Wayward Pines 2.04 “Exit Strategy”

“Nothing says Wayward Pines like a piece of fresh warm fudge!”

If this season is like the first, the stories build and end in mini-arcs. This episode seems like the end of the first arc, with the confirmed death of Ben. It’s the last episode of saying goodbye to the core members of season one, as we’ve already witnessed Kate’s and Pam’s deaths, and are firmly entrenched in Dr. Yedlin’s passive resistance/coerced cooperation era at the hospital, against mini-tyrant Jason. Theo has deduced that he killed Pam, and refuses to give him information on troubled new patient Adam.

Megan’s abrasive agenda turns out to be the life’s blood of this season, that of encouraging the barely pubertal 1^st generation kids to breed, the “old-fashioned” way. She turns all her hypno-therapy skills towards manipulating the children but abandons mind games to enter into open conflict with adults who disagree. She is, as Theresa has long known and as Rebecca seems to concur, the worst. Not all the fudge and ice cream in the world (of which there is apparently only a limited supply) will change that.

But there are other agendas afoot. TJ Mitchum, in a revealing planning session with Jason, Kerry and Megan, insists on the urgency of cultivating land outside the barrier while the Abbies seem to have retreated. Dr. Yedlin insists that the Abbies may have a social structure and be more than monsters, based on what he saw outside the wall, and we get possible confirmation of that when two previous players return: Xander, exiled along with Yedlin and Ben, and Adam Hassler, who is from Theresa and Ethan’s time and has been living outside the walls in the wilderness for decades. How has he survived?

Adam is back to help Theresa, as he apparently feels guilty for getting her and Ben admitted to the program along with himself (the adults were all secret agents together, along with Kate; one forgets this about Theresa, that she was a badass before becoming a mom). Of course, had he not, they’d have been long dead, but that’s not how it feels emotionally to Theresa. He’s also having traumatic flashbacks to Abbie attacks and joins her on the agricultural expedition outside the walls when the opportunity arises. We’re unclear on what he knows, really, though Xander is accepted back into his old role as owner of ice cream shop McConigles, conditionally according to Kerry, who is well enough again to act as Jason’s more flexible voice of reason after her Abbie attack.

Xander and Rebecca may have history that she is keeping from Theo, as she makes a flirtatious visit to also urge him to comply with this new opportunity, and then she openly defies Megan when she puts pressure on a fearful Lucy to procreate. We’ve seen Kate and Theresa resist Megan before, but nobody’s had quite the way of Rebecca grabbing her wheelchair and guiding her out of her presence, with a veiled threat (in third person!) that an attempt to “reckon” Rebecca “might not be a winner for you!” Nimrat Kaur’s subtle and mellifluous accent is somehow wonderfully apposite to her words.

Interesting sub-currents circling around each other all episode, with Theo’s intellectual rejection of all things Wayward Pines becoming entrenched (“Every time one thing almost makes sense here, two other complete contradictions pop up!” he tells Rebecca in frustration) and Rebecca’s more moderate approach hinting at her own attempts at resistance. Shannyn Sossamon’s work as Theresa is a welcome remaining thread to season one, though does she have anything to live for now that her family is dead? Let’s hope Adam can convince her she does.

That’s not the cliffhanger, though. The cliffhanger is Lucy’s brother coming across a non-feral female Abbie within the town’s confines, in a surreal late-night merry-go-round sequence. Time to bring on the monster babies?