Home Entertainment The road to hell is paved with good intentions in Netflix’s German-language series We Are the Wave

The road to hell is paved with good intentions in Netflix’s German-language series We Are the Wave

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Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Power corrupts. The oppressed becomes the oppressor. But not you, right? You’re a good person, and you’re fighting the good fight for all the right reasons. It’s about justice after all. You’re standing up for yourself and those like you and fighting fire with fire. You’re on the side of right, and people are either with you or against you. So how does it feel to be on the road to fascism?

We Are the Wave (or Wir sind die Welle if you prefer) is Netflix’s upcoming German-language teen coming-of-age drama series that draws its inspiration from the accidentally all-too-successful Third Wave social experiment run in the ‘60s by a California history teacher, Ron Jones. In an attempt to explain to his class why the German people went along with the Nazis and their actions, over the course of a week he accidentally created a social movement that quickly spread throughout the school and mimicked many of the characteristics of a fascistic, authoritarian regime. You can read more about it here. It formed the basis for the 1981 Emmy Award-winning movie The Wave, which received a novelisation from author Todd Strasser (under his pseudonym Morton Rhue) that same year.

The show’s official plot synopsis is as follows:

Inspired by a real experiment that shocked the world and the highly acclaimed hit movie, We Are the Wave follows a group of rebellious teenagers. In pursuing their dream of a better tomorrow they build a community that spreads into a mass phenomenon. What begins as an idealistic and playful uprising against the establishment, soon starts to take a terrifying turn – but the power of The Wave has already grown out of control…

Let’s take a look:

There’s a reason why people say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, as this trailer ably demonstrates, and this is an incredibly topical series given the polarised world we’re living in right now. The series looks decently shot and acted, but I do question how much the plot will strain our credulity. It seems like we go from being bullied to full blown mass murder in the blink of an eye, but I find the psychological aspects behind it rather intriguing.

What do you think?

We are the Wave will premiere its six-episode-long first season on Netflix on 1 November. It stars Luise Befort, Ludwig Simon, Michelle Barthel, Daniel Friedl, and Mohamed Issa.

Last Updated: October 22, 2019

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