Which Wayward Character Are You?

Learn More About Wayward

Wayward arrived on Netflix in fall 2025 as a psychological thriller limited series created by, co-showrun by, and starring comedian Mae Martin, who also plays the show's central character, Alex Dempsey. The eight-episode series is set in the fictional town of Tall Pines, Vermont, a place that looks idyllic on the surface but is quietly built on control, secrecy, and generational trauma.

The story follows Dempsey, a police officer with a troubled past who relocates to Tall Pines with his pregnant wife Laura (Sarah Gadon), hoping to finally build the stable, conventional life he has always wanted. Laura, who grew up in Tall Pines, appears to be an open book but is revealed over the course of the series to be hiding an agenda of her own, one that puts her at odds with the very town she once called home.

At the center of Tall Pines sits Evelyn Wade, played by Toni Collette in a performance widely praised as one of her career best. Evelyn is the founder and head of Tall Pines Academy, a boarding school that markets itself as a haven for troubled teens and promises, unsettlingly, to 'solve the problem of adolescence.' Evelyn's warm, nurturing public persona masks a ruthless, controlling core, and much of the show's tension comes from watching her manipulate students, parents, and staff alike while maintaining an almost impenetrable veneer of maternal concern.

Two new students, Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind) and Abbie (Sydney Topliffe), arrive at Tall Pines Academy early in the series and quickly become entangled with Dempsey as he starts to suspect the school is not what it claims to be. Leila is sharp, sarcastic, and quick to rebel, carrying visible wounds from her past that make her fiercely protective of the people she loves. Abbie, her best friend, is a gentler, more idealistic presence, a self-described hippie who takes cues from Janis Joplin and tends to see the good in people even when it is not entirely earned.

The series also features a supporting cast of Tall Pines Academy staff, including Rabbit and Duck, who enforce Evelyn's methods on the school's female and male students respectively, along with Patrick J. Adams as Wyatt Turner, a seemingly affable authority figure with a much darker connection to the town's history.

Critically, Wayward has been noted for using the tropes of the psychological thriller genre to explore very real anxieties about the troubled-teen industry, drawing loose inspiration from the well-documented history of unregulated behavioral-modification programs in North America. Mae Martin has spoken about wanting the show to feel both entertaining and genuinely unsettling, using dark comedy and mystery-box pacing to keep viewers guessing about who in Tall Pines can actually be trusted.

With its slow-burn mystery structure, morally ambiguous characters, and a genuinely chilling lead performance from Toni Collette, Wayward has quickly built a passionate audience looking to unpack every twist, making it one of the more talked-about new Netflix thrillers of the season.