Mae Martin on Wayward: Trauma, Ambiguity and the Show's Final Turn

Wayward, a limited series now streaming in full on Netflix, takes a darker path than Mae Martin’s previous work while staying rooted in the same preoccupations that have defined their storytelling: adolescence, trauma, and the fraught dynamics of adulthood. The show is set in the picturesque but harboring town of Tall Pines, Vermont, where Abbie and Leila, two best friends and habitual daydreamers, are trapped at Tall Pines Academy, a boarding-school facility that publicly markets itself as a cure for adolescence. The head youth counselor, Evelyn, exerts a chilling level of influence over the town, and Alex, a local police officer who moves in with his pregnant wife Laura, begins to uncover a web of secrets at the school and within the town’s quiet facade. As the layers peel back, Wayward unfolds as a thriller that asks whether healing can come from within a system that claims to fix what is broken on the outside.

Martin, who created, wrote and produced Wayward, says the project was born out of personal resonance with teen-aged trajectories and a desire to explore what happens when young people confront institutions that promise care but can feel coercive. The show’s origin story, as captured in TIME’s interview, centers on a real friendship from Martin’s own adolescence and the experiences of people who have actually been sent to troubled-teen programs. Martin notes that the project is written with a sense of fidelity to those moments and those voices, including a friend who served as a consultant and a writer who was, in fact, a former student at one of these programs. The result is a narrative that treats the subject with gravity while preserving the levity that exists in Martin’s work about young people and the messy, sometimes funny, realities of growing up.

The series’ core relationship is between Abbie, Leila and the adult world that tries to police and “rehabilitate” them. Leila, in particular, has drawn comparisons to the Mae character in the sense that she’s grappling with a need for radical change while wrestling with shame and vulnerability. On screen, Alex’s arc requires a careful balance of authority and humanity, a challenge Martin met with technical preparation, including physical training to portray a convincing, grounded policeman. He emphasizes the procedural aspects of the role but is quick to credit co-stars Toni Collette and Sarah Gadon for helping him find the emotional texture of the character. Collette’s Evelyn is described as a magnetizing presence who blends warmth and menace; the longer she stays in a scene, the more viewers feel drawn into the ambiguity of her “rehabilitative” methods.

The show is also a loud commentary on the real-world scrutiny of youth residential facilities. In June 2024, a U.S. Senate Finance Committee report highlighted abusive and neglectful practices within such facilities, underscoring the urgency of reform. Wayward connects with these concerns by presenting a world in which adults claim to protect vulnerable teens while maintaining a structure that can isolate children from family and community. The show is augmented by documentary works like Teen Torture, Inc. and The Program, and by public advocacy led by figures such as Paris Hilton, which has helped elevate national attention to the industry’s failures. Martin says the research was essential and that survivors’ perspectives informed the portrayal of intergenerational trauma and the punitive, group-therapy dynamics that echo the most troubling elements of real programs. The aim, they say, was not to sermonize but to illuminate how these systems can harm even as they intend to heal.

On the craft side, Wayward examines how a small-town setting can become a pressure cooker for moral decisions. The final episodes center on the fates of multiple characters, and the ending deliberately leaves some questions unresolved. Martin reflects that the ambiguity was a deliberate choice: some viewers may feel unsatisfied, while others may see the absence of a neat resolution as a reflection of reality, where people make imperfect, morally complicated choices under strain. In the climactic sequence, Alex’s decision to stay with his wife and newborn and the tension surrounding Leila’s and Abbie’s paths are presented as parallel moral inquiries rather than tidy conclusions. The car scene that closes the episode—where Alex appears poised to drive away with Abbie while still yearning to do right by his family—was shot late at night in cold weather and, as the cast recalls, became a moment of intense energy on set. The moment even included a playful, if improvised, nod to a classic film cue that the team decided to film in a didactic homage, underscoring the blend of pop-culture texture and grim realism that characterizes Wayward.

Wayward’s tonal ambition is to evoke rather than instruct. Martin emphasizes that the project isn’t about delivering a single moral message; rather, it seeks to provoke an emotional response and to foster a broader conversation about how society treats young people who resist and resist being defined by the adults around them. The interview notes that the show aims to empower young viewers and their families by validating anger and distress rather than gaslighting them into compliance. This stance aligns with a broader cultural moment in which creators are asked not only to entertain but to reckon with real-world systems that shape the lives of vulnerable youths.

In discussing the performances, Martin describes working with Collette as an education in measured intensity. Collette’s warmth and charisma complicate Evelyn’s authority, making her more than a one-note antagonist and compelling the audience to consider the thin line between care and control. The younger cast members formed a tight-knit group during production, bringing a palpable energy to the classroom and therapy-room scenes that the show uses to emphasize the emotional vulnerability of the students. The therapy sequences, which the production team resisted overdramatizing, instead favor a grounded realism that mirrors the episodic tension between a desire for belonging and the fear of being broken apart.

As Wayward lands on streaming, its creators hope the show will be read as a mirror rather than a mandate: a narrative that reflects the harm and resilience found within real families and communities, and a story that invites audiences to consider how to support young people who claim their own truth in environments designed to shape them differently. The show’s press materials and Martin’s own remarks in the interview stress that the healing process is not a simple return to the status quo, but a work in progress that involves listening, accountability, and a willingness to confront painful histories.

The timing could not be more relevant. The Netflix release comes as the country continues to confront the fallout from the troubled-teen industry and as audiences demand more nuanced portrayals of trauma, accountability, and recovery. Wayward offers a narrative that is at once tense and compassionate, a thriller with moral gravity and a human-scale view of how adolescence continues to shape the adults they become. In this sense, the show is not only entertainment but a cultural artifact that contributes to ongoing conversations about reform, power, and the rights of young people to demand both safety and respect from the institutions that claim to serve them.