SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Lord of the Flies,” now streaming on Netflix.
Fans of William Golding’s classic 1954 book “Lord of the Flies,” about a group of schoolboys stranded on a tropical island, will surely anticipate Piggy’s (also known as Nicky) death coming in the new four-part series from showrunner, writer and executive producer Jack Thorne.
“In the book, he dies instantly. It’s a real shock. It comes out of nowhere and I think what Jack Thorne’s done rather cleverly is to prolong his death so that we can see the relationship between Ralph and Piggy sort of persists,” director and executive producer Marc Munden said during Variety‘s Making a Scene presented by HBO Max.
The heartbreaking scene follows Ralph (Winston Sawyers) as he watches his friend Piggy (David McKenna) die, followed by Ralph carrying Piggy’s body through the forest. It’s a crucial scene to the heart of the show as Thorne wanted to land Ralph’s character development from treating Piggy poorly to “learning that, actually, he is a human being with a heart a mile wild.”
Thorne broke down why filming the scene wasn’t just emotionally difficult: “We were completely stupid! We were ridiculous to shoot it where we did. It was an island that wasn’t just difficult to get to, it was uninhabited. It took us a boat ride to get there and then when we were there, we were cutting holes with machetes in order for cameras to be able to get through. But Mark was insistent that the island be a character in the show.”
