We all like to think we wouldn’t fall into a cult. But Wayward, the Netflix original mini-series, boldly asks, “What if it were run by Toni Collette?”
Admit it, you’d be tempted to follow her anywhere, if only for the plot.
The Australian actor is a chameleon, able to play the offbeat but lovable heroine of Muriel’s Wedding, the emotional mum of About a Boy, the fiercely protective Philly mom in The Sixth Sense, and the full-on “I am your mother” of Hereditary. In Wayward, she’s a mother figure, inviting yet intimidating and utterly addictive.
Evelyn Wade has long, flowing blonde hair, large eyeglasses, and a tendency toward cardigans that suggest she’s a mix of earnest intellectual and crunchy hippie. She is the leader of Tall Pines Academy, a reform school for teenagers who need to “solve the problem of adolescence.”
However, from the intense opening sequence of Wayward, show creator/co-star Mae Martin lets us in on a sinister secret: This promising reform program in a picturesque town is not what it seems.
Wayward begins with a big leap.
Credit: Michael Gibson / Netflix
On a dark night, a teen boy races recklessly through trees, fleeing something or someone. He’s so desperate to escape that he plunges himself into a lake, but what he sees at the bottom of it is impossible: a glowing door. Swimming around him are the cryptic words of an unseen woman. She speaks of his mother, a bell, and a door. What could it all mean?
Martin takes their time untangling the mystery of Wayward. Across the eight episodes of this mini-series, much of the action will be set in Tall Pines, Vermont, a cozy place where boundaries are so nonexistent that houses there have no doors between rooms. This lack of privacy comes as a shock to Alex (Martin), a cop joining the local police force at the behest of his wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon), who is a graduate of Tall Pines Academy. After facing some professional problems, this married couple is looking for a fresh start, and where better than the place once problem child Laura found hers as a teen?
Evelyn is positively giddy to welcome them to town, but less forthcoming when it comes to the Academy. Not long after they’ve arrived, Alex is drawn toward the place — or more specifically, to its troubled youths. Hailing from Canada, Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) fell in with a bad influence, her bestie, Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind), who’s coping with grief through drugs, partying, and a 26-year-old boyfriend who’s as bright as a burnt-out bulb. The girls’ parents hope Tall Pines will be a turning point for both. But Evelyn’s promises are so enchanting that few grown-ups are looking into her methods — except Alex.
Mae Martin has crafted a compelling teen drama with grown-up twists.
Credit: Netflix
Often in teen dramas, grown-ups are lazy caricatures of smothering moms or abusive dads, or parents that are absolutely absent so as not to be an obstacle to the plot. Wayward handles this potential pitfall by writing the boring parents out pretty swiftly; they’re all left behind as the kids enter Tall Pines. And yet, parenthood is a major theme of the series, as Laura is pregnant.
A trans man eager to embrace the role of dad, Alex wants to support his wife in any way possible. But he’s bewildered by her apparent disinterest in all things baby, even as her belly grows. Alex finds an outlet to test his fatherhood abilities in protecting the Academy kids, even if it defies Evelyn’s rules.
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Through a smuggled walkie-talkie, Alex communicates with Abbie about what’s going on behind the cheery exterior of the Academy. But Evelyn, a mother figure not only to Laura but also to much of the town, has a power that even the police can’t compete with. Plus, she seems so nice. And she’s helping kids! So even doubting her feels wrong, like questioning your mother or God. (A very YA predicament!)
Beyond creating the series, Martin shoulders much of the story as an actor, taking on scenes of frenzied teen confessions, steely stare-downs with his partner on the police force, uneasy confrontations with Evelyn, and scenes of seduction with his wife. Gadon, a stalwart in Canadian television like Letterkenny and Alias Grace, lends support and delivers an unnerving arc of her own. Each of their stories slowly unravels the mystery of Evelyn Wade through flashbacks and investigation. Lovers of crime dramas will relish every tense moment. And yet, Wayward has more to offer.
Wayward offers a fresh perspective.
Credit: Netflix
While Laura and Alex try to make Tall Pines a home (or at least less scary) before their baby arrives, Abbie and Leila are fighting to survive the Academy. It’s shades of One Flew Over the Cuckoo‘s nest as the kids are treated like inmates, stripped of their clothes and personal effects as a means of erasing their identities. They must all fit into the box made up of Evelyn’s rigid rules. And as you might expect, the residents of the Academy range from rebels — like Abbie and Leila — to bootlickers, like counselors nicknamed Mule (Tricia Black) and Rabbit (Tattiawna Jones).
Snitching on your fellow kids is rewarded at Tall Pines Academy, where Evelyn sits and smiles as her wards tear one another apart with judgment and snarling name-calling. Basically, imagine the shittiest thing someone said to you in high school being said in front of everyone in your grade, with your teacher nodding in approval. With the Academy, Martin heightens the stakes of high school drama — from embarrassment to cliques to crushes — by putting them all under the unblinking eye of Evelyn, who treats normal human urges like a disease that can only be defeated by a rigorous regimen of shame and submission.
Within this, Topliffe and Lind have the most screentime, and make a meal of it. Together, they are authentic in capturing the chaotic chemistry of girlhood best friends. They are at times childish, challenging, caring, and even caustic. So you can’t help but root for them, even if their paths seem to be pulling them away from each other.
Martin smartly builds a curious cast of misfits around their heroines, including a chronic liar who is also a sweetheart (John Daniel), a gleeful snitch (Isolde Ardies), and a volatile bad boy (Milton Torres Lara). Rather than fitting neatly into The Breakfast Club clichés of John Hughes–styled teen drama, Martin carves out fresh ideas of what it means to be young and acting out. And to drive home the high stakes of the Academy’s brutal rehabilitation process, Martin offers Colette as a vengeful god.
Toni Colette is electrifying in Wayward.
Credit: Michael Gibson / Netflix
Naturally. With enviable ease, Colette musters a gravitas that instantly establishes Evelyn as not only powerful, but also beguiling. From the first time you see her smiling face — in a promotional video for the Academy —you might know she can’t be trusted. Perhaps because her whole schtick feels too familiar to the various true-crime exposés about pretty blonde white women who’ve led well-meaning people into twisted cults that profit from followers’ shame. Maybe because you don’t cast Toni Colette to play just some nice helper of children. That would be a waste of her depth and just how bone-chilling she can be. And Wayward wastes neither.
There’s a sense in this show that Colette knows what the audience wants from her. On some level, maybe we’re watching and waiting for a Hereditary-style monologue, so scathing that it’s devastating and delicious. Every scene with Evelyn seems to peel back another layer of her smiling exterior, so that those glinting white teeth seem less a welcome and more a warning. What will be revealed becomes like a twisted striptease as the series goes on.
Colette grounds the horror of Wayward, which, despite hints at the paranormal, is terrifyingly human in its horror. Martin’s series renders a world familiar, current, and even disarmingly progressive. LGBTQ+ characters live in Tall Pines, and they might be judged for all kinds of infractions against the town’s unwritten rules of conduct. But no one will condemn them for their sexuality or misgender them. In this way, Martin lays a sophisticated message into the mini-series.
Horror set in small towns can often come from a fear of conservative politics. In those movies, breaking from old-fashioned ways can get you cursed or killed. But Wayward offers a twist on this.
Tall Pines is not some Stepford Wives setup of brainwashed white wives obeying stodgy gender roles. It’s a diverse Vermont town, in terms of race, sexual orientation, gender — just not belief. In that, Martin scratches at the troubling, smug isolation that can happen within liberal enclaves. These spaces aren’t immune to the abusive tactics of a charismatic figure. And yet, both through casting Colette and building rich character arcs, Martin shows how damned hard resisting such an influence can be, especially when you are in desperate need of community.
In the end, Wayward becomes about what we’re willing to surrender. Like great Netflix series like Orange Is the New Black, Stranger Things, and Bridgerton, this mini-series gives audiences an ensemble of fascinating characters with intriguing arcs, so the story feels rich, no matter what thread a sequence follows.
All this makes for a show that’s very easy to binge-watch. So now a warning: Don’t hit play on Wayward unless you’re ready to surrender yourself to 8 hours of this sensational series. Like the town at its center, it’s hard to walk away from.
Wayward was reviewed out of the Toronto International Film Festival; it will debut on Netflix on Sept. 25.
