YMMV / Wayward Pines

• Alternate Character Interpretation: David and Pam can fall all over the board. Are they both monsters? Did they do what they had to do? Is one the former and the other the latter? If so, which is which? For a while it appeared Pam was the monster, and David was the Well-Intentioned Extremist, but episode 8 presents a lot of evidence that it's the other way around.
  • As of episode 9 the switch is complete, with David crossing the Moral Event Horizon, and Pam giving comfort to a crying teenager whose girlfriend is in surgery.
• Badass Decay: Arguably justified, as the first description of the Abbies we were given was intended to scare teenagers to keep them in line. In the first few minutes of episode 9 it's made clear that they are NOT Immune to Bullets, and a single human skilled with firearms can handle a small group. Likewise said Abbies were forced to crawl through a tight space, and unable to use there their enhanced speed (which is what really gave them such an advantage), so arguably it's less decay, more shooting fish in a barrel.
  • In the book as in the series, the Abbies' terrifying character comes from their Super-Strength, orders of magnitude above a healthy human - which in Real Life won't work on human-sized bodies and muscles. Great apes are pound for pound only 2-3 times stronger in arm muscles than a trained man, bears are made from 600-700lbs of raw muscle and bone. No matter how you evolve (or devolve) a creature from a man, slim chance to make it dozens of times stronger.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: The originally planned season 1 ending has Hassler returning to town with news of the outside world rather than Jason taking over the town. Given how the final ending set up the far less popular season 2, many fans would have preferred the original ending.
• Fanon Discontinuity: The second season isn't very loved. The fact that the show was originally intended to be a miniseries ending with the first season finale adds to this feeling.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Pope was clearly an unpleasant figure from the start, but he didn't show just how psychotic he was until he slit Beverly's throat.
  • Pilcher spends a lot of the season seemingly a sympathetic Well-Intentioned Extremist, but most fans agree turning off the power, to allow the Abbies to destroy the town, all because Ethan told the people the truth, was when he lost that claim.
  • Jason's coup of the town and reversion back to the dystopia it was is also a part when some people felt that he's gone so far into madness, that there is no going back.
• Second Season Downfall: After a well-received first season that helped salvage M. Night Shyamalan's career, the show got a second season that got much worse reviews from critics; it probably didn't help that the showrunner was replaced, the first season was meant to be a miniseries and the last episode was billed as the series finale, and that most of the regular cast had moved on to other projects and couldn't return.
• Strangled by the Red String: Amy seems really oddly devoted to Ben from the get-go, taking a shine to him immediately when he's the epitome of the Ordinary High-School Student. Possibly justified when we learn that the teenagers are conditioned to be loyal to Pilcher and the town; it's implied that Amy was told to get close to Ben so he'd get onboard with Wayward Pines and hopefully bring his father with him.
• Win Back the Crowd: After directing several critical flops, M. Night Shyamalan's work on this show has managed to garner the kind of support he's had with his earlier work on The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs.

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