53 pages • 1 hour read
Blake CrouchPines
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Series Context: The Wayward Pines Trilogy & Wayward Pines
Pines is the first novel in Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines Trilogy. The second book, Wayward, was published a year later, in 2013, with the third and final installment, The Last Town, published in 2014. The trilogy follows Ethan Burke’s journey in the small town of Wayward Pines. In the first book, Ethan discovers the truth about Wayward Pines, eventually getting promoted to sheriff. In the second book, Ethan works to manage the town and its residents and protect them—both from the outside world and from the abbies, genetically evolved humans who threaten the safety of the community. In the third book, The Last Town, Ethan finally discovers the truth about the world around Wayward Pines. This discovery involves Ethan overcoming fierce attacks from the abbies and the Wayward Pines crew’s inability, until this point, to explore the world outside their boundaries.
In 2015, Fox aired a television adaptation of the Wayward Pines trilogy, directed and produced by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Matt Dillon as Ethan Burke. The first season of the show, which covers the plot of the entire trilogy, was intended to be a stand-alone season of 10 episodes. However, after it was renewed for a second season, the show featured new actors, a new showrunner, and a plot that spun off from the original trilogy. While the first season received positive critical reception, the second season didn’t generate the same level of interest, and the show was then canceled.
Cultural Context: Twin Peaks
In the Afterword to Pines, Blake Crouch mentions several television shows that aired during the early 1990s that influenced his development of the Wayward Pines trilogy. The shows that he mentions, such as Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, and The X-Files, broke the mold of television at that time, highlighting unconventional characters and bringing science fiction and supernatural elements into primetime television’s mainstream. When it comes to the Wayward Pines trilogy, the most influential of these, Crouch says, is Twin Peaks.
Though it originally aired on ABC for just two years, 1990-1991, Twin Peaks is widely regarded as a revolutionary series for the television medium. Created by Mark Frost and film auteur David Lynch, director of Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and Lost Highway, among others, the show crossed the boundaries between film and television at a time when television was considered a lesser medium. The show also blurred genres. Though such genre blending has become common, at the time, it was completely novel. Namely, Twin Peaks was a detective show that often veered into soap opera conventions, yet it incorporated supernatural and fantasy elements as well.
In the premise, setting, and even characters of Wayward Pines, Twin Peaks fans will recognize similarities to Lynch’s show. The town of Twin Peaks is nestled deep in the pine forests of Washington. While the town seems idyllic on the surface, it hides dark secrets about both its residents and the surrounding environment. The forest is host to supernatural elements that affect the town and its residents and can be either a comfort or a threat. The main character of Twin Peaks is FBI agent Dale Cooper, an upright agent who always, like Ethan, dresses in a black suit and tie. Much emphasis is also placed on Dale’s love of coffee, a love that Ethan, even when he doesn’t know his own name, shares.
Crouch embeds several other references in his trilogy, including the date that Beverly Short arrived in Wayward Pines: October 3, 1985. This is the same date that Laura Palmer, the murder victim in Twin Peaks, began writing in her diary.
However, Crouch’s work also departs from the Twin Peaks model in several ways. Crouch attributes the darkness of Wayward Pines not to the residents’ secret lives and the unnamed supernatural force of the forest, as Twin Peaks does, but instead to a larger conspiracy that hews more closely to the science-fiction genre.
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