After the ominous recap – in which we see Scott is the
new shiny alpha and all of them have activated a supernatural beacon with the
Nemeton as well as causing all kind of darkness inside themselves - we return to the second half of season 3
with Stiles in bed, having a bad dream. Of the school at night all empty, very
spooky and very atmospheric (well done director) school – and the Nemeton in
the middle of the classroom. Which grabs him with a vine
He wakes up – next to Lydia. It takes him a moment to
realise that is odd – then the door creaks. As is the way of dreams, he feels
the need to close it. He opens the door while Lydia begs him not to – which leads
to the Nemeton again, this time lit by floodlights.
This time he wakes up for real – no Lydia present, but
his father chivvying him to school. Hey the dreams may have had spooky dead trees
all round but they’re better in some ways at least, Stiles.
At school, Stiles tells Scott about the dream and they
worry if the whole Nemeton sacrifice could have effected them. Um, what part of
“there will be a darkness in you forever” made you think there wouldn’t be long
term consequences?
And he wakes up YET AGAIN, screaming and panicking until his dad rushes in to hold him and calm him down. Ouch, poor Stiles
Over to Scott and he seems to be awake – but his shadow
has claws. Not his actual hand, just his shadow. Poor, insecure Isaac is still
his houseguest and all kinds of worried that maybe maybe Scott is angry with
him after the whole Isaac/Allison thing. Scott assures him that he’s totally
maybe possibly not totally almost maybe angry? Yeah, even he doesn’t know. But
it’s ok he totally doesn’t want to hit Isaac. No. Not at all, not even if Isaac
says he can – wait, Isaac wants to kiss her? That’s it, you’re bouncing off the
far wall. Melissa McCall, being awesome, makes it clear she’s not having
supernatural teenaged boys test her supernatural levels of patience.
I know that’s kind of meant to be funny and it is in a way, until you remember that Isaac with his “do you want to hit me? You’ll feel better if you do…” has had a lifetime of physical child abuse… Isaac’s history makes this joke fall very flat (and it’s not like they forgot, because they’re randomly bringing it up later on).
Stiles is still having trouble, the title of his books
changing to become gibberish – when his dad distracts him he looks back and it
has turned back to English (the gibberish was an anagram). His dad is worried
about him, but also wants the eternally curious Stiles not to notice the box of
files he’s taken from work.
Allison has her own side effects – becoming freezing cold
in the lift from her flat – and it opening to a disused and wrecked hospital
corridor. The director who is really good at spooky atmospheres comes back. Aie
and she ends up in the morgue with doors opening by themselves. The label on
the door is “Kate Argent” her dead evil, murderous aunt. She opens the door and
sees an incredibly long tunnel – and then down it scrabbles the body of her
aunt all rage and flashing cameras. Yes, I nearly fell out of my chair, I’m not
ashamed to admit it.
Allison turns and runs – and is suddenly in school,
surrounded by people and Lydia
Also at school, Scott continues to see wolfy parts in his
reflection and shadow – which he tries to run from. Running from your own
shadow is never really successful – he runs into Stiles and tries to pretend he’s
alright. Stiles isn’t a fool and guesses Scott is having the same problems he’s
having. Lydia leads Allison to them, having also figured it out; they’re all
hallucinating. They agree to keep an eye on each other – and for Lydia to stop
enjoying their pain (she’s gleeful to be the one who ISN’T hallucinating for a
change. I actually have to give her that one given how the story has treated
her – I love a bit of lampshading).
And they have a new teacher, Mr. Yukimora who promptly
humiliates his daughter, Kira, who is also in class. Aaah, parents, for some
reason it’s a crime to drown them. She does exchange a glance and smile with
Scott though (new love interest ahoy!)
Their problems continue, Scott’s shadows, Allison’s hands shaking and having flashbacks (helped by Lydia and watched by Isaac) and Stiles losing the ability to read. Scott uses his super-hearing to eaves drop in Kira arguing with her dad – and she notices. Which in turn sets Scott’s eyes glowing. He can’t stop it and Stiles hurriedly shuffles him into an empty classroom (am I the only one who went to a school that didn’t feel the need to have 8 times as many classrooms as it actually used?) for him to grow claws and get dramatic, gouging his own hands so the pain helps him focus on not changing. Stiles tells Scott his problems – the waking dreams, how he can’t read in dreams and can’t read while awake – he doesn’t know when he’s dreaming or not; looking around, he can’t read anything.
Lydia is more practical and takes Allison out to train
with her bow to see if that gets her co-ordination back. But even with Lydia’s
surprising knowledge of archery (though why anyone should be surprised that
Lydia knows things by now…) Allison fails to come near the target. She then
gets lost in another hallucination – then it’s night time, then she’s chased by
zombie Kate (who is terrifying!) and shoots her… and only Isaac catching the
arrow stops her shooting Lydia.
At home, Isaac explains what happened to Scott, that if
he hadn’t been there, Lydia would be dead. Scott asks why he was there – an poor
Isaac gets thrown across the room into a wall again. Melissa still disapproves
of their supernatural shenanigans.
At work, Sheriff Stilinski is tracking a lot of old cases
and adding them together (including some deaths/disappearances we’ve seen) –
connecting them to the full moon. Including a close up on a picture of a girl called
Malia Tate – which is probably relevant or will be.
Stiles drops in on him and sees the huge mess of cases being re-evaluated – all put into context of the supernatural he’s now aware of. He’s looking though old cases and realising he could have solved them if he had known the truth – especially the case of a woman and her two daughters dead and savaged on the night of a full moon. Oh and extra revelation – all the cases are going to the office of Agent McCall – Scott’s father, the FBI agent.
Next day, more randomness – Stiles going to class and everyone
speaking in sign language, before he finlly snaps out of it and the Coach tells
him to stop reminding him why he drinks, every night (I kinda love the coach).
He assures a worried Scott that he was just asleep – but Scott tells him he
wasn’t asleep; and the writing pad on his desk has “wake up” written on it
dozens of times.
The gang gathers together to brainstorm and get nowhere
(except for Isaac bringing up his abusive childhood and Stiles snarking it –
which seems a little out of the blue for both characters) – when Kira drops in
overwhearing their creepy conversation and apparently having some insight on
the experience – what the Tibetans call Bardo; of course Lydia has heard of it,
because she’s heard of everything. Kira describes hallucinations and being visited
by peaceful and wrathful deities as part of Bardo (demons) eventually leading
to death. Not so good.
Finally showing some sense, Stiles and Scott go to see
Deacon. Why is Deatonalways the last resort when he always has the answers?
Stiles shows him the sign language and it apparently means “when is a door not
a door?” This boils down to them opening a big door in their heads when they
did the Nemeton ritual and it’s still kind of half open. They need to close the
door.
Of course, while Deatonalways has the answers, as ever what he has is a lot of “what” and “why” and not a great deal of “how”.
As they leave, Sheriff Stilinski wants to talk to them – he wants Scott to sniff out Malia’s body so they can see if a werewolf really killed her and her family. I assume the police department has a low budget for sniffer dogs.
Which means going to the surviving husband/father and
distracting him while Scott and Stiles sneak in the back and sniff things to
see if Scott can pick up an 8 year old scent, after an altercation with a dog
and the surviving husband getting all agitated they call it a bust. Of course the
Sheriff want to have one last case while he’s still sheriff (hey, if he gets
the sack you could give him a first name and I wouldn’t have to call him
sheriff Stilinski all the time)…
…which leads to Scott having a raging argument with his
dad who he doesn’t get on with anyway. Melissa arrives and she’s also not
impressed by Agent McCall trying to get Sheriff Stilinski fired (or impeached,
rather) for failing to close cases. While definitely agreeing with Scott she
has to quickly hurry him out of the room as he begins to shift. Melissa, the
eternally awesome, does a great job in talking Scott down and being his own
anchor – not focusing on Allison. When he’s back in control she follows up with
further awesome advice – you fall in love more than once, and no Allison doesn’t
mean he will never love again.
Cut to Stiles and Scott going on a midnight search for a
body. Or possibly another dream of Stiles’s.
Isaac and Allison also aren’t getting any sleep – and Isaac
being a little economical with the truth saying that Scott is perfectly ok with
them being in bed together – and then zombie Aunt Kate appears behind him and garrottes
him. This one is Allison’s dream (in case that wasn’t clear) – and while
asleep, Allison acquired a knife.
Stiles and Scott are apparently awake and go midnight
hunting, including their mutual agreement that if it turns out the people were
killed by werewolf triplets who morph into Cerberus they’re not having anything
to do with it (snerk), Stiles’s hatred of coyotes, until they find the wrecked
car from 8 years ago which no-one has bothered to move because REASONS. Proof
that maybe Sheriff Stilinski needs to be impeached is presented by the car
having massive werewolf claw marks all over it – and they find a doll. But they’re
interrupted by the sight of glowing eyes and a growling wolf.
Scott chases and it runs –it’s actually a full wolf. It growls
at him when he lands facing it, but when his eyes glow red, the wolf’s eyes
glow blue (showing a werewolf who has suffered incredible grief) and it calms.
Scott calls her Malia. The girl whose body was never found. She runs off
Scott calls Derek… And we switch to a scene of a large
number of horrible hardware being used of torture implements, the sound of
someone in pain, and Derek’s phone. Derek and Peter are tied up shirtless to a
metal fence being electrocuted (Derek spends an inordinate amount of time in
this position), apparently this is Peter’s fault.
Teen Wolf has some really high quality acting (which has
always managed to cut the cheese of the show and made it darker and edgier with
some very real emotions to it) and some excellent direction – they could make
some truly awesome horror films together. In fact, since the second half of the
season is going to be horror-esque, this bodes well that they can do horror
extremely well.
Especially since all 3 are being targeted in what seems
to be their strengths – Allison’s awesome mastery of weapons, Scott’s ironclad
control that not only makes him a dangerous werewolf, but also a werewolf that
is in control of all his bestial instincts and less ready to run off and savage
something as his first (and only) solution – even if his repeated peacekeeping
between Deucalion and Derek. And Stiles loses his ability to read – now while
Lydia is kind of replacing him as the brain, when it comes to research Stiles
tends to be better because of his imagination and willingness to believe
whatever he reads after an all night research session, while Lydia is more
logical and less willing to work on the hypothetical (she’s excellent at
skewering the silly in Stiles’s more extreme leaps of creativity).
As for the rest, I am intrigued. Plot wise I think we’ve
kind of swept aside everything that happened in the first half of the season
which, I think, is a little irritating because there were things unresolved but
at the same time the first half was rather cluttered and it’s not a bad thing
to move onto a whole new lot of plot lines, which we have. The question remains
whether we have too many – and whether this new lot of plot lines means we’re
going to ignore what a True Alpha means, where Deucalion has gone, exactly what
it means to be a Druid (and more Deatondevelopment into something more than a
wise oracle they will consult when needed) and what Lydia will do as a Banshee.
I’m curious to see where Kira will go as a character –
but not invested yet because it’s too soon to have faith or hope in her being
handled well, the same with any inclusion comments on this half of the season.
I do quite like that Lydia dodged the whole hallucination bullet because we
have had 3 solid seasons of her screaming and delusional and seeing things and
being possessed etc and I’m kind of tired of all that.
I am wary of the way Isaac is being handled - specifically his history of abuse. Some scenes they completely ignore the context of it... and then it's dragged up? I'm leery
The rest is a great big wait and see – but wait and see
with a lot of hope and expectation that this is going to be really well done demi-horror.
