A big turning point on Untamed for Kyle Turner (Eric Bana) and the newest park ranger, Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago), is when he saves her when she’s trapped in a mine during their investigation into the death of Jane Doe.
“That’s when we first see that he realized he really cares about her as a character and that also that they become real true partners at that moment,” coshowrunner Elle Smith tells TV Insider.
Filming those scenes was “an exciting challenge,” shares Santiago. “Mark [L. Smith, co-showrunner] couldn’t even be there that day. He was like, ‘This is too claustrophobic.’ It was a very long, exhausting day, but I was so lucky to have such incredible support from the crew, the director, the showrunners, Eric. I felt very supported. And I was really scared because they built this incredible, huge mine. They built the whole thing for us so that it could be movable and removed and safe. But still, at a certain point, my body didn’t know that I was playing pretend. My body really had one of those moments where I was like, ‘I’m stuck.’ So it was scary.”
Also important for Kyle and Naya’s growing bond is when she takes her son to his cabin after her ex shows up. What makes her trust him so much at that point?
“I think as Kyle and Naya start developing this give and take relationship where it’s like you give a little, I give a little, and they start — I think especially after the mine, because they shared this vulnerable moment of this fear of death — relying on each other more as partners,” Santiago says. “I think also after she learns that Kyle and Jill [Rosemarie DeWitt] had a son and there’s sort of this generosity in wanting to share her son with them.”
Kyle’s trust in her also contributes to Naya looking pretty comfortable in Yosemite at the end of the finale; she doesn’t like that word and instead suggests she’s just less likely to die in a wilderness when it comes up.
One relationship of Kyle’s that’s the complete opposite of his with Naya is his with Shane Maguire (Wilson Bethel), whom he suspects of killing Lily. (Shane did kill Sanderson at Jill’s request, after he murdered her and Kyle’s son.) That culminates in Shane hunting Kyle through the woods until Naya intervenes and kills him, saving the ISB agent.
Their scenes are full of conflict, “almost a fault,” Bethel tells us with a laugh. “I’m like, ‘Can these guys just be nice to each other for like 30 seconds? Can they pretend?’ I think that it’s obviously owing to the stakes of their history. They just couldn’t be any higher. One of the things that this show does amazingly well through the writing is slowly reveal to you just how high the stakes are. You think the stakes are one thing, and then they sort of get ratcheted up a level and then ratcheted up another level. And so these guys, especially I think from Kyle’s perspective, share the biggest, deepest, most meaningful secret imaginable, basically. And that creates a dynamic in their relationship that is just a mess there.”
Though Shane didn’t kill Lucy, there was a cut scene involving those two characters, Bethel reveals. “Shane meets Lucy for the first time, and they have this whole very interesting, kind of weirdly dangerous, weirdly sexually charged cat and mouse dynamic that I thought was really cool and interesting,” he shares.
Untamed, Streaming Now, Netflix