Wayward Pines executive producer Chad Hodge discusses the major episode 5 reveals and what to expect next.
Warning: Major spoilers ahead for Wayward Pines episode 5, “The Truth.”
This week, the truth was revealed as Megan Fisher told Ben and two other new Wayward Pines Academy students that it’s no longer 2014; rather, it’s 4028 and human civilization died out nearly 2,000 years earlier. What remained mutated into carnivorous creatures called “Abbies” (short for “Aberration”).
A scientist named David Pilcher (who turned out to be Dr. Jenkins) foresaw the calamity and created Wayward Pines as a sort of ark to preserve the human race with a select group of people — and whose children would become the first generation of Wayward Pines.
Related: Wayward Pines episode 5 recap: A whole new world
Hodge discusses how that reveal came to be as well as comparisons with Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines trilogy and what is coming up next in the series.
The reveal
According to Hodge, many of the citizens of Wayward Pines “were chosen for specific reasons, Ethan for sure. Some people were chosen because they happened to be around Wayward Pines and they could easily hijack or abduct them. Some people were chosen because this is actually a better life than the life they had before — you’ll see a lot more of that as we go through episodes 6 and 7.”
And though there were some differences from the books in terms of how the reveals occurred, Hodge promises, “All of the mythology is exactly the same as it is in the book. I didn’t play with any of that whatsoever. The only thing that’s different is the way the information is laid out.”
He explains that the information in the books is revealed by Pilcher/Jenkins to Ethan in the wilderness, rather than the subplot with the children of the town. The First Generation is “something that I created for the show, mostly thinking that the future of this town and the last of humanity is going to be these kids, so ideally nobody would be in the dark.
“What you’ll see is that there are reasons that they had to keep the adults in the dark, because as Megan Fisher hinted, adults can’t handle the truth.”
He adds, “[T]he mind of a child…is much more open to new ideas. Telling them and making them feel special and all of that is integral to Wayward Pines and to the way that Pilcher envisioned it.”
Upcoming episodes
With this in mind, Hodge teases, “A lot of the latter half of the season is about, ‘Is Wayward Pines a good thing, a bad thing? Is it as simple as good and evil, or not?’ If we’ve done our jobs, you’ll constantly be changing your mind about that.”
As for how the world looks in 4028: “Essentially what we wanted to show is what the world would look like after 2,000 years without human intervention or pollution or destruction,” Hodge says. “If we all died out, the planet would probably redevelop and be more green and more beautiful, be the planet that it should be without every horrible thing that we’re doing to it.”
In the final five episodes of the season, Hodge promises “constant reveals through the rest of the show, always. There’s always something that you didn’t expect, a twist and a turn.” Those who have read Crouch’s trilogy should “find it very similar to the books with a few tweaks here and there.
“Again, the First Generation is not a part of the books in the way that it is in the series, and they figure in in a major way in the ending. So there are some differences. But globally and schematically and mythology-wise, it’s all the same. I’m very close to Blake Crouch, the author, and everything was sort of put through his filter the entire time.”
Season 2?
And though the series was always planned as a 10-episode limited event, “Could there be a possibility of a season 2?” Hodge ponders. “Sure, of course, and you’ll see a window to that, but it also is a complete ending as it is.”
Wayward Pines returns with a new episode on Thursday, June 25 at 9:00 p.m. ET on Fox.
Source: TVLine
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