# Wayward Pines Season 1 **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 14, 2015, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072 "2015-05-14T22:11:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Edward\_The\_Head](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ce73a5/32.png) [@Edward\_The\_Head](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edward_The_Head)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/61 "2015-05-30T01:48:59Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > Any reasons given for any of those things would be spoilers. You’re not yet supposed to know the reasons. > > That’s part of the fun; being totally confused and then bam, there’s a reveal and it all makes sense. > > At least we hope that’s what happens. It remains to be seen. If the show follows the book then it will make sense, at least in terms of the book universe. Hopefully they will follow the book enough and if that’s the case then it’s not going to be like Lost or Under the Dome. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/62 "2015-05-30T01:56:34Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > Any reasons given for any of those things would be spoilers. You’re not yet supposed to know the reasons. > > That’s part of the fun; being totally confused and then bam, there’s a reveal and it all makes sense. > > At least we hope that’s what happens. It remains to be seen. To go back to the The Hunger Games, knowing Gale and Katniss knew each other ahead of time made the movie make a lot more sense. Just knowing something from the book didn’t spoil anything. It was simply something that the director and screen writer (and whoever else) chose to leave out. Unless you know something I don’t, you have no way of knowing what would or wouldn’t be a spoiler. You’re just assuming. If someone watched the first Hunger Games movie and was confused about the Gale and Katniss thing and asked for clarification before watching the rest of the movies, it could be explained without ruining anything (FTR, I’ve only seen the first movie and I don’t know if they backtracked to tell that part of the story). But I/we digress and I don’t want to derail the thread over what is and isn’t a spoiler. I’ll leave my question open, if someone can explain what I was asking, without spoiling anything, great, otherwise, don’t worry about it. ---
**Author:** ![Fair\_Rarity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fair_rarity/32/153_2.png) [@Fair\_Rarity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fair_Rarity)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/63 "2015-05-30T02:02:08Z")
I am enjoying the season a lot, more than I expected because I cannot stand Leo, Lewis, or Howard. I try to avoid anything any of them are in as a general rule so a three-fer is really pushing my patience. However, I hardly notice them and I kind of liked Lewis. It’s reminding me a lot of The Village, but not in a bad way, as that movie suuuuuuuucked. I can’t wait for it to be over so I can inhale the books. After the nightmare that Game of Thrones has become in the book vs show arena, I like being completely in the dark and not boiling with rage over changes. Plus I can’t remember the last time I saw Matt Dillon in anything and I’ve adored him for … well… way too many years to admit to in public. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/64 "2015-05-30T02:12:24Z")
I’m not familiar with The Hunger Games so your examples don’t mean anything to me. In any case, anything we don’t already know from watching the show could be a spoiler, by definition. But I don’t want to bog down this thread with an argument about what is or isn’t a spoiler. Hopefully people will use common sense about what they post. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/65 "2015-05-30T03:17:23Z")
> [@EllisDee](#): > > I rewound and played back the part with the monster taking the sheriff’s body in slow-mo. > > Clearly humanoid but also clearly not human, possibly covered in silver fur. Definitely walked on two legs. It looked pretty similar to the [Twilight Zone airplane gremlin](http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Gremlin_%28Twilight_Zone%29?file=Twilight_Zone_Gremlin.jpg). > > Nothing about it made me think of the time of dinosaurs. > [@davidm](#): > > Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t think they actually showed the monster. I’ll have to look at it again. > > It just seemed like, with the other time travel clues, dinosaurs would make sense. But if they showed it and it wasn’t a dinosaur, then I guess not. Okay I looked at it on On Demand. There was only a very brief glimpse of something but to me it looked nothing like what you’re describing. If anything it was sort of dinosaur shaped (but I can’t swear to that) which may be where I got the idea. Maybe I can find a screen capture online. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/66 "2015-05-30T03:42:17Z")
You can see it on the fox website: [Wayward Pines, episode 3](http://www.fox.com/watch/450105411834/7684059648) I took a nice brightened, slow-mo video capture of the monster; is there somewhere other than youtube I could upload it? Only 9 seconds / 12 megs. Don’t want to get my youtube account banned, so anywhere else would be preferable. It’s _clearly_ just a dude in a costume, btw. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/67 "2015-05-30T03:51:40Z")
Oh, hey, dailymotion works for me. To my knowledge I’ve never uploaded anything there, so if my account gets banned it won’t matter: [Wayward Pines monster](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2s13ut) Be sure to view in 1080p; the lower resolution versions annoyingly jutter right past the monster. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/68 "2015-05-30T04:18:54Z")
In my hopes that this doesn’t get (too) supernatural. I’m going to hope that someone Pope’s chip knows that he wasn’t living anymore and that whatever thing was (hopefully a person or animal) was dispatched to go pick him up. As opposed to Ethan opening the door and Sasquatch just happened to be waiting right there and just happened to grab the first piece of meat he saw and just happened to run right back out and nothing else was there so he Ethan could close the door right away without having to go all Walking Dead on everything else trying to get in. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/69 "2015-05-30T04:34:54Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > […]Sasquatch[…] That’s a better comparison. It reminded me of the Twilight Zone gremlin based on color. EDIT: Actually, looking again at the video and the linked picture upthread, it does resemble the gremlin quite a bit. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/70 "2015-05-30T04:44:57Z")
> [@EllisDee](#): > > That’s a better comparison. It reminded me of the Twilight Zone gremlin based on color. > > EDIT: Actually, looking again at the video and the linked picture upthread, it does resemble the gremlin quite a bit. [Simpsons did it!](http://www.simpsonsworld.com/video/318795843551) (Sorry wish I could find a youtube link, but they’re in German) ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/71 "2015-05-30T05:45:33Z")
> [@Fair\_Rarity](#): > > It’s reminding me a lot of The Village, but not in a bad way, as that movie suuuuuuuucked. > [@EllisDee](#): > > It’s _clearly_ just a dude in a costume, btw. > [@Joey\_P](#): > > In my hopes that this doesn’t get (too) supernatural. I’m going to hope that someone Pope’s chip knows that he wasn’t living anymore and that whatever thing was (hopefully a person or animal) was dispatched to go pick him up. Thinking more about this, my original “It’s clearly a dude in a costume” comment was in reference to how production pulled it off as a practical effect, as opposed to CGI. But there’s no reason it can’t be a “The Village” situation, where the town elders (possibly the offscreen people in charge) dress up as monsters to scare the townsfolk into staying put. If that’s the case, it’s not unreasonable that they’d have been dispatched as soon as they saw the locator beacons approach the wall. Heck, the sheriff could have called it in himself. ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/72 "2015-05-30T07:09:50Z")
Never mind. missed page two. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/73 "2015-05-30T15:08:09Z")
So it does look like a humanoid of some kind. I’m not sure why I couldn’t see that on my TV. It seems like there’s definitely some sort of time travel or time distortion going on, but that wouldn’t explain sasquatch or whatever it is. Maybe the humanoid and all of the animal sounds are part of a deliberate illusion meant to keep them from trying to escape, or maybe it’s another planet, or some sort of parallel world. Neither of those would, by itself, explain the time discrepancies. ---
**Author:** ![KayLovesPurple](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylovespurple/32/6114_2.png) [@KayLovesPurple](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KayLovesPurple)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/74 "2015-05-30T17:22:36Z")
Having read the books rather recently (about a year ago; they’re available on Kindle Unlimited), I can say there’s only three of them. And yes, everything will make sense after the big reveal, which I thought to be quite original and imaginative. A tiny spoiler: There is nothing paranormal involved. And another one, to make it more confusing: There’s also no time travel involved 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/75 "2015-05-30T17:51:18Z")
I’m not going to read your spoilers but I’m happy to hear that everything will be explained in an original and imaginative way. Stories like this often seem to pile mystery upon mystery until no satisfactory explanation is possible other than dreams or hallucinations, which of course are extremely disappointing. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/76 "2015-05-30T19:14:38Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > I thought it was obvious. The inconsistencies as to how long different people have been there can be explained by time travel. The woman who disappeared from the outside world several weeks ago has been there for years because they took her back in time. Actually, I should say that they took her back in time further than they took Burke. All of them are in the distant past, during the time of dinosaurs (the “monsters” outside the wall). > > That’s my theory at least. I’ve seen speculation elsewhere that the “time travel” is due to people being placed in some sort of suspended animation before being revived in Wayward Pines. So for instance the Juliette Lewis character may have been put on ice back in 1999 and woke up in Wayward Pines years later. Since Ethan thinks he last saw Kate just a few weeks ago but she has visibly aged and is aware of having been in Wayward Pines for 12 years, this would suggest that Ethan was on ice at least that long and the “present” of the show is 2026 or later. (Possibly even in the far future.) This theory does require assuming that there’s been some deceptive editing in the first few episodes. Teresa’s search for Ethan has been presented as if it’s going on at the same time as his early adventures in Wayward Pines, but since they were never able to speak to each other on the phone we don’t know for sure that this was the case. She and their son could have set out after him soon after his disappearance, been placed in suspended animation after their accident, and revived not long after Ethan was. This would explain why he saw them in the hospital “before” they arrived in Wayward Pines. > [@Joey\_P](#): > > Another question is why the locals from down the road just call it a ‘nothing town’ as if they know about it. And how can they have that giant wall up that no one from around the area knows exists. Well, the kid who mentioned the accident was presumably a plant, and it’s possible that the convenience store clerk is in on the whole thing too, although at this point I’m inclined to believe he was being honest with Teresa. However, I’d assume that the “nothing town” the people of Idaho know as Wayward Pines is not the same place – or at least not the same place in the same time – that we’ve been seeing. Ethan, Theresa, and their son were transported into Wayward Pines while unconscious, and it could be very far away (in space and/or time) from the road in Idaho they last remember being on. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/77 "2015-05-30T19:24:23Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I’ve seen speculation elsewhere that the “time travel” is due to people being placed in some sort of suspended animation before being revived in Wayward Pines. So for instance the Juliette Lewis character may have been put on ice back in 1999 and woke up in Wayward Pines years later. Since Ethan thinks he last saw Kate just a few weeks ago but she has visibly aged and is aware of having been in Wayward Pines for 12 years, this would suggest that Ethan was on ice at least that long and the “present” of the show is 2026 or later. (Possibly even in the far future.) > > This theory does require assuming that there’s been some deceptive editing in the first few episodes. Teresa’s search for Ethan has been presented as if it’s going on at the same time as his early adventures in Wayward Pines, but since they were never able to speak to each other on the phone we don’t know for sure that this was the case. She and their son could have set out after him soon after his disappearance, been placed in suspended animation after their accident, and revived not long after Ethan was. This would explain why he saw them in the hospital “before” they arrived in Wayward Pines. > > Well, the kid who mentioned the accident was presumably a plant, and it’s possible that the convenience store clerk is in on the whole thing too, although at this point I’m inclined to believe he was being honest with Teresa. However, I’d assume that the “nothing town” the people of Idaho know as Wayward Pines is not the same place – or at least not the same place in the same time – that we’ve been seeing. Ethan, Theresa, and their son were transported into Wayward Pines while unconscious, and it could be very far away (in space and/or time) from the road in Idaho they last remember being on. The next question becomes, why? That’s an awful lot of work, up to and including Sheriff Pope roaming around the outskirts of town finding people to bring in, but for what reason? To what end? Hopefully that’s part of the reveal. ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2015, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/78 "2015-05-30T23:04:24Z")
Yes, the why of whatever is happening will be part of the reveal. But I’m holding out hope that it isn’t as lame as in the books. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2015, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/79 "2015-05-31T00:31:30Z")
> [@Edward\_The\_Head](#): > > If the show follows the book then it will make sense, at least in terms of the book universe. Hopefully they will follow the book enough and if that’s the case then it’s not going to be like Lost or Under the Dome. “Make sense” is a bit of a stretch. I read the first book in November and it’s one of the stranger books I’ve ever read. It definitely, definitely did not turn out anywhere near what I imagined while reading the first half. ---
**Author:** ![VunderBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/839c29/32.png) [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2015, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072/80 "2015-05-31T15:24:42Z")
I have just started book #3. The show so far is all in book 1, and is about 2/3rds faithful. I will say the monsters are not dinosaurs, and the big secret is science fiction related, not supernatural. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayward-pines-season-1/720072.md?page=5)