Wayward Pines

Did You Know?

• A companion webseries titled Gone, written and directed by Christopher Leone, aired on the Fox website alongside the weekly episodes.
• The webseries follows rocket scientist Eric Barlow searching for his missing wife Sarah, a journalist.

Premise

The first season follows Secret Service agent Ethan Burke as he looks into why two fellow agents vanished in the remote Idaho town of Wayward Pines. After crashing his car, Ethan wakes up unable to reach the outside world or drive out. He discovers one agent is dead, while the other, his ex-girlfriend Kate Hewson, has settled into the town’s peaceful facade. The residents are held captive by an electrified fence and a rigid code enforced by Sheriff Arnold Pope. Anyone who tries to flee faces a public execution called a reckoning, where the sheriff cuts the condemned person’s throat. Ethan finds his wife and son again while working to expose the truth. In the second season, surgeon Dr. Theo Yedlin gets pulled into a conflict between Jason Higgins, who leads the First Generation after the Abbie incident ended season one, and Ben Burke’s underground resistance. The story concludes with the final 871 humans placed into cryo hibernation, while Yedlin carries out a biological warfare plan to wipe out every Abbie creature on the planet, even though he has learned they possess advanced intelligence.

Production

The series Wayward Pines was brought to television by executive producers Chad Hodge, M. Night Shyamalan, Donald De Line, and Ashwin Rajan. Hodge wrote the first episode, which Shyamalan directed. Fox ordered ten episodes on May 13, 2013. Production ran from August 19, 2013, to February 14, 2014, with interior scenes shot in Coquitlam and Burnaby, and exterior scenes in Agassiz, all in British Columbia. The initial five episodes adapt the first novel in Blake Crouch’s trilogy, Pines (2012). The remaining five cover the next two books, Wayward (2013) and The Last Town (2014). Shyamalan agreed to join on one condition: that not every character die. He noted that while the show differs from the books, Crouch was still writing the novels during development, leading to “all kinds of cross pollinating” between the two. In June 2015, Deadline Hollywood reported that Fox was weighing a second season due to strong ratings. Hodge stated the series was always intended to be just ten episodes, matching the books’ storyline, but he left the door open, saying the finale would offer “a window to that, but it also is a complete ending as it is.” The tenth episode was promoted as a series finale, yet on December 9, 2015, Fox renewed Wayward Pines for a second season, set to premiere in mid-2016 with original material. After season one, Hodge stepped down as showrunner and executive producer, replaced by Mark Friedman. The second season featured a mostly new main cast. Several lead actors from season one did not return or appeared only in recurring roles, partly because Terrence Howard and Juliette Lewis had taken on other projects between the filming and airing of the first season.

Broadcast

Fox announced on May 12, 2014, that Wayward Pines would premiere in 2015 as a mid-season replacement. The series was also picked up by Fox in the United Kingdom and by FX in Australia from May 14, 2015, where the premiere was the second most watched program on subscription television with 101,000 viewers. Fox made the pilot available on demand from April 23 to 30, 2015, in what the network called 'the first-ever global preview event.' The series debuted on May 14, 2015, simultaneously in more than 126 countries, described as 'the world's largest day-and-date launch for a scripted series ever.' Due to time zones, episodes of the first season aired first in Australia.

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, season one holds a rating of 78% based on 77 reviews, with the critical consensus: 'Creepy and strange in the best way possible, Wayward Pines is a welcome return to form for M. Night Shyamalan.' The fifth episode, 'The Truth,' received an individual rating of 83% based on 12 reviews. On Metacritic, the first season has a score of 66 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating 'generally favorable reviews.' Rotten Tomatoes rated the second season 43% based on 14 reviews, with the consensus: 'Wayward Pines drifts away from the intrigue and mystery established during its debut season, slipping into a dull, repetitive, and trite narrative.'