This story contains details about the 'troubled teen' industry that some reads may find upsetting.
From Paris Hilton's 2020 documentary This Is Paris, in which she claimed she suffered physical, sexual and psychological abuse while institutionalised as a teenager, to Netflix true crime documentaries The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping and Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare – which spotlight abuse at a boarding school in New York and a so-called wilderness youth treatment centre in Utah – to the countless Reddit threads, personal blogs and social media posts in which people recount their experiences and trauma following their stints at a variety of teen institutions, to news reports and long reads from a wealth of publications, the TTI hasn't covered itself in glory.
View oEmbed on the source websiteBut while the seductive promotional material promises a place where vulnerable souls can "grow and thrive" – music to the ears of parents who are emotionally unavailable, clinically depressed and therefore vulnerable to manipulation, or absent entirely – the reality is anything but.
"She was sent from Canada to an American 'troubled teen' institute, and came back with crazy stories about unregulated practices and therapy," Martin told Dazed.
"I’ve been researching it for 20 years. The germ for that industry was cults in the 1970s, like Synanon, that were doing behavioural modification. It's bizarre! It writes itself!"
Laura attended the academy back when she was a 'troubled teen' and appears to have made quite the impression on Evelyn Wade (Hereditary's Toni Collette), the school's lead youth counsellor, who is thrilled to have her back.
And crucially, she has dedicated her life to helping some of society's most troubled teens work through their trauma so that they can emerge transformed and rebuild their lives. How very noble.
But you only need a moment in her company to sense that something is spectacularly off – from her rejection of social cues and niceties, to a hard stare that seems to strip away every layer you’ve ever built to hide your fears and trauma, peer into the centre of your soul, and then devour what it finds, replacing it with something entirely new in her image.
As the series progresses, viewers are given a front-row seat to the extreme methods Evelyn and her staff employ as students crawl through the academy’s development milestones: burrow, break, build – and finally, ascend. Here, a truly special, transformative privilege – in Evelyn’s own words – awaits a select few who may then graduate and step into the next phase of their lives.
Shortly after moving back to the town, it becomes clear that Laura's pain hasn't healed, but has simply taken on a different shape, which threatens to destroy her relationship with Alex, which she describes as the one thing in her life not tainted by Evelyn, and also raises questions about what she's capable of in moments where she's not in control.
The former was kidnapped from her bed by strangers in the middle of the night as her parents looked on, absorbing her guttural cries for help as she was taken to an unknown location and stripped of every ounce of individuality – an all-too-common fate for teens sent to these types of institutions. Regulation in this industry is often so lax it is virtually nonexistent, with programmes subject to complex laws and varying background checks for staff depending on the state.
If you didn't know about the TTI coming into Wayward, or had only heard about snippets of what can happen, you might think that it all seems entirely far-fetched and completely obscene, such as being forced to complete a 50-mile hike with minimal supplies, as we see in Wayward.
But while it is heightened, with certain elements created for the purposes of the show, it's also not that heightened, as Martin told RadioTimes.com. Its victims, of which there are thousands, can attest to the authorised kidnappings and the "attack therapy", which is designed to publicly humiliate the students; they have firsthand experience of what it's like to be physically restrained, often incorrectly, which can lead to injury, and of being force-fed medication, and ordered to complete forced labour; some teenagers have attempted to take their own lives while under the school's care, or lack thereof, while others have died; and there's also the long-term psychological problems that many who attended these institutions and programmes continue to live with.
But what feels especially cruel – even heartbreaking – is that Wayward offers fleeting glimpses of true belonging and connection, both within the Tall Pines community and the school itself. For many townsfolk and students, these are feelings they had never truly experienced before arriving, and Martin shows us what it could be like if profit, control and ideology were taken out of the equation.
Is adolescence a problem to be "solved", as Evelyn puts it? Or are these teens being failed by society, and by the people who sent them there in the first place?
Wayward leaves little doubt: the kids are not alright – and neither is the system that is failing them.
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