Wayward review: Disturbing Netflix mystery explores a world out to “solve” adolescence

Wayward
Mae Martin, Netflix

Like most people, I suspect, I don’t really like thinking about my teenage years – a time of too much brooding and too little self-awareness. But despite any lingering embarrassment I might feel, I have never seen adolescence as some mistake or aberration we would ideally do away with.

That’s not the case for many characters in Wayward, an eight-part mystery series from writer-comedian Mae Martin. It is set at a mysterious academy in the fictional small town of Tall Pines, Vermont, that promises to pacify unruly teens and solve adolescence. Head of the school is Evelyn Wade (Toni Collette), a towering presence who dominates the “progressive, intentional community” of Tall Pines with her saccharine, New Age philosophy. But peel back a few layers and there is little love and light to be found in the town.

Our window into Tall Pines Academy is Abbie (Sydney Topliffe), a stoner tomboy from Canada who isn’t living up to her father’s expectations. After she sneaks out one night to meet her best friend Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind), a troubled, grieving girl who is deemed to be a bad influence, Abbie’s parents arrange for her to be abducted in the night and taken to Evelyn’s school. On arrival, she is stripped of her possessions and encouraged to snitch on her fellow students for the tiniest infraction.

Meanwhile, police officer Alex Dempsey (played by Martin themselves) and his pregnant wife Laura (Sarah Gadon) are new to the town. Their home was gifted to them by Evelyn because Laura is a particularly beloved graduate of Tall Pines Academy. When Alex encounters an escaped student tearing through the woods, consumed by terror, he resolves to investigate the school.

Tall Pines is full of small-town creepiness: the residents are overly interested in Alex and Laura’s unborn child; there is a mysterious door etched on their basement wall; Laura is plagued by the constant croaks of toads. That’s before we even get to the academy, where former students, now employed by Evelyn and renamed after animals, speak breathlessly about the transformative effects of their time at the academy.

But the scariest part of Wayward is the therapyspeak. The series takes on the phenomenon of weaponised psychobabble, abject cruelty often disguised as a way of protecting mental health – especially that of adults.

Take poor Abbie, whose acts of ordinary, adolescent rebellion are pathologised by her parents. Because they want her to be someone else, they pretend she is harming them and send her off to be cured of her androgyny and get away from friends like Leila.

Everyone at the academy is a master manipulator, but none more than Evelyn. She can turn the “honesty is the best policy” trope into hot-seat “treatment”, where students are berated by peers armed with cruel “truths”, until they crack. “It’s a way of holding yourself accountable,” says Evelyn, over dinner.

There are so many interesting ideas in Wayward, but it is often more stimulating to think about the show than watch it. Sadly, after some stellar first episodes, it falls apart, ending mundanely. Yet I was temporarily won back in the final minutes, when the motivations of a character who felt thinly drawn are finally, fantastically realised.

If you feel compelled to revisit your adolescence, Wayward is worth a watch. If not, there may be better uses of your time.

Bethan also recommends…

Hereditary
Ari Aster

Toni Collette also shines in Hereditary, another tale of intergenerational trauma. She plays artist Annie, whose family is plagued by odd occurrences in the wake of her mother’s death.

Abolish the Family
Sophie Lewis

Tracing 200 years of the movement to abolish the family, Lewis argues for better ways to care for children than privatised units. No need to totally buy into the thesis to get something from the book.

Bethan Ackerley is assistant culture editor at New Scientist. She loves sci-fi, sitcoms and anything spooky. Follow her on X @‌inkerley