Wayward Pines ends as it began (almost literally), as an artful but frustrating mix of noir, small-town paranoia, conspiracy theory and post-apocalyptic nightmare. The Burke family proves as integral to survival in the future protected enclave as Pilcher and his sister once did. And we get the sense that this ravaged finale to the fate of Group B may yet happen to Group C, as it happened to Group A. We’re not quite in the Matrix, with avatars living virtual lives over and over, but we are in a world that builds in and doles out its own reset button, for however dwindling a community that remains.
Disgusted with Ethan’s betrayal, Pilcher has cut power, letting the abbies be his cleansing fire and final judgment on the ungrateful batch of survivors he tried but failed to dominate. Kate was his principal metaphorical subject, bringing the full weight of psychological pressure upon her to get her to accept not just her new reality, but the new reality he was imposing upon everyone. That it didn’t take should be no surprise.
When your acolytes are cult members, what do you do with those who choose not to worship? Pilcher’s idea of scaring, threatening and ordering them into submission doesn’t work, and when even Pam stops drinking the Kool-Aid he knows all is lost. Worse than confining an indulgent jailer to the cryo-tank last week, he sends his own sister there, testing the resiliency of the elite group of insiders behind the scenes.
Ethan and Theresa make what they can of their knowledge of the crumbling town, surviving in the hospital with the injured Ben and Amy until they can lead everyone to the temporary safety of the bunker in lot 33. There Megan makes a last stand “for the children,” who have retreated to their own well-stocked bunker to wait out the chaotic invasion. Which she should know about, really. Hope Davis and Melissa Leo gave the two strongest performances in the cast, for all that you couldn’t tell half the time if their tone was ironic or meant to be taken as gospel.
In a standard (but mostly believable) chase scenario, everyone is hobbled by depending on a lone freight elevator, and must be sent up in groups. Ethan sacrifices himself to keep the abbies back, using Harold’s bombs while Kate and Theresa confront the guards and Pilcher in his sanctuary. It’s Pam, however, who kills him, and Ben who is knocked unconscious in the elevator shaft explosion.
The writers take one last swipe at Twilight Zone glory, when Ben wakes up 3 years later (having been put on ice with the other adults) to a world overtaken by the power mad First Generation wrought by Megan and her selective mind control. He flees the hospital and Nurse Amy (who warns him he’s being watched) to stumble into a conformist street littered with the Reckoned bodies of those who “tried to leave.” Whether he’ll overturn the applecart the way his father did we may never know, but the spooky echoes of episode one are a mere gesture. The possible next season is up for whatever, but this one feels quite closed, well-acted-if-illogical pastiche that it was.
I also finally caught the digital-only companion series “Gone,” really just a half hour of immersive advertising for the Surface tablet (which is apparently all you need once the Pilcher Foundation has kidnapped your journalist wife) that was also ridiculously well-acted. It even explained (in a rushed aside) how the Wayward Pines technology survived 2 millennia (designed by a rocket scientist!). Like the parent show, “Gone” ended as a twisted kind of love story.