Photo Courtesy Of FOX
Warning: Spoiler Alert
Viewers of the FOX network miniseries “Wayward Pines,” learned in episode five that the town that claims to be “Where Paradise Is Home,” exists in the year 4028. Thursday night, we found out the genesis of the project conceived by Dr. David Pilcher and why the occupants of the town, used to live in our era. We get the information through the explanation that Pilcher gives to former Secret Service Agent, turned Wayward Pines Sheriff Ethan Burke, after he’s brought back to the town via helicopter.
Before Burke’s told about his new reality, we witness a scene of destruction. Our first sight’s a badly-bent street lamp, as the camera pans downward we see that it’s bent due to a now dead woman crashed into it in her car. As the shot widens we see a sign for Wayward Pines lying in the road, along with several dead bodies and numerous fires that have broken out. In the distance we see a group of hysterical people running and screaming.
We see a man approaching the town from the opposite direction, at first we can’t make him out however as he nears the camera, we realize it’s Pilcher. But he’s far younger than the man we know and sports long hair. His eyes grow with horror as he surveys the death and destruction around him.
When we return from the commercial break, we see the town of Wayward Pines as it looks on any typical weekday morning. However a little girl riding a pink bicycle looks up at the sky and notices the chopper flying overhead, containing Pilcher, Burke and Nurse Pam. It lands at what’s known as the “Complex” and the three of them go inside and we a rather good-sized production facility that’s fully staffed. Pilcher explains that all the workers in the complex are volunteers and make great sacrifices, to devote their lives to this cause.
Pilcher’s summoned via loud-speaker to another part of the complex, Nurse Pam tells Pilcher she’ll take care of Ethan’s arm that got sliced up by an Abbie in the previous episode. As she stitches up Burke’s arm she says she realizes he’s likely very angry with her right now. She says she hopes by the end of the day, he’ll have a better understanding of what they’re doing.
There’s a page for Pamela Pilcher and the nurse says to Ethan that duty calls. Burke asks her if she’s David’s wife and she giggles and says she’s his sister. She tells Ethan that David got their mother’s good looks, while she inherited her stubbornness.
Ben’s looking melancholy before Theresa heads off to work and she asks her son what’s wrong. He mentions a poster he had in his room, about the earth’s population constantly growing and that made him feel insignificant. However he suddenly has started wondering if he truly could make a difference and he finds that prospect scary. Theresa asks what made him start thinking of that and he said science class.
Theresa heads to her job at the real-estate office and witnesses the office secretary Henrietta, telling their boss Bill McCallum that he can shove his job where the sun doesn’t shine. She says she should have gotten Peter’s job as an agent, instead he brings this cutie-pie in for the position. Burke tries to tell Henrietta she doesn’t want the job, but her boss tells her to stay out of it. He asks the secretary what’s she going to do, take another job out-of-state?
Burke follows Henrietta to her car and starts apologizing, but the secretary cuts her off and starts complaining about the town. She talks about Peter getting killed and says that it had nothing to do with graffiti, he was onto something with his theory on Plot 33. Theresa asks her what’s Plot 33 and the secretary, shakes her head saying for Burke to stay away from it. Burke starts telling her about her conversation with Mr. Johnson, the man she gave the house to Henrietta says that talk like that will get her killed, gets into her car and drives off.
Ethan alone in the room that Pam stitched him up in, suddenly hears the growls of one of the Abbies and he follows the sound. He walks into another room and gets terrified when an Abbie jumps to the front of his glass case, he’s even more frightened when Pilcher enters and turns on the lights and Burke sees exactly what the creature looks like.
Pilcher says to Burke the Abbie doesn’t like him and he puts the creature to sleep with some gas that he pumps into the cage. Ethan asks who are they and Pilcher responds a distant relative, Burke asks how distant? The doctor starts to tell Burke the beginnings of Wayward Pines, he says that back in the 1990’s humans started realizing how badly they were effecting the environment. However Pilcher’s company through a series of DNA testing, determined that the environment had started mutating our genes. He tried warning the scientific community about it, but they laughed at him when he made his presentations.
David had just one ally, one believer in his theory his sister Pamela. After being laughed at during another presentation, Pilcher told his sister he was giving up his fight. He said even if the scientific community believed in him, it might be too late. Fighting alone, his cause was hopeless. Pamela said he still had her and he sarcastically said he and his ex-junkie sister would save humanity. Pamela smiled and said, perhaps one day we will.
Turns out that Kate and Harold Balinger, aren’t happy serene couple we thought they were. They’re part of a rebel faction along with a deliveryman named Ted that want to blow up the fence and return to their lives. Ted’s supposed to deliver Harold parts to construct a bomb with, but he accidentally dropped off the package at the real estate office. He doesn’t trust McCallum, but the couple tell him he needs to retrieve the package.
David Pilcher skips ahead a few years in his story, he’s now gained credibility and notoriety due to his book “The Coming Crisis.” At a book-signing a hypnotherapist named Megan Fisher approaches him and says he needs to be the catalyst to save humanity. He says though he’s starting to get some scientists to agree with him, most scoff at his theories. She says then leave them behind and take who you need to build a society for the future.
Inspired by her confidence in him, Pilcher decides to build a society for the future using cryonics. He’ll set-up a new society, inhabited by citizens that will help his new community grow and thrive. He realizes he needs somebody to kidnap the people for Wayward Pines and approaches a security-guard from his company named Arnold Pope.
Pope was a good man who fate beat-up, he lost his father before he can remember. However he didn’t let that stand in his way as he went though grade-school getting all A’s on his report-card. Then he lost his mother to cancer in 1987 and Arnold lost his way, ended up doing two-years in a teen correctional-center, then two years in prison for heroin possession. As Pilcher tells Arnold he knows about his background, the security-guard braces himself to get fired, but Pilcher tells him he wants him on a new project. Helping people get the second chances they deserve.
The first person Arnold goes after is a brilliant physician who lost his medical practice for prescribing too much Oxycontin. He lost everything he had including his wife and family and now worked as a butcher in a grocery-store. Arnold sneaks into the apartment and knocks the former doctor out with a rag coated with ether. Later that afternoon, the doctor would be the first member of the new society to get preserved by cryonics.
Over the next few years, Pilcher recruited volunteers to run the complex, while kidnapping hundreds of people to populate his town. Finally in 2014, Pelcher, Pamela, Megan and Pope got frozen, he set the controls for them to get awakened 2000-years later, according to his statistics when humanity as we know it was extinct.
When they regained consciousness, Pilcher realized he was correct and set about waking up others and start giving Wayward Pines it’s citizens. It took two-years to get everything running smoothly and they built the fence, not to keep the residents in, but the Abbies out.
He then tells Ethan that the reason he woke him up, was because the town was disintegrating and needs a hero, Pilcher thinks Burke can fill that role. Ethan says that you can’t rule people through fear, secrecy and surveillance, that Pilcher has to tell the residents the truth. The doctor replies he can’t do that, the people will go into a mass panic. Burke says that Pilcher doesn’t know that, but it turns out he does.
The doctor reveals that Ethan and the current residents of Wayward Pines are Group B. The first group that was revived Group A, were told the truth when they awakened. Everyone handled the news calmly at first, but after a couple of years realizing they were the sole surviving humans drove them mad. The scene that opened this episode, showed us the final moments of Group A’s participants. They either ran away and got destroyed by the Abbies, or killed themselves.
The doctor says they’re living in the Dark-Ages right now, but Enlightenment will soon be upon them. Ethan asks where that enlightenment will emanate from and Pilcher says from the children. That young minds are far more flexible and can easily accept a new reality, Burke asks if his son Ben knows the truth and Pilcher tells him yes.
David says that there’s a faction right now that’s trying to escape, he doesn’t know who they are but they want to blow up the wall. Burke says he’s not going to allow anyone in the town to get killed. He says that he’ll make certain that all are safe from a rogue group, the Abbies and from the reckonings.
The final scene takes place at the toyshop of Kate and Harold, Balinger has constructed the bomb and installed it in one of his music-boxes. He says he doesn’t want innocent people getting hurt, Kate asks how many people that the town-leaders have killed over the years. She says she wants to leave and get back home, but she can’t leave Harold behind. He promises her they’ll leave together.
The Story Resumes Next Thursday Night at 9:00 pm on FOX.
