Wayward is by turns a love story, a thriller, and a horror-light look at a school for troubled teens hidden away in the Vermont woods and surrounded by a very peculiar town.

Wayward is crammed with brilliant performances. Created by and starring Mae Martin as a police officer, we also get Sarah Gadon as his pregnant wife Laura and Toni Collette as the sincere but creepy head of a school for troubled teens.

Since we saw Mae Martin in the excellent Feel Good, they have undergone a transition and now identify as nonbinary. In Wayward Martin plays Alex, a trans man who wants to be a brave cop and a good dad and uses he/him pronouns. So I will refer Alex with he/him pronouns here.

This series has eight episodes. The strange events and suspenseful reveals stretch out at a pace that allows for plenty of subplots and character development. All the characters in this series had interesting shadow sides, some slow to be revealed.

It’s 2003 when Alex and Laura move to Tall Pines. She is a graduate of the Tall Pines Academy and knows everyone in the town. The town welcome them warmly. Evelyn (Toni Collette), who is head of the Tall Pines Academy for troubled teens, seems to feel no boundaries with Laura and visits their home immediately. In fact, she is providing them with the home!

Simultaneous with this storyline, we meet Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind). These are two of the many troubled teens in the story. Abbie’s parents basically have her kidnapped and hauled away to Tall Pines Academy. Leila hitchhikes her way there with the intention of rescuing Abbie, but once she’s inside she can’t get away. These two major characters carry us into the school where all sorts of interesting kids and workers live.

The school is strange. It harkens back to cults from the hippie era (with a sound track from Pink Floyd and others like that to emphasize the woo woo of it). Evelyn is the authoritarian power in the school. She enforces bizarre rules and therapies. The people who work there have names like Rabbit and Mule. Most of the students go along with the strangeness of the place to avoid punishment. Abbie and Leila want out of there. They do find some comrades who want to get away from the craziness around them.

Alex’s first day on the job he runs into an escaping student. A strange twist involving this student leads him to start investigating the school and a number of missing teens who ran away from it. His fellow cop Dwayne (Brandon Jay McLaren) dismisses all his concerns. Alex starts noticing strange things about not just the school but also the whole town! He brings up his doubts to Laura. She counters with all the good she finds there.

Laura is happy in Tall Pines. She feels loved and surrounded by a supportive community. Without being too spoilery, I will say that Laura begins to change in Tall Pines. The way her character arc moves in conjunction with Evelyn’s is shown in a really interesting visual way.

The series holds a beautiful love story between Alex and Laura, a mostly horror style look at what happens in the school, and a compelling layer of suspense from both secrets revealed and murders.

There were lots of queer characters, so the trans man who was the new deputy in town didn’t phase anyone. There was some humor (this is Mae Martin, after all). The ending was full of an ironic foreboding – especially scenes of Laura giving birth while Evelyn was doing some of her mind altering therapy treatment on someone surprising.

Overall, the series shines with brilliant acting and a compelling story. Renuka Jeyapalan directed 2 episodes. The entire season is available on Netflix.