What Is Tranqlara? The Drug at the Center of Neagley

The short answer

Tranqlara is the fictional experimental drug at the center of the conspiracy in Neagley season 1. TV Insider and NME describe it as a psychedelic developed by pharma executive Pierce Woodrow and secretly financed by the billionaire Arvid Rawlings. It is pitched as a treatment for trauma-related conditions and tested on the residents of Echo Canyon Farm, where, Decider says, it usually kills the people it is given to. Reported

What the series says it is

TV Insider and NME both call Tranqlara an experimental psychedelic drug, developed by Woodrow and secretly financed by Rawlings. Confirmed

Primetimer names Woodrow as chief executive of Invection Pharmaceuticals and says he manages the network directly while Rawlings pays for it. Reported

TV Insider says it is designed to bring traumatic memories to the surface so patients can face them with guides in a controlled setting, and Collider says it was developed to resolve traumatic memories. Reported

Outlets disagree on what it is supposed to treat, and we do not pick one answer. Primetimer says it was developed to help recover from PTSD. TV Insider’s premiere recap says Woodrow pitches it against depression and anxiety. Decider calls it a “panacea”. Variety says Woodrow’s company is built on a promise to revolutionize trauma treatment. Reported

On ingredients, Decider says the drug combines psilocybin and LSD. The Review Geek says the same. We cannot confirm the mix from an official source, and none of these outlets compares the mix with a real treatment. Reported

How it is pitched and sold

Wikipedia says Tranqlara is introduced in episode 1, when Woodrow pitches it to leading psychiatrists. Other recaps place the pitch before a board or investors, so the audience is unclear. TV Insider’s recap says he sells it as a miracle drug that can significantly reduce depression and anxiety. Reported

The pitch leans on short sessions. Reel Mockery says Woodrow claims people could permanently change their brain’s physiology in 12 half-hour sessions. Decider says he and Cole spend the season looking for a mix that works in fewer than twelve 30-minute trips. In episode 6, Reel Mockery says Judith tells Woodrow they have hit the 30-minute mark with “formulation 147A”. The figures differ from recap to recap, and no source says whether 30 minutes is a session length or the time the drug takes to work. Reported

Episode 5 opens with a fake pharma commercial in which Jerry O’Connell plays himself as Tranqlara’s celebrity spokesman. Confirmed

TV Insider says the ad describes a clear, flavorless, odorless liquid that can be added to a drink. Decider’s transcript has it promising one ounce in a beverage, three times a week for six weeks, and healing from trauma, anxiety, depression, PTSD and addiction. That is in-show marketing, and it gives a different schedule from the session figures above. Reported

Showrunner Nicholas Wootton says O’Connell agreed at once. He joked that the show now has “a second career in making advertisements for pharmaceutical companies”. Confirmed

The ad plays during Neagley’s own trip, cut in with her hallucinations. ShowSnob says it explains that the drug activates the part of the brain that holds memories, good or traumatic, and should be taken somewhere safe. Reported

What it does to people

Recaps show the drug going wrong in many ways. In episode 3, Wikipedia says, Keno sees a man drugged with Tranqlara hurt himself without feeling pain. The Review Geek says that while the drug is unperfected, patients have hurt themselves or taken part in group sex. Reported

Owen Vark is the clearest case. Wikipedia describes him as a retired veteran whose Tranqlara treatment failed. Reel Mockery says that on the drug he believes he is back on patrol in Afghanistan. The Review Geek says he was nicknamed Patient 42 and that Cole accused Woodrow of giving him a “chemical lobotomy”. Reported

Neagley gets her own dose. Killers spike her milk with an experimental version of Tranqlara, and she drinks it at the end of episode 4. The trip brings up a repressed memory of her father killing a man. Confirmed

During the trip she walks into traffic. Reel Mockery says she later tells the others the headlights felt like they were pulling her in, as they did Tommy. ShowSnob says that may be a side effect of the drug. Reported

How it was tested

TV Insider and NME both say Echo Canyon Farm’s residents were used as human test subjects. Confirmed

Wikipedia says the farm looks like a peaceful commune that fronts a black-market operation run by Lawrence Cole and Woodrow. Reported

Decider says Cole recruits impressionable, lonely or traumatized people and puts them through “The Project”, which Wikipedia calls the place where Tranqlara is developed. The Review Geek and FilmiFeed say the targets were people with weak ties to family or employers, who could disappear without a big investigation. Reported

TV Insider and Decider place the lab in an underground silo. Confirmed

Decider adds that it is a converted missile silo beneath the farm’s barn, while Wikipedia sometimes calls it a vault. Reported

The money side is also in recaps. Wikipedia says Woodrow’s board reprimands him for years of ineffective testing and threatens funding cuts. Reel Mockery has Rawlings tell him he cares only whether it makes money. Decider says Rawlings sends a kill team once the Echo Canyon experiments finally prove the drug works. Reported

In the finale, Rawlings sends armed men to wipe out the Tranqlara research and any witnesses, and to stage the deaths as a mass suicide led by Cole. Confirmed

How it ties to Tommy Crane and Echo Canyon

Tommy Crane seemed to die by walking into a train while on drugs. He had actually found out what was going on at Echo Canyon and was killed to stop him exposing it. Confirmed

Primetimer says police ruled it a drug-fuelled suicide. Reported

Outlets differ on the drug’s role. NME says he was killed through the drug by the people running the operation. Primetimer says its side effects, including severe hallucinations, led him in front of the train. No news outlet says how or by whom he was dosed; only a fan wiki names a person. Our article on who killed Tommy Crane weighs the evidence. Reported

The same drug ends Rawlings. Neagley injects him with Tranqlara, and he strips, wanders into traffic and is killed by a truck, which echoes Tommy’s death. Cole is left behind in the blast, seemingly to die. Confirmed

Woodrow develops the drug, Cole supplies the subjects and Rawlings pays. Our article on who created and funded Tranqlara covers the three men. Reported

Wootton says the cult plot “all comes back to our character”. The memory Tranqlara unlocks in Neagley explains her fear of touch. Sten says the season is about how people deal with trauma: some push it away, some turn to a cult or drugs, some choose therapy. The season ends with Neagley starting therapy. Confirmed

Our reading is that the drug sells a fast chemical route to healing, and the finale sets it against Neagley’s slow choice of therapy. Interpretation

Fiction versus reality

Tranqlara is invented for the show. The Cinemaholic and FilmiFeed both say so, and FilmiFeed sees no sign that the name refers to a real approved medicine or a real product under another name. For how it compares with real psychedelic research, see is Tranqlara real. Reported