The Wilds avoided the male gaze by being a series by women, for women and about women

Indiewire

"Not to get too 12 Days of Christmas about it, but on Amazon Prime Video’s The Wilds there are nine female leads, six female directors, four female executive producers, four female writers, and a female stunt coordinator," says Ann Donahue. "It’s a series by women, for women, and about women — and given the rigors of the emotional subject manner and the YA audience’s bloodhound instinct for phoniness, using a cast and crew composed of people who have actually been teenage girls makes perfect sense. It shouldn’t be that audacious, and yet it feels like it is. It also breaks boundaries because of the cross-genre storytelling — it’s both a survival tale and a coming-of-age story — and the fact that many of the characters are forced to deal with intersectional bias in their arcs."