Who Created and Funded Tranqlara? Woodrow, Rawlings and the Money Trail

The short answer

Three men stand behind Tranqlara, and they split the work. Pierce Woodrow developed it, Arvid Rawlings secretly paid for it, and Lawrence Cole supplied the people it was tested on. Neagley works her way up that chain across the season, and by the end of the season, recaps and explainers show all three meeting violent ends. Reported

Who created Tranqlara: Pierce Woodrow

Woodrow is a pharmaceutical executive who developed the drug. Tranqlara itself is fictional, an invention of the show. Confirmed

Primetimer and Wikipedia call him the chief executive of Invection Pharmaceuticals, the company behind the drug. Reported

Coverage says he spent about four years developing and testing it. TV Insider describes the pitch as a psychedelic miracle drug that can significantly reduce depression and anxiety, built to bring traumatic memories to the surface so patients can face them in a controlled setting. Episode 5 opens with a fake advertisement in which Jerry O’Connell plays himself as the celebrity spokesman. Reported

Who paid for it: Arvid Rawlings

Rawlings is a Swedish billionaire who secretly funded Woodrow’s operation. Peter Outerbridge plays him. Confirmed

Variety calls him a mastermind in crime with citizenship in nine countries, a private biotech business and a team of mercenaries. Recaps of episode 5 add what he wants: he tells Woodrow he does not care whether the drug works, only whether it makes money, and he calls Invection’s board a cover that gives the company a veil of legitimacy. Reported

Who ran the human testing: Lawrence Cole

Echo Canyon’s residents were used as human guinea pigs for the drug, and Cole leads the commune. Confirmed

Recaps show how the arrangement began. An episode 3 flashback goes back four years to Woodrow offering Cole cash for Echo Canyon in exchange for access to a resource he needs. Later, Cole and Woodrow test the drug on a retired veteran, Owen Vark, and it fails. Owen later tells Neagley that Woodrow talked of “patient 42” being cooked. The Review Geek says Cole supplied the subjects and knows the project is killing people but keeps supplying them anyway. Reported

Our article on what Echo Canyon Farm is covers the commune itself.

Who answers to whom

The sources do not agree on a formal chain of command. A fan wiki says Cole reports to Woodrow, who answers to Rawlings. Other sources put Rawlings above both men, and Collider simply names the three as the people who orchestrated the conspiracy. No major outlet gives an org chart. Reported

Our reading is by role. Money and orders move down from Rawlings through Woodrow to Cole, while test subjects move up from Echo Canyon to Woodrow’s lab. Cole supplies the test subjects and runs the farm, but the money and the final orders come from above him. Interpretation

How Neagley finds the chain

The investigation moves up one rung at a time, according to episode recaps. Reported

• Episode 3: the wounded assassin Davos answers yes when Neagley asks whether Cole had Tommy killed.
• Episode 4: Renee identifies Woodrow as the head of Invection, and Neagley finds that a corrupt deputy chief put $800,000 into a pharma-only fund.
• Episode 5: Renee finds that the underground room is a missile silo, and Neagley concludes Woodrow must have someone over him.
• Episode 6: Woodrow calls Rawlings on a burner phone, and Rawlings says he will not have another “Hamilton” and end up in prison, a reference to an earlier crime that the recaps do not explain.
• Episode 7: Neagley follows payments to Boone Riley’s account back to Rawlings Corp, and Renee finds that its chief executive is Arvid Rawlings.

How Tommy Crane’s death ties them together

Tommy Crane found out what was happening at Echo Canyon and was killed before he could expose it. Confirmed

NME says he was killed through the drug by the people running the operation. Davos’s answer in episode 3 points at Cole, which is why recaps treat Cole as the man who ordered the killing. Neagley is later dosed with Tranqlara herself and says the headlights that pulled her in are what they did to Tommy. Reported

What the coverage does not settle

No official source explains how the three men were organised, and no outlet says whether Rawlings owns Invection. Recaps place an earlier scheme called “Hamilton” and a clinic run by Pinnacle Therapeutics in the background, but they disagree on where it happened and how many young people died, so we leave the details out. We also do not know what became of Invection or the Tranqlara research after the finale, beyond the evidence Neagley dropped off at the FBI, according to The Review Geek. Reported

What happens to each of them

Recaps say Rawlings shoots Woodrow in episode 7 and makes Cole his new partner. Wikipedia says this follows Woodrow proposing to kill Cole, while DMT says it is because Woodrow drew too much attention to Echo Canyon. The major explainers do not mention Woodrow’s death, so check this one on screen. Reported

In the finale Cole is left behind in the rigged silo and, by most accounts, dies when it explodes. Confirmed

TV Insider says Rawlings’ men aimed to stage a mass suicide blamed on Cole. Reported

Neagley injects Rawlings with Tranqlara instead of arresting him. He wanders naked into traffic and a truck hits him, which echoes Tommy Crane’s death. Confirmed

The full sequence is in our ending explained.

The actors behind the chain

Amazon’s official billing lists Matthew Del Negro as Pierce Woodrow and Damon Herriman as Lawrence Cole. Outerbridge as Rawlings appears in Variety’s cast guide and in Primetimer. Confirmed

The series was created by Nick Santora and Nicholas Wootton, who are also its co-showrunners. Herriman has played Charles Manson twice, in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Mindhunter, which TVLine and People both mention when introducing his role. Confirmed