DEADLINE: With Charlie Tahan’s character waking up in a rebuilt and seemingly safe town at the end of the finale, it looks and feels like Wayward Pines is perfectly poised for a second season. The numbers are there, the inclination from Fox is there, so are you, Chad and Blake going to head back to Wayward Pines?
M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN: We’re super surprised, excited, humbled by the reaction to Wayward Pines, and I did ask Blake to come over to my house, which he did. We did sit down for a few days, and we talked about all kinds of things, and we both felt very good about our time together. We both made a pact saying if we did decide to do something more here that we would approach it with a very high level of integrity and not let the opportunity dictate it because we’re both happy to walk away.
DEADLINE: Sounds like you are diplomatically saying a Season 2 is in the cards, am I picking that up right?
SHYAMALAN: I’m actually not being diplomatic, I mean, I’m being somewhat diplomatic, but I’m genuinely being as open as I can. The one thing I’m fearful of television is its open-ended nature. I’m such an end backwards kind of filmmaker, storyteller, and that’s what I loved about doing these 10 episodes. I knew where I wanted to go. I knew I wanted the fences to come down. I knew where we were heading for the finale and so we could architecture the 10-episodes in that manner.
M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN: We’re super surprised, excited, humbled by the reaction to Wayward Pines, and I did ask Blake to come over to my house, which he did. We did sit down for a few days, and we talked about all kinds of things, and we both felt very good about our time together. We both made a pact saying if we did decide to do something more here that we would approach it with a very high level of integrity and not let the opportunity dictate it because we’re both happy to walk away.
DEADLINE: Sounds like you are diplomatically saying a Season 2 is in the cards, am I picking that up right?
SHYAMALAN: I’m actually not being diplomatic, I mean, I’m being somewhat diplomatic, but I’m genuinely being as open as I can. The one thing I’m fearful of television is its open-ended nature. I’m such an end backwards kind of filmmaker, storyteller, and that’s what I loved about doing these 10 episodes. I knew where I wanted to go. I knew I wanted the fences to come down. I knew where we were heading for the finale and so we could architecture the 10-episodes in that manner.
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Pam decides to kill Pilcher because he’s lost control and is willing to sacrifice humans to maintain control. Pam has been such a big part of her brother’s plans, and they’ve taken away people’s lives to save humanity’s future. What does this action mean to her?
It’s a horribly hard decision and not something she wanted to do at all. She knows they are the caretakers of the last people on the planet and if she didn’t stop him, they would all die. You kill one to save many. It boils down to that. Because it’s her brother, it makes it that much harder. … It’s her brother and she loves him, but she finds herself with no choice.
Was the plan for both Ethan and Pilcher to die in the finale when the series started?
We did make changes to exactly what happens at the end of the show but it was always designed to be this one season, 10 episodes. We didn’t change anything about the ending to leave room for a season two. It all wraps up, as you see.
It’s a horribly hard decision and not something she wanted to do at all. She knows they are the caretakers of the last people on the planet and if she didn’t stop him, they would all die. You kill one to save many. It boils down to that. Because it’s her brother, it makes it that much harder. … It’s her brother and she loves him, but she finds herself with no choice.
Was the plan for both Ethan and Pilcher to die in the finale when the series started?
We did make changes to exactly what happens at the end of the show but it was always designed to be this one season, 10 episodes. We didn’t change anything about the ending to leave room for a season two. It all wraps up, as you see.
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If the show were to return for a second season, would the adults be part of it?
We are in such preliminary discussions that I can’t confirm anything.
What exactly went wrong so the adults were all put under?
Right? The last we see is Kate (Carla Gugino) and Pam (Melissa Leo) talking about how this didn’t work and this is the last of humanity, things have to change. But the strength and insanity, you could call it, of Pilcher’s ideology and the First Generation that he groomed so effectively was stronger. While, of course, we don’t know the details of exactly what happened between then and now, obviously they took over. They put all of the adults back in suspension. They felt the adults would just be their downfall.
We are in such preliminary discussions that I can’t confirm anything.
What exactly went wrong so the adults were all put under?
Right? The last we see is Kate (Carla Gugino) and Pam (Melissa Leo) talking about how this didn’t work and this is the last of humanity, things have to change. But the strength and insanity, you could call it, of Pilcher’s ideology and the First Generation that he groomed so effectively was stronger. While, of course, we don’t know the details of exactly what happened between then and now, obviously they took over. They put all of the adults back in suspension. They felt the adults would just be their downfall.
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TVLINE | How many actors did you have made up as abbies at any given time?
I would say it was probably 12 or 13, and a lot of them were reproduced digitally.
TVLINE | How did your finale differ from how the book trilogy ended?
In Episode 9 you saw Pilcher shut the power down, which effectively let the abbies in to tear apart the town — that’s the same as the book. But the very end, with Ethan sacrificing himself, Pam killing Pilcher and the First Generation taking over years later, that’s different. [BOOK SPOILERS AHEAD] In the book, all of the adults — led by Ethan, who does not die in the book — decided to go back into suspension for another several-thousand years, because they realize that on this planet at this moment the abbies are in control.
I would say it was probably 12 or 13, and a lot of them were reproduced digitally.
TVLINE | How did your finale differ from how the book trilogy ended?
In Episode 9 you saw Pilcher shut the power down, which effectively let the abbies in to tear apart the town — that’s the same as the book. But the very end, with Ethan sacrificing himself, Pam killing Pilcher and the First Generation taking over years later, that’s different. [BOOK SPOILERS AHEAD] In the book, all of the adults — led by Ethan, who does not die in the book — decided to go back into suspension for another several-thousand years, because they realize that on this planet at this moment the abbies are in control.
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