And with one last episode season 3A of Teen Wolf ends, not with a bang but a whimper.
We start with Scott, Allison, and Stiles, who at the end of last episode chose to temporarily sacrifice themselves to find out where the Nemeton is. They wake up in what looks like nothing so much as a heavenly parking garage. Big, empty, white, full of pillars. In the middle of the room they see a giant tree stump—the Nemeton—and are each transferred by it all the way back to season one. They watch themselves on that fateful night when Scott was werewolf-ified, and each of them see the Ye Olde Druid Tree Stump nearby. When they come out of their magic-induced trance it’s with a vague idea of where to look for their missing parents, but it might be too late: Deaton informs them that they were out for 16 hours, and the full moon rises in less than four.
Back at Derek’s loft, Cora has been helping her big bro—and the show’s budget—by giving him some Aquafina, Purity Guaranteed (TM). Seven minutes in and we get our first hilariously unsubtle product placement—is that a record? Peter reminds Derek, weak as a kitten and newly a beta again, that a fully charged Alpha is coming to beat his furry rump up.
Scott is determined to meet back up with Deucalion; he did promise to help him, after all, and there’s no way they can defeat Jennifer without him. Deaton agrees, reassuring the group that Scott can use Deucalion as bait. That out of the way, Ethan comes in and says he needs Lydia’s help, because his brother and Kali are about to go kill Derek.
Lydia and Ethan go to warn Derek that Kali’s not going to wait for the lunar eclipse to level the playing field—she’s going to attack soon. (Well… yeah? Of course she is. Is anyone not fully aware of how the eclipse strips werewolves of their power by now?) Peter and Cora both tell Derek he should run, to which Derek responds: “How do you know I’m going to lose?”
Honey.
You’re Derek Hale.
Look at your track record. You’re going to lose.
Still, with a little help from Lydia saying her magic mojo tells her she’s standing in a graveyard (appropriately dramatic, four for you Lyds), Derek is convinced to take Cora and run.
Meanwhile, Isaac, Scott, and Allison are at the Argent apartment looking for something the werewolves can use to track Chris’ sent. They’re held up by Agent Jerkbag—sorry, Agent McCall—who proceeds to quiz the trio on Beacon Hills’ mysterious goings-on. He tells Scott he’s trying to avoid the embarrassment of dragging his son into an interrogation room, which—I just—argh! This is the first time you see your son in, presumably, years, and one of the first things you say is “don’t embarrass me”? Screw it, I’m sticking with Agent Jerkbag.
Agent Jerkbag says the vast array of weapons he found in the Argent apartment are enough for him to not let the teens go. Luckily, Allison has a plan. (When does she not?) She starts in on a speech about how her dad needs all those weapons because he’s a private security consultant (echoing what her mom said to her in her beginning-of-the-episode flashback), and she detonates a smoke bomb under the guise of just showing it off. My Queen! The three of them run off to the woods, where Stiles was supposed to meet them. He doesn’t, though, because he got caught in Jennifer’s magic storm and crashed his Jeep into a tree.
Kali, Aidan in tow, has arrived at the loft to kill Derek, and she’s none too pleased when Lydia says he left. A bit of Alpha-style posturing is interrupted by the arrival of Jennifer Blake, who crashes in through the skylight. Dramatically jumping off things, Jennfier? Methinks Derek has been rubbing off on you. (No, not like that. Though that too, I guess.) Kali and Jennifer engage in a patented Teen Wolf slo-mo dubstep fight, which Jennifer handily wins, using magic to fling shards of glass at Kali. It doesn’t seem like that would be enough to kill an Alpha, but whatever. I’m sad that Kali’s dead, as I really liked her, but it’s almost worth it because she got some seriously badass last words: “I should’ve ripped your head off!”
RIP, Kali. You and your violence and your crazy toes will be missed.
Jennifer’s attacked by the Frankentwin, which has about as much luck as Kali did: She snaps its neck, appearing to kill both Alpha twins instantly. She turns to Lydia and tells her she wants her to scream, which she does. Hearing it, Derek decides to go back to the loft. Once there he gets a little speech from Jennifer, who convinces him to help her kill Deucalion so she won’t have to sacrifice Scott, Stiles, and Allison’s parents. The lunar eclipse only lasts for 15 minutes, and she won’t be able to kill Deucalion without his help.
I’m pretty sure killing the parents and powering up before the eclipse is a better tactic than relying on a single werewolf who won’t even have any of his powers during the critical window. Why is Derek taking it on faith that she won’t kill the parents, anyway? I know I say this a lot with this how, but Jiminy Christ: Why don’t characters communicate with one another?! Derek’s doing one thing to save the parents. Scott’s allied with Deucalion to lure Jennifer into a trap, so he’s doing a completely different thing that is directly at odds with what Derek’s doing. Cell phones, you guys. I know you have ’em; I’ve seen the product placement. Use. Them.
The entirety of Scott’s plan appears to be going to the warehouse where the vengeance spiral is and goading Jennifer into attacking Deucalion there. So… relocating the fight? That’s it? Jennifer shows up with Derek, but the pair of them still can’t beat Deucalion, whose Alpha form—which we’ve never seen before, remember—is seriously scary. Deucalion grabs Jennifer by the scruff of the neck, presenting her for Scott to kill. He tells him that by offing Jennifer he can both save his parents and become the Alpha he was born to be. The latter point makes no dang sense, since Morrell already told Scott that Deucalion knows if Scott kills someone he won’t become a True Alpha.
This season has been like swiss: Cheesy and full of (plot) holes.
Anyway, Scott refuses to kill Jennifer, saying that his pack will save the parents, thank you very much.
That part’s not going so well. Isaac, trekking through the forest with Allison, hears Chris’ sonic emitter, which leads him right to the Nemeton. The rescue effort comes to a screeching halt when Jennifer’s storm causes the roof cellar ceiling—and the stairs—to collapse, giving the parents, Allison, and Isaac a matter of minutes before they get buried alive. Stiles shows up right before a beam’s about to collapse, propping it up with a baseball bat, but if the storm doesn’t stop soon they’re still all going to die.
Deucalion tries to force Scott to kill Jennifer, but Scott blinds him with some of Allison’s flashbomb arrow tips, which he pocketed during the scene with Agent Jerkbag. Right after is when the lunar eclipse starts. Jennifer, now wearing her true Darach form and what looks like the druid version of a soft-core S&M outfit, proceeds to smash Deucalion’s head against the floor. Derek stops her, pointing out that Deucalion’s never seen her true face and therefore doesn’t know the price she paid when he ordered Kali to kill her. Jennifer heals Deucalion’s eyesight so he can see her, but doing so leaves her weak, just like when Derek healed Cora. She tries to convince Derek to kill Deucalion, but he refuses, saying Mama Hale didn’t raise no killer.
I’m sorry, but I’m going to have a stop right here. The way I see it, Derek’s little play to get Jennifer to stop killing Deucalion was one of two things: An honest-to-God attempt to play to Deucalion’s potential humanity, or, more likely, a trick to get Jennifer to run her magic battery dry. Both are stupid. Deucalion might’ve been good once upon a time, but this is a dude who’s been doing terrible things for decades and is dead-set on killing Jennifer. There’s no reason to think he’d be moved by her plight.
As for the second option: I totally buy that Derek guessed he could make Jennifer stop by appealing to her vanity. I’d hoped all that “Don’t think I’m ugly!” stuff from The Overlooked was just a trick on Jennifer’s part to get Derek to underestimate her, but apparently a really big part of her character really is hangs-up about her physical appearance. (We could’ve had it all, show. We could’ve had it all.) But it’s a pretty big coincidence that Jennifer, a Druid, using magic to heal Deucalion had the exact same effect as Derek, a werewolf, giving up his Alpha powers to heal Cora.
Derek Hale: Saved by the power of sloppy writing.
Jennifer loses it and proceeds to rip Derek to shreds (um… Jennifer? Deucalion’s right there! You know, the dude you dedicated your life to killing? Ugh, I hate this season’s villains). Derek flashes back to that time earlier in the season when he let Cora and Boyd wail on him to keep them away for Jennifer, the inference being that Derek is ready to die if by doing so he can run out the clock on the lunar eclipse.
But it’s not that easy: Once the lunar eclipse ends Jennifer spews up a circle of mountain ash and tells Derek that, welp, now she’ll just have to kill the parents. Scott tries to force himself through the magical barrier, and to the surprise of everyone, he actually succeeds, his eyes turning True Alpha red in the process. He tells her to stop the storm or he’ll kill her himself, but he doesn’t have to: The magical barrier broken, Deucalion comes up behind her and slashes her throat, ending the storm in the process.
So now the group in the root cellar is safe, as are the Alpha twins, who earlier in the episode turned out to be alive and were taken to Deaton’s office and are now all awake and stuff. I’m sorry, but I just don’t care about the Alpha twins. A whole 12 episodes have passed and I still have trouble telling them apart.
Derek tells Deucalion that he was a man of vision once, and as such he and Scott are going to let him go. But be warned, Demon Wolf: If you get up to your old tricks Scott and I will find you and shred you. Um, what? He wasn’t just obsessed with killing Jennifer; for years he’s actively been an evil, sadistic jerk who’s either killed or ordered the deaths of dozens of people. And you’re just letting him go?! What’s to stop him from hopping a flight back to Britain and killing people there? Scott and Derek killing him would sit a bit wrong with me, sure, but so does just letting him go. Surely there’s an in-between option? What do they do with werewolves who commit crimes?
Lo, the crisis of the Alpha Pack and the Darach is over. Allison tells her father about Deaton’s prediction that other supernatural nasties come to town and suggests that they become hunters again, albeit ones with a new code: “We protect those who cannot protect themselves.” Derek and Cora head out of town; Scott, in helpful voice-over mode, says he doesn’t know if they’re ever returning, but c’mon, they totally are. He also says he feels the darkness around his heart that Deaton warned them about, but that he can counteract it by looking for his friends. He sees Danny with Ethan and Lydia with Aidan, which I only point out because Lydia being with Aidan now… I just don’t get it. He was evil fifteen minutes ago. He killed Boyd and still shows absolutely no remorse for it. And he’s a good guy all of a sudden? I don’t buy it.
Scott also says his dad’s staying in town, and then proceeds to shut a door in his face while Mama McCall hides around the corner and smiles. Agent Jerkbag if you ever hurt Mama McCall I swear to God—!
But there’s one more bit of drama before we go on hiatus! Turns out Jennifer isn’t quite dead yet; she’s crawled back to the Nemeton and is begging it to save her when Peter shows up. She mentions that now Scott’s leveled up Peter can kill him and become an Alpha again. “Again? Again?!,” he responds. He kills her before yelling “I am the Alpha! I have always been the Alphaaaaa!” demon wolf-style.
So is season 3B going to be full-on baddie Peter? Or at least eventual baddie Peter (since that dude sure does like to wait in the shadows and spring his evil plot at the least expected moment)? I approve. I love Teen Wolf, but this season has been weak, and I’m happy to put it behind me.
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