Teen Wolf returned Monday to huge ratings but it wasn’t exactly “premierish” except for marking the start of a new school year.
We pick up with Isaac being rescued by someone we only call “the girl” as they’re fleeing on a motorcycle and chased by the Scavo boys, who grossly morph into a single uber werewolf. They get away, sort of, winding up in the hospital where the newly-educated Mama McCall knows what she’s looking at when Isaac’s wounds starts to heal and he asks her to call Scott.
Scott’s spent the summer not calling Allison and building up his strength and his studying, and he’s hellbent on getting a tattoo to mark his penance but he can’t get it to stick. Allison’s been away, and Lydia has been casually dating to get over Jackson, who hilariously isn’t mentioned by name and is specifically excluded from the previously recap that precedes the opener (which seems a scoche overkill/bad break up, but whatever).
The running theme of the episode is that all the local critter population are flipping out, and it’s soon revealed that they’re running wild because an entire pack of Alphas has descended on Beacon Falls, and that’s who had Isaac, and who still have Erica and Boyd.
Stiles doesn’t have much to do in the episode other than rush Lydia to the floor when they survive a Hitchkockian Birds scene at the school. He does have a funny, quick moment with his dad where he’s trying to drum up a case and his dad is basically begging him to go to school. And he’s there to hold Scott down when Derek helpfully tells them he’ll have to blowtorch Scott’s arm for the tattoo not to heal (ewwwww).
Allison is shaky on her first day and Papa Argent offers her a pass but she goes anyway and when he comes to the school after the bird attack, we find out that they’ve both packed in the family business (for now). When Sheriff Stilinski asks about him the animal behavior because he heard Stiles refer to him as a hunter, he corrects him that he “used to be.” So we’ll see how long the non-wolf domesticity holds. The Sheriff then moves on to Dr. Deaton, who can’t explain it either.
As for the Alphas, they’re in a sort of heightened near-wolf state with elongated nails and turned eyes but they seem to wolf out the same as Scott, except for the Scavos, who do a tag-team thing. And because Lydia is stupid like that, she finds them kind of hot.
We don’t see Peter in the episode at all, so we don’t know where he is. Derek helps Scott get Isaac out of the hospital and away from an attempted Alpha kidnapping and then helps Scott with his tattoo situation. On his way out the door, Scott notices it’s newly painted despite the house still being in ruins. He asks Derek about it and he deflects until Scott claws through the paint to see the symbol behind it and Derek has to tell him there’s a pack of Alphas in town, i.e. more than just the one at the hospital. He tells Scott to go to school and not worry about it, but it’s pretty clear Scott’s not listening. (So much for his newfound attempt to rehab himself as a student and recoup his grades for his mom.)
By episode’s end, “the girl” has seemingly been killed by the Daddy Alpha, who’s apparently such a powerful werewolf that he’s sightless in human form, and Scott previously runs into him at the hospital and helps him off the elevator without sensing him. Before she’s killed, the girl marks Lydia and Allison with matching bruises that are a tipoff for where Erica and Boyd are being held–they just don’t know that yet. And that’s our set up.
I liked the episode even though it didn’t have a specific “premiere” feel–it almost could have been a return from hiatus mid-season episode, which is fine, but I think I expected more of a kickoff. I’m also not keen on having several more new characters if it means losing focus on our core cast, but we’ll see what they do with them. Here’s a look at what to expect this season:
Photo courtesy of MTV.