REVIEW: Netflix’s Unsettling Teen Drama 'Wayward' Twists Therapy Into Control
- Emma Fisher
- Sep 9
- 6 min read
This article contains spoilers for Wayward.
Wayward is the sort of series that makes you want to shout at the TV (or whichever device you're watching it on). Not because it's bad - far from it - but because it's constantly dangling questions, twisting expectations, and leading its characters into situations that are so unjust you can't help but squirm. Across its eight episodes, therapy turns into indoctrination, grief is used as a weapon, and the idea of healing is distorted into control. It's not always perfect, but it is always watchable.
We begin with a boy on the run, chased through the woods, before he plunges into a body of water where a woman's voice can be heard inside his head. From there, the show cuts to Toronto, where Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind) and her best friend Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) are skipping school. Leila is grieving her sister’s death, avoiding her counsellor, and lashing out in ways that are recognisable to anyone who's ever been a messy teenager. When her teacher hands her a leaflet for Tall Pines Academy, an elite therapeutic boarding school across the border in Vermont, it's framed as an opportunity for help. To Leila, it's a threat.
The first major shock comes when Abbie is sent away to Tall Pines instead. After a mix of rebellion and choices her parents deem poor, they decide she needs help, and without a moment’s notice, she’s whisked across the border in the middle of the night. From the very first glimpses, the Academy feels off due to staff whose behaviour is just a bit too practised and rules that insidiously chip away at identity. Abbie’s clothes and belongings are stripped away, her hair is cut, and a uniform is issued. She's plunged into a regime of rules and rituals that feel more like a prison than a school. Leila, devastated, tries to save her best friend. She sets out to bail Abbie out of Tall Pines, but the moment she steps inside, the trap closes on her, too.
Inside the Academy, the so-called therapy is terrifying in its depiction. "Hot Seat" sessions involve cranking up the heat and forcing kids to confess, attack, and betray one another under the guise of "radical honesty." Individuality is treated as pathology. Grief is not to be processed but purged. Watching teenagers be weaponised against each other is one of the hardest aspects of the series to sit through, made worse by how plausible it all feels. Even so, Leila and Abbie hatch their own schemes, sneaking through corridors at night and hiding a walkie-talkie to talk to a police officer on the outside, daring to hope for freedom. These small acts of defiance, however doomed they may feel, keep the show's heart beating.
Elsewhere, in Vermont, Alex (Mae Martin) and his partner Laura (Sarah Gadon) are trying to build a new life. Alex has joined the local police department, paired with small-town officer Dwayne (Brandon Jay McLaren), and immediately runs into Riley, the boy from the opening sequence, desperate not to be dragged back to Tall Pines. His insistence that the Academy isn't what it claims to be unsettles Alex, who soon begins noticing worrying statistics about missing children. 18 have gone missing without explanation, their absences folded into Tall Pines' immaculate image of discipline and progress. Alex begins tugging at threads that others in town are protecting, uncovering silences and complicities. At home, Laura insists Tall Pines saved her as a teenager, but even her insistence rings hollow.
Much of that unease circles back to Evelyn Wade (Toni Collette), Tall Pines' founder and figurehead. She is adamant in her belief that she is helping the teenagers in her care, inserts herself into Laura and Alex’s domestic life, and speaks in the language of healing while enforcing control. Her interest in Laura is alarming, hinting at old ties that blur the line between loyalty and indoctrination. It's an excellent turn from Collette, and you'll love to hate her.
The series splits itself cleverly between the claustrophobia of the Academy and Alex's investigation outside. From within, we see the kids resist, fail, and bond with each other in secret. From without, Alex unearths red flags only to be told by colleagues and townsfolk not to overreact. Even Laura seems unwilling to confront the truth. That wall of denial is maddening, and it puts the audience firmly in Alex's shoes: we know something is wrong, but nobody wants to admit it.
Wayward's setting is as much a character as its people. The forested landscape around Tall Pines is both stunning and oppressive, a natural labyrinth that traps rather than frees. At first glance, the Academy itself appears ordinary, but its atmosphere is terrifying. The dorms, dining hall, and therapy rooms are just off-kilter enough to feel unsafe. Water recurs throughout, whether in lakes, basements, or swimming pools, always signalling that something is about to shift. Perhaps the most intriguing is the imagery of doors to basements, imagined places, minds, and nowhere at all, which becomes a running motif, reinforcing the show’s obsession with thresholds and change.
The performances carry all this beautifully. Mae Martin is excellent as Alex, giving him a mix of determination and fragility that makes him instantly sympathetic. Laura is harder to read, sometimes tender, sometimes cold, but always compelling. The young cast is particularly strong. Alyvia Alyn Lind’s Leila is stubborn, funny, and deeply wounded, while Sydney Topliffe’s Abbie has a warmth that makes her struggles inside Tall Pines even more painful to watch. Their friendship is a highlight as the two girls fight for the other in a place determined to ostracise them from themselves, each other, and their peers. Other characters like Rory (John Daniel) and Stacey (Isolde Ardies) also leave a mark, their performances shifting between victimhood and complicity with unnerving precision.
However, the series isn't flawless. With so many threads running, missing children, manipulative therapy, town secrets, Alex's own past, and Evelyn's influence, the pacing occasionally falters. Some storylines feel as though they're building to answers that never fully arrive, and the ending leaves a lot unresolved regarding the Academy. Viewers who prefer neat, tied-off conclusions may find themselves frustrated. But for others, the lack of total clarity will be part of the appeal. Wayward thrives in ambiguity, and it isn't afraid to leave its audience with questions gnawing at them.
By the final episode, you may not feel satisfied in a traditional sense, but you will feel haunted. The questions it poses, about control, trauma, and the price of belonging through the troubled teen industry, go beyond the eight episodes. It's a show designed to provoke conversation, not to soothe.
Wayward isn't perfect, but it is gripping, atmospheric, and superbly acted. It pushes at the edges of teen drama and psychological thriller, refusing to settle neatly into either. It makes you angry, unsettled, and often horrified, but that's the point. It wants you to feel what its characters feel, and it succeeds. For all its imperfections, it's one of the more daring new series of the year.
Rating: ★★★★☆
About Wayward
Premiere Date: September 25, 2025
Episode Count: 8
Showrunners: Mae Martin and Ryan Scott
Executive Producers: Mae Martin, Ryan Scott, Jennifer Kawaja with Sphere Media, Bruno Dubé with Sphere Media, Ben Farrell with Objective Fiction, Hannah Mackay with Objective Fiction, Euros Lyn
Writers: Mae Martin, Ryan Scott, Evangeline Ordaz, Mohamad El Masri, Kim Steele, Kayla Lorette, Alex Eldridge, Misha Osherovich
Directors: Euros Lyn, Renuka Jeyapalan, John Fawcett
Production: Objective Fiction, Sphere Media
Distribution: Netflix
Cast: Mae Martin, Sarah Gadon, Sydney Topliffe, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Brandon Jay McLaren and Toni Collette
Synopsis: In the picture-perfect town of Tall Pines, sinister secrets lurk behind every closed door. Not long after police officer Alex Dempsey (Mae Martin) and his pregnant wife Laura (Sarah Gadon) move into their new home, he connects with two students Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind) from the local school for “troubled teens” who are desperate to escape and could be the key to unearthing everything rotten in the town. As Alex begins investigating a series of unusual incidents, he suspects that Evelyn (Toni Collette), the school’s mysterious leader, might be at the center of all the problems. Created by Mae Martin, Wayward is a thrilling and genre-bending limited series about the eternal struggle between one generation and the next, what happens when friendship and loyalty are put to the ultimate test, and how buried truths always find a way of coming to the surface.
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