The first two seasons of the Netflix reality competition series Outlast took place in Alaska, where players had to deal with freezing temperatures, especially at night. The third season goes to the opposite end of the continent, taking place in a tropical rainforest in Panama.
Opening Shot: Scenes of an island just off the coast of Panama.
The Gist: In Outlast: The Jungle, sixteen contestants enter the Panamanian jungle and need to survive there for 45 days. Like the first two seasons of Outlast, which took place in colder northern climates, the one rule the show has is that only a team will win the $1 million prize for being the last ones standing. It could be a team with as few as two members, but it must be a team. Contestants can fire a flare if they decide it’s time to leave, or if they’re exiled from their teams and can’t latch on to another one after 24 hours.
The environment isn’t the only thing different from the first two seasons. This time, the 16 players are split up into three teams instead of four, and the teams are limited to five members — yes, that means there’s going to be an odd person out right at the start, who has to latch onto a team after being voted off the one they’re on.
The teams each provided with an different but important set of tools or supplies: Alpha camp gets bows and arrows for hunting, Bravo camp gets material to easily start a fire, and Charlie camp gets material to make a shelter. While Bravo camp seems to have set themselves up nicely with fire and a decent shelter, Charlie has shelter but no fire and tension between the loquacious Sarah and not-pulling-his-weight Wes. Alpha camp has neither shelter nor fire, but have just killed a gull they’d like to cook.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Outlast: The Jungle, like the first two seasons of the show, reminds us of a combination of Alone mixed with Survivor, albeit with the caveat that the contestants need to work together.
Our Take: The idea of Outlast is that the lack of rules leads to near chaos, with some players looking to sabotage or undermine others instead of creating alliances. That can be seen in Bravo camp, when Abby tries to create an alliance with Morgan, aka “Beefcake”, in order to ensure an all-female team wins the prize. Morgan is having none of it, mainly because she’d rather rather show the team’s men that she can be relied on.
We haven’t quite gotten to the stage where teams are stealing material or poaching players from each other, but a different kind of gamesmanship occurs when Alpha’s Ben, a former federal agent, and Maddy, a photographer with copious hunting skills, go to Bravo in order to trade fire-starting materials for some of their weapons. Bravo is finding protein without weapons, and Alpha has a dead gull that will quickly go bad in the tropical heat, so who do you think has the advantage?
But the factors that make this season of Outlast interesting is that the tropical climate means that the teams have to deal with unbearable heat during the day but still have to worry about hypothermia at night due to the daily deluges. Also, trenchfoot is a factor, which is caused by constant exposure to moisture. As we see, those elements plus not being able to cook and eat proteins make people really ornery really quickly. At what point will team members start to defect and/or sabotage each other?
Performance Worth Watching: As with the other two seasons of this show, we appreciate the people who don’t thrust themselves into leadership right away but have interesting personalities and a definite strategy. Morgan is in this category, as well as Pharoah and Sarah.
Sex And Skin: No sex, but it’s not a stretch to say that wet shoes, pants and shirts will come off pretty quickly as people realize it’s better to wear as little as possible — even if it means they’ll be more attractive to biting insects.
Parting Shot: Ben and Maddy argue with the Bravo camp over their terms. Their offer is that Alpha can come to Bravo camp to cook their gull, but Bravo takes half of it.
Sleeper Star: Maddy is a pretty steady player, despite being in Alpha camp, who can’t seem to do much right. We just love the juxtaposition of her profession — photographer — with the laundry list of outdoor skills she has.
Most Pilot-y Line: The editing that shows Wes sleeping on a log while Sarah tries to build a floor in their shelter is, to say it kindly, not a good look for the show.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Outlast: The Jungle is a good continuation of the Outlast franchise, adding heat and torrential downpours to the hazards the show’s players have to face in order to collect a share of the $1 million prize.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.