Wayward Pines - Season 1
This review seems old as that show was on a couple of years ago and Season 2 has already aired and finished.I really liked Wayward Pines Season 1. I drove through the town of Agassiz, BC, a few times while the town of "Wayward Pines" was standing on their Pioneer Street. My husband then worked in the film industry building a new town of "Wayward Pines" for Season 2. He did the whole Beauty Salon including setting the tiles, if you watch it and see that set many times in the show.Season Two was not as good as season one. But I still hope that they do a season three anyways ... they don't seem to have decided yet on that.From what I have read, it's considered a bit of Cult Classic and has a pretty big following.
Wayward Pines - Season 1
Fox's Wayward Pines and HBO Game of Thrones are facing similar issues heading into their new seasons, since both shows have caught up with their respective source material. Of course, Wayward Pines was only based on one novel by Blake Crouch, while Game of Thrones fans have been waiting for George R.R. Martin's book for more than five years. Still, Wayward Pines Season 2 enters new territory for readers of the book. As we get ready for new episodes, debuting May 25, Fox has unleashed a sneak preview, introducing some of the faces coming to town this summer.
Imagine the perfect American town, beautiful homes, manicured lawns, children playing safely in the streets... Now imagine never being able to leave. You have no communication with the outside world. You think you're going insane. You must be in Wayward Pines. Fox has renewed hit psychological thriller Wayward Pines for a second season. 10 all-new episodes of the suspenseful drama are set to debut Wednesday, May 25 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on Fox. From M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, The Visit) and based on Blake Crouch's international best-selling series of books, the second season will pick up in the wake of Season 1, when a new arrival in Wayward Pines finds himself in the middle of a serious rebellion, as the residents battle over how to preserve the endangered human race.
Starring Jason Patric (Rush, Narc), two-time Academy Award nominee Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond, In America) and Emmy Award and Golden Globe nominee Hope Davis (American Crime, The Newsroom), the 10-episode, second season will pick up after the shocking events of Season One, with the residents of Wayward Pines battling against the iron-fisted rule of the First Generation. Dr. Theo Yedlin (Patric) - a new resident of Wayward Pines - awakens from suspended animation and finds himself in the middle of this rebellion, as he tries to understand what Wayward Pines really is and help preserve the endangered human race.
Also joining the second season are cast members Tom Stevens (Cedar Cove), returning from Season One as Jason Higgins, a member of the First Generation and Pilcher's young acolyte; Nimrat Kaur (Homeland) as Rebecca, who has her own secrets she keeps from Theo, her husband; Josh Helman (Mad Max: Fury Road, X-Men: Days of Future Past) as Xander, a resident working to undermine Wayward Pines from within; and Kacey Rohl (Hannibal) as Kerry, one of Jason's lieutenants in the civil war going on in Wayward Pines. Additionally, several Season One cast members will appear in Season Two, including Terrence Howard (Sheriff Arnold Pope), Carla Gugino (Kate Hewson), Toby Jones (Dr. Jenkins/David Pilcher), Melissa Leo (Nurse Pam), Tim Griffin (Adam Hassler), Shannyn Sossamon (Theresa Burke) and Charlie Tahan (Ben Burke). Take a look at this new preview for Wayward Pines below.
Theresa was the character I was really hoping would be fleshed out more in the second half. I was excited before that they had made her so active in trying to hunt down Ethan at the start, rather than sticking her as the passive stay-at-home wife longing for her husband to return trope. And while she was kept busy throughout the season, it was at the cost of sticking her in rather nonsensical storylines.
The big twist of Wayward Pines season 1 is that the show is actually set in a post-apocalyptic future, with the town housing survivors who were frozen in suspended animation for 2000 years. In the outside world, the rest of the human race has devolved into feral monsters dubbed abbies. Season 1 ended with Blake sacrificing himself to save the human race from an abby attack and the survivors going to cryogenic sleep again.
Wayward Pines season 2 received lukewarm reviews and disappointing ratings. The ending suggested the show could hit the reset button again and bring in a new cast of characters. The last episode of the show aired in 2016 but while Wayward Pines season 3 hasn't officially been cancelled it will almost certainly never happen. The last update was in 2017 when Fox president David Madden revealed he was set to meet with M. Night Shyamalan to discuss a possible direction for season 3.
Instead, we were given a new cast of characters, none of which we truly ever got to know particularly well. I never got to know Theo the way I did Ethan. I was initially intrigued by Rebecca, a strong woman like Theresa in season 1, but her story quickly dovetailed into a focus on an underdeveloped love triangle, complete with pregnancy. The only point of that seemed to be to isolate Theo. Yawn.
On a story level, I found myself most drawn to the Abbies this season. I was curious about their mystery, such as how and why they evolved into the form they did. Why was Margaret the leader? What set her apart from the other Abbies? What was with the symbol on her hand (similar to symbols seen on an Abby in the final moments of the episode)? But that was a string left dangling once Margaret escaped the town.
To put it more bluntly, with ruthless brown-shirted teens now running the town, Season 2 of Wayward Pines is at best all style and no substance. Or, as I say in my video review above, at its worst the season is a lot of ominous nonsense. Yes, there are glimpses of Season 1 stars Carla Gugino, Toby Jones and Melissa Leo, and Terrence Howard shows up to set the whole season up, but the new episodes lack any of the charm the admittedly convoluted first run had.
As you might be able to tell from this quite scattered synopsis, a big issue I had with this season of the show is that it is kind of all over the place. Season two has only 10 episodes, and there are so many big ideas being explored simultaneously that it just feels unfocused and scattered.
In fact, adapting Crouch's entire series to the screen in one fell swoop was always the plan. The game-changing reveal that came in Episode 5 of the show's 10-episode freshman season is actually the ending of Crouch's first novel. "You do find out the big truth halfway through the season," Hodge told The Salt Lake Tribune in advance of the series premiere last May. "And then we continue our story after that with where Book 2 and Book 3 go." Shyamalan also revealed to the publication that he and Crouch were actually developing the show and the books in tandem, which led to "all kinds of cross-pollinating" between them.
Wayward Pines' episode "Blood Harvest" proved that, while the second season may be a completely different show than the first, it's actually a better one. Don't get me wrong; I loved Season 1. Atmospheric small town mystery is kind of my jam. After earning my respect for having an answer to its central mystery that was neither "aliens" nor "purgatory", the show has won my heart by ramping into one of the most gloriously high concept series I've seen on Fox in years. Pregnant school girls! Pyramids of dead abbies! And Shannyn Sossamon is back!
Another thing I love about this season, which was also the salient point of "Blood Harvest": Yedlin, as a surgeon in a town with no doctor, has real life-and-death leverage against the powers that be. Wayward Pines needs him, Higgins is at his mercy, and overnight he becomes an institution: The day after being rolled out in the woods to die, Yedlin stepped into a lovely little office with his degrees framed on the wall and Wayward Pines' best secretary by his side.
ARLENE!!! Arlene (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) stole every scene she was in last season, I'm so glad she's back! Apparently she was the woman getting electro-shock-therapied last week -- which makes sense, since she came to support Ethan Burke by the end of Season 1. And maybe she'll recover some of her organic brain activity and similarly help out Yedlin, who has more of an opportunity to save this town than Ethan Burke and his bare-knuckled justice ever did... provided everyone in Wayward Pines doesn't starve first.
Hope Davis dropped some tantalizing hints about what the season has in store: there are three live abbies in captivity in a big crazy research center! Which she directs! And, as we've seen, the abbies are getting pretty nosy about what's on the other side of the wall.
Alas, Ben was eaten by monsters. It was sort of a shocking death, I thought on some level he'd carry on Burke's legacy. Instead, Ben bridged the two seasons and has now full handed on the Protagonist Torch to Yedlin.
Fox recently announced that Jason Patric and Djimon Hounsou would be making the trip to Wayward Pines for its second season. Today, they confirmed a May premiere date and the main cast, including some familiar faces from Season 1:
Two-time Academy Award nominee Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond, In America) has been cast as a series regular in Wayward Pines, the hit psychological thriller event series returning for a second season this summer on FOX. Hounsou will portray CJ Mitchum, an original resident of Wayward Pines and a historian for the town with extensive knowledge of its complex origins, and the one person who can provide a unique bridge between the current world of Wayward Pines and the previous world that humans inhabited. Hounsou joins Jason Patric, who was previously announced in a starring role on Season Two of Wayward Pines. 041b061a72