Back where we started.
Warning: Full spoilers for the Wayward Pines: Season 2 premiere follow. For a quick refresher of Season 1, check out our catch up/prep feature from yesterday.
By design, Wayward Pines: Season 2 was always going to feel a little repetitive. The Season 1 finale pretty much hit the reset button on the town, with Ethan Burke's son Ben waking up from a coma to find himself in almost the exact same position his father was in at the start of the pilot. While that was an amusing, full-circle way to end things, the show kind of shot itself in the foot if and when it did get picked up for a second season. But considering the show blew through all three books in the first 10 episodes, it was kind of assumed Wayard Pines was a one-and-done limited series.
However, after its runaway success on FOX and the fact that it did leave the door open to more story, it's no surprise the network decided to continue its one-of-a-kind sci-fi mystery. But Season 2 had its work cut out for it -- for two reasons, mainly. First and foremost, star Matt Dillon was no longer going to be a part of the show, since his character died at the end of Season 1 (although many other characters are back this season); and second, there's not really any more mystery left to solve -- at least not inside the walls of Wayward Pines -- so, how entertaining could a followup really, truly be?
As it turns out, quite a bit. Surprisingly, the Season 2 premiere was very enjoyable and hit the ground running right away. Following a quick recap of the first season from Ben, we were off to the races with newcomer Dr. Theo Yedlin (Jason Patric), who was sort of the new audience surrogate here. As such, there wasn't much time to get to know him as a character, and what little time we did get with him felt a lot like Ethan's intro, right down to the marital problems and wandering around Wayward Pines in a disheveled stupor.
Luckily, the premiere offered a good, solid reason to bring Theo out of hibernation -- that is, he needed to perform emergency surgery on Kate Hewson (played once again by Carla Gugino). This at least sped things up in terms of getting Theo -- and us the viewers -- caught up on what had happened in the last three years. This included key bits of info like the fact that Ben had put together a resistance and that they'd blown up the First Generation's security system (hence no more tracking or video surveillance).
"Enemy Lines" also didn't waste any time in setting new storylines in motion. Unlike Ethan's extensive investigation, which slowly pulled back the layers of Wayward Pines, Theo's introduction was much more urgent and thereby compelling. For example, I thought it was going to be much longer before Ben gave himself up to Jason Higgins, or for Theo to find himself face to face with a horde of aberrations.
Of course, the biggest and most surprising twist here was Kate's final scene, as she took her own life in front of a paralyzed Megan Fisher (who I thought for sure was dead at the end of the last episode). For awhile there, I thought they were setting up Kate to be Theo's "Juliette Lewis" à la Season 1, but I have to admit I was completely taken aback by her sudden decision to kill herself and leave this dark future behind once and for all. Although I guess in retrospect Gugino's guest-star status should have tipped me off.
Speaking of which, it helped to see several familiar faces in this episode. In addition to Ben, Kate and Megan, "Enemy Lines" brought back Terrence Howard's character Sheriff Pope, who slyly "recruited" Theo in the past for David Pilcher's Wayward Pines project.
This episode also marked a tragic end for Ruby, who served as the final straw for Ben to surrender. (Though, Ben still seems to have loyalists on the inside, like Josh Helman's character Xander Beck.) That's not to mention Toby Jones ("Pilcher"), Shannyn Sossamon ("Theresa"), Melissa Leo ("Nurse Pam") and others who are slated to come back this season. All in all, Season 2 is already shaping up to be an exciting continuation of the original story, if also a slightly more predictable one.
The Verdict
Just going off the first episode, Wayward Pines: Season 2 seems to be heading in a much more straightforward direction than the previous 10 episodes. Instead of unraveling a mystery and figuring out what Wayward Pines is all about, this storyline seems geared towards finishing what Ethan started in the first season -- and that's not such a bad thing, as tonight's premiere showed us. While the new main character Theo isn't that interesting, the trajectory of the characters we know and where the story is headed certainly are.
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