YMMV / Island (2000)

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Did Mr. Radford only pretend to break down crying while being interviewed about the kids to manipulate the public into not guessing he abandoned his charges to die? Or was this a genuine My God, What Have I Done? moment?
• Hilarious in Hindsight: At the end of the series, the kids - and readers -learn the nuclear bomb was disarmed, and the only thing left was a "very expensive paperweight". A decade and change later, the US declassified records that revealed that a pair of nuclear bombs fell on North Carolina in a 1961 plane crash. One was recovered (and came very close to going off), but the other one was "cored out", and left in place, much like the one in the book. At least the government purchased an easement over the bomb to keep people from using the area.
• Paranoia Fuel: Not by the end of the last book because the bomb has long since been de-armed and was probably never capable of firing in the first place but just the revelation until then that they had stumbled upon a WMD, Junior, the last Nuclear Bomb meant to be dropped on Japan, still there, waiting, and probably still active, would not sit well with anyone deserted.
• The Woobie: All of the kids go through plenty of trauma, but Will is especially pitiable due to spending most of the series thinking his sister is dead (complete with Parting-Words Regret), being in a dehydration-induced coma, being in a frightened amnesiac state, or suffering from a painful bullet wound. He also has to watch the wild boar he befriended die.

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