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Wayward Pines Recap: Mommy and Me

Wayward Pines

Walcott Prep
Season 2 Episode 9
Editor’s Rating 3 stars
WAYWARD PINES: Tom Stevens in the

Wayward Pines

Walcott Prep
Season 2 Episode 9
Editor’s Rating 3 stars
Tom Stevens as Higgins. Photo: Sergei Bachlakov/FOX

Like last week’s episode, “Walcott Prep” is yet another time-killer, prolonging the eventual war between the humans and the abbies. Still, Wayward Pines certainly bides its time with an “Oh, shizzle!” moment, to borrow a phrase from Power showrunner Courtney A. Kemp. Halfway through the episode, we find out that snot-nosed punk Jason Higgins has been in a loving relationship with … his mom.

Oh, shizzle!

How the hell can this be, you ask? How can Kerry and Higgins be mother and son? Well, as we learn through flashbacks, Pilcher visited Kerry in the hospital soon after she gave birth. Pilcher needed a newborn baby to take into the future with him, and he had one already lined up, growing in the womb of this young, prep-school girl named Abigail. (She was even planning to name the baby Jason.) Unfortunately, Abigail had an accident in Chicago, and the baby was gone.

So, here comes Pilcher in this Boise hospital, ready to get this baby and get the hell outta there. But after meeting Kerry and getting won over by her love of Proust and her dreams of leaving Idaho and traveling to Istanbul and Paris, Pilcher decides to take her as well. Since Kerry feels she’ll be saddled with her dysfunctional life forever, Pilcher also decides to slap her picture on top of Abigail’s case file, automatically giving her a new life.

That file would later win over Higgins, who told Mario and the boys to wake her up and bring him to her. After an awkward meet-cute, Kerry takes Higgins’s arm as they walk into the future together, both completely unaware they’re mother and son.

Eventually, Higgins finds out for himself while he’s plowing through old files and find a confidential one, which says, in straight-up black-and-white, that Kerry gave birth to him. When he confronts her about having a baby in her youth, she tells him that Pilcher told her he sent the baby to Texas. A heated tussle ensues. Freaking out, Higgins draws his gun. Kerry looks for anything within arm’s reach she can use to smack him upside the head. And, of course, as they both fight for the gun, a shot rings out. While they both lie on that miniature table model of Wayward Pines, it looks like Higgins’s blood is covering the streets. How’s that for dead-on symbolism?

Yes, this is a delirious, Hail Mary pass of a twist. But despite its over-the-top convolutedness (why would Pilcher still have a confidential file on Kerry if he planned to give her Abigail’s life?), it makes perfect sense in the Wayward Pines universe. With people going in and out of suspended animation, it doesn’t seem all that far-fetched that a grown-up Higgins would wake up Kerry, all without knowing she gave birth to him. Man, after offing his mentor Pam at the top of the season and losing his other motherly figure last week, Higgins has became a character with a lot of mommy issues.

As insane as this Oedipal situation is, the rest of the episode isn’t as compellingly nuts. With the abbies growing in number outside the wall, Higgins decides the only thing that can be done is to send everyone back to sleep. But C.J. tells him that there’s only enough power in the pods to take half the town, which means Higgins will have to make some sacrifices. He asks Yedlin to help identify the physically superior candidates, but you know Yedlin ain’t down with that shit. After first suggesting a lottery, Yedlin then tells Higgins that if defectives won’t be going, his barren girl Kerry won’t be able to take the big sleep. After that, Yedlin lets Kerry know what her boy’s planning — and also suggests that now might be a good time to take him out. Which, of course, she accidentally does.

As the townspeople begin to line up outside the Mountain, like they’re fanboys waiting to see the next Star Wars movie, and hordes of abbies prepare to attack now that Margaret has fully recovered from her wounds, I’m gonna assume next week’s finale will just be chaos. It certainly seems like the best way to end such a crazy season. I mean, incest just jumped into the picture. It can’t get any crazier than that!

Stray Thoughts:

  • I’ve been wondering what happened to all those bodies that were hanging all over the place at the end of last season’s finale. As we see in one flashback, Higgins ordered to have them cut down.
  • It seems the Yedlin-Rebecca-Xander love triangle was settled off-camera, as Yedlin goes to Xander’s sugar shack to both bitterly accept defeat and ask him whose side he’s on. As much as Yedlin wants to act like this dude doesn’t matter, Xander continues to be a worthy adversary. He levels with Yedlin man-to-man and asks him what exactly his plans are to save this place.
  • Did you get a High Noon vibe when Yedlin walked through an empty Main Street with a gun in his hand? Then again, did you also get a Rain Man vibe when Yedlin acted so fidgety after getting the news from Higgins?
  • Even though Hassler doesn’t appear this week, I’m still wondering: Has he become the Dances With Wolves of the abbies?
  • Beginning and ending an episode with Skeeter Davis’s “The End of the World” is never not creepy.
  • Another bit of on-the-nose symbolism: Pilcher catches Abigail reading George Orwell’s dystopian novella Animal Farm, and they both recite passages from it.
  • I could’ve sworn the headmistress Pilcher talked to was Harriet Sansom Harris, a.k.a. Frasier Crane’s batty super-agent, Bebe Glazer. Turns out it was this lady.
  • “Do you dream?” “Sometimes.” Djimon Hounsou’s warm, weary smile after answering that kid’s question is the episode’s quietest, most simple pleasure.

Wayward Pines Recap: Mommy and Me