Spoilers below for the Season 2 premiere of Wayward Pines.
In Season 1, the surreal Fox thriller Wayward Pines definitely lived up to whatever notoriety that having M. Night Shyamalan as an executive producer earns. And even though everything wrapped up like it did in the novel trilogy that served as the show’s source material, Fox ordered up Season 2, which debuted tonight with new and returning characters, a new narrative direction, and one hell of a shocking death. Alas, viewers only got a short while to revisit with the unsettled Kate Hewson before she killed herself, and here’s why actress Carla Gugino says it had to happen.
I’m sure [the writers] bounced around other ideas, but we had the sense that she would take her own life. By the time we spoke, that was really the only conversation we had… What I didn’t want was for her to have just disappeared, you know? As we talked about how she would be able to exit the story, what we kept coming up with was this notion that ultimately, all that she was fighting for just seems futile. Her husband had been shot in front of her by the young man who’s running the town. In that moment, she gets to a place where she doesn’t want to be there anymore.
That’s rough. The entire situation is rough. I’m still confused as to why people in Wayward Pines fight to keep civilization going when civilization is horrible.
Even though we knew Carla Gugino would be back for Season 2 of Wayward Pines, we didn’t know for how long, and we weren’t quite sure what capacity she would show up in. It turns out she’d kept the resistance front going for the past three years with Ethan’s son Ben, but her efforts landed her in the hospital, and new world order leader Jason Higgins’ aim to get information from her is how the super-confused newbie Dr. Theo (Jason Patric) came in. His medical mission was pretty useless, though, considering Kate had no intentions of ratting out the people she’d been working with to take down the First Generation. It seems she really had only one true intention.
When confronted by the better-than-thou-and-all-the-rest Megan, Hope Davis’ Pilcher fanatic who’d seemingly died in Season 1, Kate had little issue with making it one of the most uncomfortable situations Megan had ever been in. Kate attacked the wheelchair-bound woman and then slit her own throat after expressing a desire to no longer be a part of the world that Megan and the First Generation are in favor of. It was a huge shock in the moment, certainly, but after thinking about it and reading Gugino’s thoughts to EW, it’s probably the most understandable thing that has ever happened on this show. Anything to get out of that abomination-surrounded hellscape.
Given that this was only the first episode of Season 2, we are undoubtedly in for way more surprises from Wayward Pines, both bigger and smaller. And it wouldn’t be dumb to expect to have to wait for explicit answers to the mysteries until another few weeks have gone by. The biggest mystery right now? How Megan is going to do anything anymore without feeling Kate’s blood splattering all around her.
Wayward Pines, and at least some of its cast members, will be around for the next nine Wednesday nights on Fox. To see what else you can find premiering in the coming months, check out our summer TV schedule.
