Abstract: I will discuss work in progress with Shenker, Stanford, Yang, and Yao focused on understanding certain universal aspects of spacetime wormholes at late times. In particular, we focus on the late time behavior of the spectral form factor, making an analogy with the explanation of these features in semiclassical periodic orbit theory. For semiclassical periodic orbits, the spectral form factor is computed by a sum over pairs of highly correlated periodic orbits, which trace out the same path except during “close encounters”. It has been shown that these orbits reproduce the expected random matrix behavior of the spectral form factor before the plateau. These encounter pairs have a natural analog in gravity as certain spacetime wormholes, and are closely related to OTOC shockwave geometries. I will explain the simplest of these wormholes, as well as discuss prospects for explaining the plateau in JT gravity with wormholes.