Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Is She The Wolf?’ on Netflix, A Dating Show With At Least One Mole Among The Contestants Who Isn’t Allowed To Fall In Love (2024)

In the new Japanese Netflix series Is She The Wolf? five men try to pair up with five women to find love. The only trouble is that at least one of the women isn’t actually on the show to find love, she’s a saboteur, a plant who is literally not allowed to fall in love. This means that the whole cast is aware that one of them is a mole and they’re constantly on the lookout for suspicious behavior, but it also means that at least one unlucky suitor might actually fall for her and end up disappointed at the end of the series… unless the wolf blows her cover.

IS SHE THE WOLF?: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Five single men stand inside a church. An envelope is set in front of them and the title card explains that this is an Oath Ceremony.

The Gist: There are five male contestants on this dating show, each of whom wants to find true love. There are also five women on the show, but at least one of them is a “wolf”: a mole, a deceiver, an agent of chaos. She’s not actually here to find love, she’s here to throw things off for her fellow co-stars.

The five women we meet are Mikako, a musician, Honoka, a YouTube personality, Sakurako, an actress, Gabby, a model, and Julie, a singer, and they all seem genuinely sweet and, at various points during the show, they all try to assure the male contestants they’re honest and not the wolf. One of them just happens to be a convincing liar, and we won’t have to wait long to find out who that is.

The show is emceed by five Japanese media personalities, and they appear throughout each episode to offer commentary and explain the rules of the show. Among the rules we learned in episode one: Whichever woman (or women) of them is the wolf, they have to keep a secret the entire time they’re on the show, or else they’ll be eliminated. And even at the end of the show, if a man professes his love to the wolf, she’s not allowed to reciprocate. She’s a stone-cold predator, after all.

Before the wolf makes her confession to the group, the contestants will get to know one another and complete a set of tasks along the way, too. The first thing they’re told is that they have to take a series of photographs shot at various Japanese landmarks, like the Diamond Fuji, when the sunrise aligns directly over Mount Fuji. (Okay, this is a fun enough task to bring them all together, it’s starting to feel like a classic episode of Road Rules.)

As the cast starts to get comfortable with one another, the men have to gift the woman of their choice a bottle of perfume. This adds an element of urgency to the show in a way, because one of the men, Taiju, immediately gifts Honoka a bottle after just one conversation with her, which makes the other men realize that if they like someone they better gift their scent quickly to make their feelings known. They’ll know if the feelings are returned if the woman wears their scent the next day. Inevitably, more than one man might gift the same woman a bottle, as was the case with Mikako, and she is forced to choose which perfume to wear.

As the show moves along, it’s clear that there are certain people who seem like truly great matches, like Robin and Julie, two of the slightly older contestants (older meaning like, they’re hovering around 30) who have an incredible rapport right away. And there are others who are still trying to figure out what to make of the show, like Gabby, the one contestant who seems not to have made an impression on anyone on the show or in the edit room and has virtually no screen time.

The show has referred to a final confession where the wolf is revealed to her castmates, but in something of a twist –SPOILER ALERT –we the audience learn the identity of the wolf in the very first episode –it’s Julie! The emcees and the audience, now in on the secret, are about to have to deal with the fact that Julie, who is half of a truly charming couple, is now making us complicit in her deception. To keep things interesting, it’s also still possible there are other wolves out there, so literally anything can happen.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The show was definitely inspired by The Mole, which kept the identity of the one saboteur in a group competition a secret. But now that we know the identity of the saboteur and we have to watch how she keeps her secret from the rest of her castmates, there’s also a”Jury Duty, but make it a dating show” vibe.

Our Take: Is She The Wolf? has already aired in Japan, and is based on the series Who Is The Wolf? which has aired for several seasons there as well and has a very similar premise. The idea of a mole within the contestant pool is a great hook for a dating show, but I have to admit that all the other details of the show make it one of the more fun and compelling dating shows I’ve seen lately. For starters, there’s the whole bit with the perfume.

When it’s first revealed that the men would gift the woman of their choice perfume, I thought it was just another variation on a rose ceremony. What I didn’t count on was the fact that these men would literally be sniffing around the women each day to figure out if their feelings were reciprocated. Add to that the fact that some of the women strategically dabbed their perfume in places that aren’t immediately detectable, and it’s just a clever and comical addition to the show. There’s also the addition of the sun and moon lines, which are what the show calls the text threads that the contestants can chat through. It’s a touch complicated, but essentially it’s a way for the contestants to communicate, and if they chat via the sun line, it’s a group thread that everyone can see, and it’s intended to make people curious or jealous about their relationship pairings.

While the contestants all knew what kind of show they were signing up for, it’s hard not to feel bad for those who end up duped by the wolf (and thanks to the editing and casting, it’s hard not to feel bad for Julie because I’m pretty sure she didn’t know she’d be the wolf when she got there and she found out during the Oath Ceremony on-camera, she’s definitely feeling guilty). I don’t throw the word addictive around too often but after just one episode, I’m hooked.

Sex and Skin: None so far.

Parting Shot: Julie, having learned that Robin has been asked, via group text, on a date by Sakurako, hides her head in her hands. She’s already fallen for him even though she isn’t really allowed to, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be jealous of the other women who are showing an interest in him.

Sleeper Star: At this point, I’m going to have to say Julie. Knowing she’s the wolf is a twist I expected that we’d have to wait for until the final episode. Now that the show has set it up so we’re in on her secret, there are sure to be even more unexpected twists that will complicate her time on the show.

Most Pilot-y Line: “The name of the game is to avoid being deceived by the wolf,” we learn at the beginning of the first episode as one of the contestants reads out the rules, and that sums it up pretty well. Wanna fall in love on this particular dating show? Don’t fall for the wolf.

Our Call: Wolves are predatory. They’re fierce! Right off the bat, Is She The Wolf? sounds more vicious than it really is; in this case, the wolf named Julie seems so sweet and is genuinely torn up by the role she has to play, which is why the show is all the more compelling. Will she throw the game to prevent the man she loves from ending up with someone else? Will we learn of a second wolf with motives of her own? I am hooked and plan to STREAM IT all, and so should you.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.