Mae Martin Warns the Wayward Ending Will Wreck You

Spoilers for Wayward ahead. Mae Martin ends their Netflix thriller right where it hurts: the big escape everyone spent the season clinging to turns out to be messier, harder, and a lot more human than a clean jailbreak fantasy.

Abbie gets out. Leila does not.

Heading into the Wayward finale, the question was simple: could best friends Abbie and Leila finally get out of Tall Pines Academy and away from Evelyn Wade? Abbie makes it to the other side, looking more or less mentally intact. Leila, though, chooses to stay. Not because she is brainless or weak, but because the show has been quietly steering her in that direction the whole time.

Martin, who was labeled a 'wayward teen' themself and wrote the series partly in response to a best friend being institutionalized at 16, walked through why Leila plants her feet at Tall Pines. The short version: it adds up.

Why Leila stays

• The promise of relief: Some people really do come out of places like Tall Pines swearing it saved them. That promise of less pain is powerful when you are drowning in it.
• Class and safety nets: Outside Tall Pines, Leila does not have the security Abbie has. Staying is, in a grim way, the more stable option.
• Different journeys, different outcomes: Leila’s experience in the program is not Abbie’s. The show makes a point of that divergence.
• Grief as leverage: Leila is still raw from losing her sister. Tall Pines funnels that grief into 'progress' Evelyn can point to.
• Evelyn’s favorite: Evelyn singles out the bright, deeply wounded kids and grooms them. Leila becomes the chosen one, and a very real relationship forms. Leila trusts her. And Evelyn absolutely wants to mint the next generation of Evelyns.

The Alex fake-out (and the choice he actually makes)

There is a perfectly constructed wish-fulfillment beat where Alex, a cop, drives off with Abbie and Toast, and you feel that little surge of freedom. Then the show yanks it back. That getaway is just what he knows he should do, not what he chooses. He stays. Martin calls that a moral failure, but a painfully understandable one: he loves Laura, he loves the baby, and that old-school protector/provider wiring is loud.

"He chooses to stay and he knows that that is the wrong thing to do. People keep saying it is ambiguous, but it is not ambiguous. He knows the right choice and he does not take it. But what would you do with your baby and your wife?"

Also, the need to be accepted is a huge part of his deal. He thinks Tall Pines can give him that validation and a ready-made community. Spoiler: it will not. Even Martin shrugs at the delusion there; the fantasy is strong, the reality is going to be rough.

If there were a 'one year later'

Martin’s read is very cult 101, which, yes, is the point. There is a honeymoon stretch: Laura is maybe running the school, the baby is around, everyone feels warm and useful. The core ideas seem noble. They always do. Then power does what power does. The hierarchy creeps back in, an opportunist at the center twists the mission, and you are right back to the same cycles. Expect another student uprising, because the underlying machine never really changes.

In Alex’s head, he tells himself he is only staying long enough to figure out how to crack the place open. As Martin puts it, he is basically thinking: 'I will stay for a bit and then bust this place out.' Sure. Good luck with that.

The brutal kicker

Even if Alex wanted to bolt later and play hero, there is the small matter of the bodies. He has killed too many people to just slide back into the world. If he leaves Tall Pines, he is not walking into a new life. He is walking into handcuffs.

Bottom line

Wayward lands on choices made under pressure: Abbie chooses the door, Leila chooses the system that finally made her feel less alone, and Alex chooses comfort over courage. None of it is neat. All of it tracks.

Wayward is streaming now on Netflix.