Jack Thorne’s Lord of the Flies
Jack Thorne’s 2026 Lord of the Flies is a masterpiece of an adaptation. The four-part BBC miniseries captures the essence of William Golding’s 1954 novel just as well as the 1963 and 1990 films but with much more emotion and depth. A group of schoolboys is stranded on an island and confronted with tensions between forces of technology, order, cooperation, community, and the forces of brutality, natural hierarchy, chaos, violence, and aggressive egoism.
The series is visually beautiful throughout. The contrasting tropical beauty and hellish nightmare of the island described in the book really comes through. The soundtrack is haunting and the acting is incredible. Lox Pratt—the 14-year-old British actor cast in the upcoming Harry Potter adaptation as Draco Malfoy—perfectly embodies the demonic antagonist, Jack.
Lord of the Flies could be described as a deeply evil book. I had a traumatic experience as a 12-year-old kid when I watched the 1990 film on TV. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of incredible evil. This film version captured the disgusting darkness that Golding was trying to convey in his book. The children are sadistic monsters, running around in filth. You feel the exhaustion and madness creeping in. The victimized children break down in tears. The evil is palpable and irredeemable. The idea of such evil overcoming a group of children was so disturbing to me that it sparked my earliest meditations into the problem of evil.
For this reason, I never liked the Lord of the Flies book. Golding projects too much of a Christian metaphysics into the story. The 2026 TV version softens many of these elements. We get a backstory for some of the characters, and we see major themes about fatherhood and motherhood. Jack’s aggression and insecurity are loosely attributed to his absent father, but this isn’t the “cause” of evil because Simon had the same issue and chose an alternative path. Piggy is a completely longhoused motherly figure, raised by his auntie, who annoys everyone with his constant rule following and concern trolling. Simon acts like a mother toward both Jack and Ralph and gets brutally rejected.
There is no clear, heavy moralized formula to the metaphysics of evil in this adaptation. Jack is more of a Nietzschean figure and comes off as heroic and sympathetic many times. The show truly becomes about him and the story of his will. He is driven by passion and a desire to test himself. “I’m not scared. I don’t want to be tested, I don’t want this to be a test—I just feel like it is.” He mobilizes his army to conduct a carefully organized hunt and utilizes the strengths of his subordinates while improving their weaknesses.
He ridicules Piggy’s system of reason and democracy but can also advance himself within it. “I have the conch,” he says mockingly when he’s interrupted. He loses the majority vote at first but ends up winning people over through his charisma and free-spiritedness. “They’ve changed their minds. That is democracy.” Even Ralph is enamored with this and must confess “I increasingly believe that bathing is the only sensible thing to do on this island… I say eat, sleep and bathe.” “You don’t mean that,” says Piggy. “I could mean that. I SHOULD mean that.”
“I’m forming a new camp. One that hunts and sings and dances,” Jack declares in his furs and war paint. These Dionysian elements—the furs, dancing, singing, etc. are not found in the original book. When nobody joins him, he forms the camp on his own and peers into a pool like Narcissus.
Simon writes in his journal about Jack: “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?’”
Despite this loftier mood, the scenes depicting the boys’ descent into savagery were still extremely horrifying. The Episode 3 beach sequence is like a nightmarish fever dream. Jack is overcome with violent ecstasy from the feast and demands that the ritual hunting “dance” begins. This transforms into an aesthetic homage of demonic pagan ritual horror. It leaves you with a satisfyingly yucky feeling while still finding it beautiful—a very different experience from previous adaptations.
