Spoilers for Wild Cherry episodes 1-4 follow.
There are a few mysteries at the heart of teen drama Wild Cherry, but one girl’s disappearance bears the most devastating consequences on Richford Lake.
BBC1’s latest is a coming-of-age crime drama that sneaks into Britain’s gilded, if dysfunctional, gated communities for a story of angsty girlhood and privilege.
As a gang crashes K Rizz’s place and the party dies out, Grace and Iris separate. This is the last time anyone sees Iris (Catriona Chandler) before she goes missing…
So where is Iris in Wild Cherry?
BBC
Nicôle Lecky’s series buries the lede very deep — so deep, in fact, that, at first, no one appears especially concerned about Iris’s supposed disappearing act.
In a town where everyone is harbouring a secret or two, a teen who regularly runs away from home is dismissed as “attention-seeking” by her friends, particularly Allegra (Amelia May).
Meanwhile, Iris’s mum Jelena (Katarina Čas) keeps quiet, knowing her daughter always comes back eventually.
Worried about her friend, Grace (Imogen Faires) ruminates over their last conversation at K Rizz’s party.
When Grace confronted Iris about having told on them and The Catalogue, Iris didn’t confess to the snitching but opted for something far more cryptic.
“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we’re dangerously close to wanting nothing,” Iris told Grace, who replied: “I don’t know what that means.”
Iris then admitted to resenting Grace for posting pictures from The Catalogue online. When Grace said she didn’t, Iris accused her of being in love with a mystery man who was exploiting them for their photos. Grace was as confused as the next viewer, as she doesn’t have a boyfriend and isn’t romantically interested in anyone.
That night, Lorna received a similarly ambiguous text from someone who she believed to be her ex-boss and Grace’s father.
“We are but demons who dream,” the text read.
Later in the season, Lorna realises the message came from Iris and confides in Juliet. None of them are able to decipher the meaning of the text, though the same sentence is found by police on a Post-it on the wall of Iris’s bedroom.
Who has Iris’s phone in Wild Cherry?
BBC
Grace’s worries are temporarily dispelled when Iris makes contact with the group the day before the Catalogue vote.
Allegra receives a text from Iris, who blackmails them into cancelling the vote.
“Or I’m going to tell,’ Iris adds, signing off with a flower emoji that leaves the friends puzzled.
Allegra finds the emoji to be especially out of character for Iris, but she doesn’t question the text too much as she’s focused on continuing her ruse with Grace.
The day of the vote, the girls are shocked when Iris, who’s still MIA, uploads an explicit photo of herself and wins the Top Girl spot, much to Allegra’s chagrin.
As the season progresses, it becomes clear that someone is posing as Iris. Not only is it bizarre she would post to The Catalogue after criticising it so harshly, but it’s also disturbing she would do so with a picture that Allegra likens to “porn”.
In episode two, Wild Cherry attempts to explain what happened to Iris’s phone when Juliet is seen with it.
During an outdoor party (Jocasta’s mum’s birthday party she can’t stop going on about, perhaps?), Juliet handles the phone with a tissue and plants it in someone’s jacket.
Wild Cherry‘s non-linear timeline then reveals someone else had it before it ended up in Juliet’s possession.
In episode four, a surprised Grace, who has been expelled as the sole culprit behind The Catalogue, finds Iris’s device in her own backpack. Who put it there, and how did Juliet get to have it?
Why is Iris’s coat in K Rizz’s video?
BBC
As Iris is still nowhere to be found, Grace’s suspicions close in on influencer K Rizz.
While Allegra is completely fascinated by his eponymous “rizz”, Grace doesn’t understand why a 30-year-old would surround himself with teenagers.
In a heart-to-heart with Noori in episode four, Grace spills something that has been bothering her. In a video posted by K Rizz, one of his dancers is wearing Iris’s coat.
Noori tentatively suggests that Iris may have left it behind, but Grace isn’t sold on this theory. Together with Allegra spotting some blood on one of the doors inside K Rizz’s squatting mansion, it seems that he might have some explaining to do.
What really happened to Iris in Wild Cherry?
BBC
At the end of episode four, all the theories prove wrong when Iris’s disappearance takes a turn. (Stop reading if you haven’t watched the episode just yet!)
After finding Iris’s bracelet in the woods, the police show up at Jelena’s door with the news no parent would ever want to receive.
Iris has been found dead, but what really happened to her?
With two more episodes to go, Wild Cherry is set to clarify whether K Rizz could be behind the teen’s death.
The two of them seemed pretty cosy at his party as they smoked together. Seeing this, Grace revisited her last conversation with Iris in which she was accused of being in love with someone who leaked their photos online.
“What if she was talking about herself, and it was K Rizz?” Grace speculates with Allegra, who brands her “crazy”.
As K Rizz, with his outsider status and a bad rap, is the most likely suspect in Iris’s death, it is also possible her killer — if it is foul play we’re talking about here — is someone else entirely.
We know Juliet had Iris’s phone at some point, but it isn’t clear whether she had something to do with her death.
What is certain is that Allegra’s mum was out and about the night of K Rizz’s party after her secret meeting with her lover, so she might’ve bumped into Iris, but does this make her a killer? Not even the daughter of a member of the House of Lords who has had every minor inconvenience removed from her path would push her luck this much.
Another hypothesis could see Grace and Allegra behind Iris’s death, or another murder altogether. Wild Cherry‘s flash-forwards show Grace frantically washing blood off her hands, with Juliet and Lorna helping their daughters cover something up.
From their outfits, whatever they’re trying to conceal takes place the night of the party, the same soirée in which Juliet gets rid of Iris’s phone.
In the future sequence, Jocasta and Noori are at the police station where a mugshot of Grace is being taken. While Jocasta looks pensive, Noori is in tears as she shows the police a video of Grace and Allegra threatening someone to join The Catalogue.
“Stop pissing everyone off and just come here,” Grace says in the clip.
“You’d better join The Catalogue or else I’m going to slice you up,” Allegra continues as Grace adds, “We’re coming for you.”
The video is in jest, though it takes on a sobering connotation in light of Iris’s untimely death. Was it aimed at her? And could her friends really go to such great lengths to protect their app?
“Nobody knew what they were capable of, even me,” narrator Gigi (Lecky) says ominously in episode one. “Until it was too late.”
Wild Cherry airs on BBC One on Saturdays at 9pm and streams on iPlayer.
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Reporter, Digital Spy
Stefania is a freelance writer specialising in TV and movies. After graduating from City University, London, she covered LGBTQ+ news and pursued a career in entertainment journalism, with her work appearing in outlets including Little White Lies, The Skinny, Radio Times and Digital Spy.
Her beats are horror films and period dramas, especially if fronted by queer women. She can argue why Scream is the best slasher in four languages (and a half).
