THE I-LAND: Political correctness isn’t the show’s main flaw

You’re not going to talk me into this. The fact that back in 2019 Netflix dropped yet another show about a group of people cornered in a life-or-death situation—where the most rational, clear-headed characters just happen to be a tough Latina woman and her Black buddy—doesn’t impress me anymore. The fact that one character has to be gay doesn’t even make me roll my eyes at this point. And the fact that, for “variety’s” sake, every white character turns out to be a hopelessly idiotic caveman? That just feels like business as usual now. Honestly, I can’t even bring myself to waste more words on it. Why? Because it all comes down to the question of how, not what. Political correctness (as such) isn’t even the biggest sin of The I-Land. The real sin is the sheer stupidity of the writing, proving you can throw a “series” together even if the pieces don’t fit—or worse, feel borrowed from entirely different puzzles.

From the very first minutes of The I-Land, I had zero doubt what kind of spectacle I was in for. The kitsch was blinding. When the camera opened with a close-up shot panning across Natalie Martinez’s cleavage, it was already obvious why her character was the only one to wake up on the island with her shirt conveniently unbuttoned. And then it only got worse. Instead of struggling to organize food, build shelter, or even figure out how to survive, this group of amnesiac castaways spent their time bickering like idiots—or, better yet, going for a random swim in shark-infested waters.

The moment it seemed the writers might actually steer the story in a meaningful direction, they threw out a premature “plot twist” that made everything collapse even faster. From there it was a downhill slide straight into a painfully bland finale. Honestly, finishing this short seven-episode run—each only about forty minutes long—was harder than watching the characters’ half-hearted survival attempts. And that’s because Anthony Salter’s core idea had already been done in film and TV plenty of times before, and way, way better.

Two comparisons immediately came to mind. The first is the most obvious: Lost—a series I’m still a loyal fan of to this day. The “island as a meeting ground for strangers who must survive while confronting their inner demons” theme is pushed in The I-Land to the point of parody. It’s not just the setting or circumstances, but especially the clumsy attempt at flashbacks, clearly borrowed from Lost. And here lies the gulf in quality. In Lost, revealing characters’ pasts (and later, their futures) was deeply woven into the story. In The I-Land, these flashbacks serve as clunky exposition, adding nothing to the heart of the plot. I assume the intention was to lean into sci-fi traditions, exploring anxieties and sociological cracks around the idea of simulation. But even here The I-Land crashes, because when compared to Westworld, it looks and sounds like a bargain-bin B-movie—cheap and tacky.

The core problem with The I-Land isn’t just that it borrows and imitates—it’s that it does so in reverse, watering everything down instead of building on it. It adds nothing new, offers no fresh spin, and buckles under the weight of its own kitsch, clichés, and artificiality. What we’re left with is a caricature of its inspirations. The last two episodes make this painfully clear. Just when I hoped for at least one real shock, I got a string of dead-end scenes, dialogue that landed like bricks against a wall, and a journey into pure emptiness—boring even by “TV dead zone” standards. The misery was topped off by obvious editing blunders, like a key character being alive in one episode only to be casually written off as dead in the next, with no scene, no foreshadowing, just a throwaway line.

The second association, equally obvious, is Cube—still one of the best sci-fi thrillers I’ve ever seen. What makes a story about strangers trapped together in danger compelling enough to watch breathlessly to the end? It’s the mystery—the hidden rules of the trap, the purpose of the experiment—that keeps you hooked. That simple principle is what cements Cube as the gold standard for this kind of story, while The I-Land ends up on the complete opposite end of the spectrum: dumped squarely in the trash heap of failed knockoffs.