Crime
Man on Fire
Have you ever seen a muscular, threatening-looking guy go all soft while holding a puppy? That’s sort of the ‘Man on Fire’ concept.
Nicholas reaches for his glasses. They’re half-buried in mud. Beads of sweat stain his aching forehead, brought on by the tropical heat.
He walks aimlessly. A hunk of plane debris reaches to the sky, stuck fast into the ground near him. But there is another boy. He seems to be the same age as Nicholas—12 at most.
His name is Ralph. For all the worries Nicholas should be feeling about crash-landing upon some remote island, the chubby boy says he’s just glad to not be called “Piggy” by his bullies anymore. Ralph laughs at the name. Piggy does not.
They find a conch, and Nicholas knows the shell can function like a horn, if you blow into it right. He’d do it, but he’s got asthma. Ralph takes the lead.
Soon, plenty of others show up. They’re all boys. Some are tweens like them—10 to 12 years old. Others, the “littluns,” are scarcely 6 or 8. None of the adults survived the crash.
It isn’t long before Ralph reveals the “Piggy” nickname. They think it’s funny, so it sticks.
One of the other big kids, Jack, claims they need a leader, hoping they’ll all vote him in. They do not. Ralph becomes chief instead—so Jack pivots, dubbing himself the leader of the hunters, comprised of a group of choir boys who follow Jack’s every order.
On Piggy’s advice, Ralph begins dividing the kids into groups for building shelter, starting a signal fire and finding food. But such tasks and assemblies are boring, adult stuff. Most of them want to have fun.
Soon, a littlun with a birthmark on his eye whispers that he’s seen something in the island jungle. A terrible enemy. A beast.
No one has seen it. But more and more of them are starting to feel its gaze and sense its presence. It’s lurking just out of sight. But it is always getting closer.
And it may be more inside of them than they’d like to admit.
William Golding’s book Lord of the Flies (derived from a literal translation of the demon name Beelzebub) is a popular public school assignment for middle school readers. It’s also a popular choice for screen adaptations: The eponymous 2026 Netflix release is the third attempt at such since the book’s release in 1954.
And if one can overcome the sometimes-nauseating, fish-eye lens shots and artistically inflated scenes, this four-episode miniseries brings plenty of the book’s most impactful moments straight to screen. (Though book purists won’t appreciate a few creative changes.) And the actors behind the story’s main four characters, Ralph, Jack, Piggy and Simon, do a magnificent job with their roles.
Perhaps disappointing is the inclusion of character backstories, which flesh out the characters, providing a reason why such might descend into savagery (and perhaps offers an excuse as to why we would not). This contrasts from the book; the lack of backstory makes the story have a more universal application.
This seems to miss the point of Golding’s story—that the “beast,” that savage sin, is inside us all, not merely those with traumatic histories. As Golding himself describes it through introspective survivor Simon, the beast is “mankind’s essential illness.” And when we are stripped away from the rules of civilization, that beast is allowed to fully bears its fangs. It is unfortunate, too, that Simon’s realization of this truth is such a small piece in this story (his pivotal conversation with the pig head lasts but a few minutes).
And as anyone who read the book should surely know, adapting its contents means adapting some disturbingly dark moments, too—and given it’s been over 70 years since the book’s release, I don’t feel too bad spoiling some of those moments.
Piggy’s death is extended beyond the book’s description, such that his skull gets cracked by a stone onscreen, and he suffers a slow, bloody, upsetting death for added dialogue and impact. Simon dies in a brutal display of spear-wielding that is only partially depicted onscreen, but we nevertheless later see his bloodied body washed away by the tide. And a variety of adult human and pig corpses in varying stages of decay are spotted in bloody detail throughout the four episodes. Some have also alleged that this adaptation implies Simon is gay, though such interpretations rely on assumption rather than any stated fact (read our episodic review of the third episode for more specifics on that).
Netflix’s Lord of the Flies effectively brings forth the savagery into which the island descends with a realism that is common to a modern series and honest to the events of the book. But the show is nevertheless visceral enough that many won’t want to watch in the first place.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
After finding themselves stranded on a remote island following a plane crash, Piggy and the boys seek to restore a sense of order. But differences in viewpoints begin to split the group.
Four of the boys encounter the bloody and bloated corpse of the plane’s pilot. They initially try to carry his body to the water below to send out to sea. But when it proves too heavy, they shove his body off a cliff instead. We watch as the corpse plummets, hitting rocks and trees on the way down. We see the bloody carcass of a dead boar, its ribcage exposed. A boy states that “burning ants is very pants, but they do not scream as they should do.” The boys accidentally set fire to part of the jungle. It is heavily implied one of the “littluns” perishes offscreen in the blaze. Others choke on smoke. Piggy falls, briefly knocking himself unconscious.
Jack states that they shouldn’t give the pilot a Christian burial, since it was the pilot’s mistake that got them stranded there. When the boys opt to throw the body off a cliff, Piggy protests that such a move is not Christian. Still, Simon says a prayer for the man: “In company with Christ, who died and now lives. May they rejoice in your Kingdom where all our tears are wiped away. Unite us together again in our family to sing your praise forever and ever.” Piggy mentions being named after St. Nicholas. Choir boys sing a Latin church song.
Ralph removes his pants to go swimming in his underwear.
We hear two misuses of God’s name and one use of the British crudity “bloody.” Someone says an iconic phrase from the book that includes the word “a–.”
When older boys claim they’ve seen the “beast,” the group rallies to hunt it down. Simon struggles with increasing isolation, and he has a spiritual encounter while speaking to a pig’s head.
The boys stab Simon to death when, in a rampage to kill the beast, they mistake him for the creature. We see this happening from Simon’s point of view, with the camera looking up at the boys as they thrust their spears into his body just offscreen. However, we later see Simon’s corpse, covered in stab wounds, as it drifts out to sea.
The body of a dead parachuter plummets through the sky and onto the island. The boys later spot the body when wind picks up the chute and lifts up the decaying corpse—and they believe it must be the beast staring at them. Later, Simon sees a decayed skeleton. Ralph and Jack knee and tackle each other; Jack smashes Ralph in the head with a conch. Simon says his father physically abused his mother. We see a pig carcass getting devoured by maggots and flies. Simon later sees a rotting pig head covered in the same.
In a diary entry, Simon recounts he and Jack playing a game back in school: “He had us both stand on the hill behind the cathedral and shout, ‘Let there be light.’ He looked tremendous, his yellow hair shining like the sun itself. He said, ‘We are as gods, because if we are not gods, then how else will the world be made?’” (Some have taken Simon’s description of Jack as an implication that Simon is secretly gay.)
Simon looks at a crucifix while singing Latin Christian songs in choir. There is a reference to Lent. Simon encounters a pig head stuck to a spear in the jungle, and he imagines it speaking to him, calling him silly and explaining that it is the beast. Simon replies that it is merely a pig’s head on a stick. Jack and the boys scream a general thanks into the air after a successful hunt for a pig, calling it a “gift.” The kids dance around the bounty in fervor, convulsing in their dance as if possessed.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
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