General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

We Are the Wave

We Are the Wave (German: Wir sind die Welle) is a German teen drama television series released on Netflix on November 1, 2019, in which a charismatic new student leads four school outsiders into a protest movement that radicalizes out of control¹. It consists of six episodes and is a loose adaptation of Morton Rhue's 1981 young adult novel Die Welle (published in English as The Wave), which itself drew on a 1967 classroom social experiment in California²^•³.

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Wir sind die Welle
Platform and premiere	Netflix, November 1, 2019²
Format	Six-episode miniseries, German-language drama¹
Basis	Loose adaptation of Morton Rhue's 1981 novel Die Welle, rooted in the 1967 Third Wave experiment²^•³
Key crew	Executive producer Dennis Gansel; writer Jan Berger; directors Anca Miruna Lăzărescu (episodes 1, 2, 5) and Mark Monheim (episodes 3, 4, 6)³
Main cast	Ludwig Simon (Tristan Broch), Luise Befort (Lea Herst), Michelle Barthel (Zazie Elsner), Mohamed Issa (Rahim Hadad), Daniel Friedl (Hagen Lemmart)²
Setting	The fictional small German town of Meppersfeld⁴

Spoilers

Premise and plot

The series follows Lea, a bored high school student from a wealthy family, who is drawn to Tristan, a smart and confident new classmate who defends the school's misfits¹^•⁵. Tristan recruits the outsiders Zazie, Rahim, and Hagen, and Lea joins them, using each teenager's personal circumstances to bind them into a shared fight against perceived injustices²^•⁵.

The five found a movement they call "Die Welle" ("The Wave"). What begins as an idealistic, partly playful uprising against the establishment develops a threatening dynamic of its own². Their protest actions target plastic waste, burger chains, disposable fashion, factory farming, and the right-wing populist party NfD, a thinly veiled reference to the AfD⁶^•⁷. After their protests go viral on social media, the group grows beyond the founders' control; a poorly planned raid on a slaughterhouse and later actions against a right-wing politician and an SUV dealership escalate the movement toward violence¹. The final episode centers on an action that crosses the line between peaceful protest and violence¹.

Relationship to the source material

The 1981 novel and its predecessors tell of a history teacher, Ron Jones, who ran an experiment at a California high school in 1967 to show how easily a fascist movement can arise; the experiment was aborted after five days³^•⁶. A well-received German film version directed by Dennis Gansel, starring Jürgen Vogel, followed in 2008³.

A deliberate reversal. The series inverts the source: instead of a teacher-led classroom experiment that turns students into fascists, a teenage offender founds a protest movement that drifts toward the left-wing extremist spectrum⁵^•⁸. Gansel returned as executive producer and explained that he wanted to think the theme a decade further, toward the youth movements of the present driven by idealism and the desire for change⁸. The Goethe-Institut noted that the choice to portray radicalizing left-wing activists rather than fascists provoked heated debate on social networks immediately after the teaser's release⁸.

Production

The scripts were written by Jan Berger, and episodes were divided between directors Anca Miruna Lăzărescu (episodes 1, 2, and 5) and Mark Monheim (episodes 3, 4, and 6)³. Production was by Rat Pack Filmproduktion⁵.

Most filming took place in North Rhine-Westphalia. Locations included the former slaughterhouse in Euskirchen, which serves as a key setting; an abandoned swimming pool on the Brabanter Platz in Hürth as the group's secret headquarters; and the Alfred-Schütte-Werk in Cologne-Poll, dressed as a weapons factory, along with Cologne's Südbrücke bridge⁵.

Reception

German critics were largely negative. Serienjunkies called the series a "masterpiece of superficiality" that reproduces clichés and, with its diffuse political stance, manages to anger both left and right⁹. FILMSTARTS judged that the many themes it raises, from gentrification and climate change to meat consumption, capitalism, gun violence, and right-wing extremism, are checked off a system-criticism checklist rather than explored in depth⁷.

Timing and framing drew specific criticism. TV Spielfilm argued that portraying a left-wing eco-movement as radical destroyers while right-wing extremism is pushed to the edge of the story was an untenable narrative decision, and noted that the scripts were finished before the Fridays for Future movement reached Germany in January 2019, leaving unfortunate parallels to the real climate protests led by Greta Thunberg³. Serienjunkies also faulted the timing, since the Halle attack had occurred less than a month before the premiere⁹. Some reviewers were more positive: Deutschlandfunk Kultur found the series refreshingly political for a German mainstream production, with problems such as xenophobia, greed, and climate change questioned with some complexity in the Wave's actions⁵. On IMDb the series holds a rating of 6.2 out of 10⁵.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Drama and prestige series (individual series) › Teen and coming-of-age drama

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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