Okay, no one asked for my thoughts on the Shoni breakup in season two of The Wilds, but I seem to be in the small majority (from what I’ve seen) who feel it made sense for Toni as a character to end the relationship, even if we as an audience can see that what happened to Martha wasn’t directly Shelby’s fault in any way. Here’s what I think....
The most important thing to remember before launching into this analysis is: this is the second time Shelby has made a decision that led to Martha almost dying. First, when Shelby gave Toni the halophen over Martha, and now with the boat. Again, we as an audience can clearly see the distinction here and understand that what happened to Martha was a result of her own trauma and self-harm.
With that said, Toni’s key characteristic is that she wants to protect Martha, and she’s never been able to the way she wants. I could launch into a discussion about how Toni protects the people she loves because nobody was there to protect her as a child, but this isn’t a character analysis--it’s just an analysis of that specific decision and why Toni took it so hard.
Okay, back to the protector thing. First, Toni wasn’t able to protect Martha with the pedophile doctor and wasn’t able to help her through the trial, then the plane crash happened, then the food poisoning where Martha almost died, then Toni pushing Martha to live in the real world and essentially grow up (which was the start of Martha’s breakdown, so she harbors extra guilt for that.)
This is where Toni and Shelby are so incredibly similar and we haven’t really seen it explored. They both carry around so much shame and guilt and act out when it gets to be too much for them. The break-up had nothing to do with Shelby or her hesitation with the boat. It seems to me that it was Toni projecting her own guilt for not being able to protect Martha onto Shelby.
Martha has been the one constant in Toni’s life and has always known exactly what to say/do to get through to her, and because it was Toni’s speech to Martha in 1x09 that caused Martha to start hunting for the group, Toni feels responsible.
Obviously feeling responsible for your sister almost dying is already a lot for a teenage girl to handle, let alone with everything else she had going on, so she did what she does best and she pushed. She lashed out and blamed everyone else because she doesn’t have the coping skills or the self-worth to take responsibility for what happened (again, *I* don’t believe it was Toni’s fault), and if she had “taken responsibility” then it would have broken her completely.
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am i the only one that kinda thinks martha is the new mole, not shelby? i know the writers all but confirmed it’s shelby, but what if that’s a red herring? just the way martha shows up in the bunker for the first time feels off to me, i can’t explain it. martha is this bright sunshine character and when she was rolled into toni’s room, there was something so dark about her demeanor that makes me wonder if gretchen got to her.
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