Blumhouse and Netflix’s Sweetheart does a fantastic job adapting the creature feature sub-genre and breathes new life into the horrors of being stranded on a desert island. However, sometimes in such catastrophic situations, monsters aren’t the only things to fear: sometimes, the threats can be much more distinctly human.
In Sweetheart, Jenn (Kiersey Clemons) washes up on a deserted island after a storm hits the boat where she, her boyfriend Lucas (Emory Cohen), and his friends were all having a party. She washes up with Brad (Benedict Samuel), who immediately perishes once they make it to the island. For a while, Jenn is on the island alone and does her best to evade a strange, aquatic creature who seems to hunt on the island at night before retreating to a hole in the bottom of the ocean floor during the day.
Eventually, Jenn is joined by two other survivors of the wreck: Lucas and his friend, Mia (Hanna Mangan Lawrence), who are met with a warm reception from Jenn before their true colors start to surface in the face of hardship and misfortune. Though the raft they arrive on boasts that it can hold six, they are the only two present, which could imply everyone else didn’t survive the initial wreck, were lost at sea, or something much more sinister.
Netflix’s Sweetheart Theory: Mia And Lucas Ate Zack
The number of passengers who attended Lucas’ party is vague, but the ones that are known include Jenn, Lucas, Mia, Brad, and Zack. Jenn, Lucas’ girlfriend, gets into an argument with her boyfriend about the party, and he accuses her of always having a “black cloud” over her head, then implies that her negative attitude is what caused the storm to befall their group. Later, when Jenn writes in her journal about the events on the island, she says that she doesn’t know Zack or Brad’s last names, so they weren’t close. Lucas and Mia seem to be good friends, and it’s also implied that Mia had a romantic relationship with Brad.
Upon arriving to the island, Mia and Lucas both seem haunted by their time spent out at sea and, even though Jenn urges them to start preparing for an immediate departure from the island because of the creature, they don’t believe her and refuse to leave. Initially, they cite being tired as an excuse for not wanting to leave. Mia outright accuses Jenn of lying about the creature, and starts to become combative and even defensive when Jenn insists that they cannot stay on the island. Lucas, likewise, is equally horrible to Jenn, threatening her with the fact that she’d have nowhere to go if she left the island alone, then states that he pays for her life. Their behavior, while erratic, could be the result of the situation; people tend to go mad in these situations, like Tom Hanks did in Cast Away.
Soon after Lucas and Mia arrive, Jenn borrows Lucas’ pocket knife to work on gathering up fish and other provisions they can take with them when they do decide to venture out again. When she retracts the blade, she notices what appears to be blood. Right before Lucas and Mia arrived, Zack’s body washed up on shore, with the bottom half missing, which could be attributed to the creature, but since it traditionally hunts on land, it could mean he died another way. Later, when Jenn is in the raft with Lucas after Mia gets killed by the creature, she notices blood inside the raft; it was too much to belong to a fish. This, coupled with Lucas and Mia’s odd behavior and unwillingness to go back out to sea, implies they may have gotten desperate for food and decided to kill, then eat, their own friend, which adds an even darker twist to Sweetheart.
Next: Netflix’s Sweetheart Ending & Creature Explained
