retreat when their plane supposedly crashed leaving them stranded on a deserted island. Their stories are told through the frame of investigative interviews after their rescue from the island and flashbacks to their lives before it. The Season 1 finale revealed they were not the only ones left stranded, with Season 2 introducing a group of teenage boys who supposedly crashed en route to their own retreat. The Wilds was created by Sarah Streicher and starred many up-and-coming actors, including Uncharted and Grey’s Anatomy star Sophia Ali, Sarah Pidgeon of Love Story and Off Campus’ Miles Gutierrez-Riley. Shannon Berry, Jenna Clause, Reign Edwards, Mia Healey, Helena Howard, Elena James, Alex Fitzalan, Tanner Ray Rook, Reed Shannon, Charles Alexander, Nicholas Coombe, Aidan Laprete, and Zack Calderon round out the series’ large cast.

‘The Wilds’ Echoes Many of the Themes in ‘The Hunger Games’

Image via Prime Video

While Suzanne Collins’ dystopian franchise pits its tributes against each other and The Wilds relies on their cooperation, both stories put their teenage main characters in survivalist settings, traps them under the rule of a manipulative leader, and have their every move recorded. The Amazon series shares many of The Hunger Games’ themes: the resiliency of youth, socioeconomic inequality, female empowerment, and the abuse of power. As Pidgeon’s character Leah Rilke explains in the series premiere, “So, if we’re talking about what happened out there, then yeah, there was trauma. But being a teenage girl in normal a** America, that was the real living hell.”

Each episode is a deep dive into a character, revealing the depths of their differences. Much like the inequality showcased among the tributes of The Hunger Games, these flashbacks reveal the differences in not just their geographical regions, sexual orientations, socioeconomic backgrounds, and areas of expertise. Despite the advantages or disadvantages they all faced, the tributes all faced off in the same arena and the participants of the supposed Dawn of Eve and Twilight of Adam retreats all ended up floating to shore on the same island.

Rachel Griffiths Plays a President Snow-like Character

Image via Lionsgate

As The Wilds unfolds, it is revealed the crashes are actually orchestrated experiments by the villainous Dr. Gretchen Klein (Rachel Griffiths) who is monitoring their interactions to prove her theory a female-led society would be void of conflict. This supposed higher purpose leads her down a familiar path, taking on a President Snow-like role. Snow is played on screen by Donald Sutherland, Ralph Fiennes, and Tom Blyth. She cruelly watches over the events on the island, with the help of embedded participants, despite injuries, assaults, and potentially death befalling the teenagers. Klein finds joy in the men’s experiment taking a darker turn, harkening back to Lord of the Flies. Throughout the show, including in flashbacks, she is shown as a master manipulator who even tricks parents and blackmails investigators.

The Hunger Games and The Wilds highlight the youth paying for the sins of its elders, with Katniss failed by even her own mother. This parallel can be seen maybe no more clearly than with Berry’s Dot Campbell who was her ill father’s caretaker. As Leah discussed her fellow island inhabitants, she said in the series premiere, “Heavy burdens meant for adults forced on us before our time.”

Amazon Canceled ‘The Wilds’ After Just 2 Seasons

Image via Prime Video

The Wilds was originally intended to run for four seasons, but Amazon canceled the teen drama after just 18 episodes and despite its 89% score on Rotten Tomatoes. “I think I pitched a four-season arc so, hint, hint, Amazon,” Streicher told Collider after Season 2. “And I always had in my mind loose vignettes. This is a coming of age story so when you’re crafting that, I think it’s important to have the beginning of immaturity and then the coming of age, the actual metamorphosis and the chrysalis moment, and then the coming of age coming out of that into some kind of adulthood or more maturity. We want to tell that whole story.”

With its untimely cancelation, The Wilds ends on a cliffhanger. Viewers were left with questions after the two groups merge in the final moments of the series.

While The Wilds isn't set in the same dystopian universe as The Hunger Games, the stories still mirror many of the same themes. The characters are forced into adulthood, many before getting to the island, but all definitely on it. And with just two seasons, it can be watched and rewatched by the time The Hunger Games: Surnise on the Reaping hits theaters on November 20.

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  Rachel Griffiths

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  Tanner Ray Rook

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  Helena Howard