"This seems 100%": Fans speculate if Netflix's Wayward is based on a real school 

When Netflix dropped Wayward, viewers expected another dark, glossy drama about rebellious teens. What they didn't expect was Reddit lighting up like a conspiracy board. As one user put it,

"This seems 100% based on the Elan School and the (...) documentary about it."

That comment opened Pandora's box! The thread is filled with amateur detectives comparing Wayward's fictional Tall Pines Academy to infamous "troubled teen" reform schools like Elan, CEDU, and Bromley Brook Academy.

And honestly, the resemblances are too chilling to ignore!

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Fans connect Wayward's Tall Pines to real-life Troubled Teen Industry (TTI) horrors

The conversation started when a user shared a Forbes link claiming that a real school for troubled teens inspired Wayward.

That was enough for Reddit to collectively say, "Wait a second!"

A user pointed out that the scene where a teen is "forcibly [kidnapped] while parents look on" isn't just TV drama, "that happens in real life." Another replied, "It does! And [it] is legal if parents give permission! Just read something recently about the 'troubled teen industry' in Utah."

For the uninitiated, that term refers to a billion-dollar web of so-called "therapeutic" boarding schools that promise to "fix" troubled kids. Former students and whistleblowers describe them as places of humiliation, isolation, and psychological abuse. Eerily similar to what happens at Tall Pines.

One Redditor shared a personal connection: "My family sent my sister to one, so it definitely happens in real life." Another added, "It happened to me in 1997."

When users began digging, they found that the rabbit hole went far deeper. A user dropped a link to Elan School, the now-defunct website of the Maine-based Elan School, infamous for its harsh encounter sessions and bizarre game therapy. This website has (as of the time of writing) been taken over by an illustrated series by a survivor named Joe, who calls this ordeal a "true cult classic."

Others compared Tall Pines' aesthetics and motto to CEDU School in California, known for its eerily similar philosophy:

"See yourself as you are and do something about it."

As this user noted, that phrase appears on the Tall Pines brochure in Episode 1. Is it a coincidence? Reddit doesn't think so.

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So, is Wayward really based on Elan or CEDU?

Here's where things get murky! According to a Forbes interview with creator Martin, Wayward is "not based on a true story" but does "draw inspiration from personal experiences." Martin had a best friend named Nicole, who was sent to a similar institution, and the latter's account got woven into the show.

But Reddit isn't buying the neat denial! One wrote, "I guess it's possible there [are] other places that did the (...) same thing, but the whistles, the notebooks, the scene in the field in the grass? It's nearly a 1:1 story."

Some noted structural similarities between the Elan School documentary The Last Stop and the docuseries The Program, which explores America's abusive TTI. This proves that the more the Redditors compared notes, the clearer it became that Wayward is a collage of real, horrifying stories.

"There was a basic playbook (...) they found that worked (...) and they just copied everything," another explained. "It's truly a terrible, terrible thing."

Whether or not it directly lifts from Elan or CEDU, it's clear that the show's "fictional" Tall Pines is more mirror than metaphor. While Netflix hasn't commented yet, the internet (and those who lived through TTI programs) has decided.

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Watch Wayward on Netflix.

NEXT: Netflix’s Wayward stirs real trauma as viewers call out its depiction of the Troubled Teen Industry