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Munya Vomo

When Wayward Pines debuted, it reminded many people of Twin Peaks. Well, those who where old enough to have watched the TV show in the 1990s. The former show is set in a cold and mysterious small town in Idaho.

The main character, Ethan Burke (played by Matt Dillon) is a US Secret Service agent who is looking in to the disappearance of two colleagues. But he digs up more questions than answers when the town he’s in, Wayward Pines, turns out to be more than a little strange. It is actually a time capsule and there are no clear answers as to when in time events are taking place.

Things start with Ethan waking up after a car accident and in his daze he realises that he can’t get in touch with his head office or wife back home. He receives medical help from a crazy nurse, played by Melissa Leo, who is obviously hiding something about the place. He keeps prying, as is the nature of his job, and learns that one of his colleagues is dead and the other is now married and has settled down.

All that would be fine if the living agent, Kate (played by Carla Gugino), made sense with what she was saying happened when she disappeared. When they compare notes, Kate and Ethan can’t agree on when they last saw each other. One believes it was only a short while ago, yet the other thinks it was much longer than that. But the more Ethan asks, the more he realises that his colleague is hiding something. Looking around, he discovers many strange things including little Bluetooth speakers in shrubs which play the chirping sound of crickets in a loop. That chilling discovery is the beginning of a nightmare from which Burke can’t seem to escape.

When we interviewed Gugino after the show debuted, she expressed her happiness to work with director, M Night Shyamalan. She confessed that she wasn’t sure the show would return because of the way it was written.

Season one saw her and Dillon’s characters trying to figure a way out of Wayward Pines. A solution did not look likely. Now that season two is upon us, what can we expect?

Things were left on a high as the two saved most of the people in the city, but not without a fight. Wayward Pines has so many routes it could follow because it is not limited to any period in time. That allows for new characters to come in with new storylines.

Wayward Pines returns to Fox (DStv channel 125) next month.