One night. One building (mostly). Lots and lots of chaos.
Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital is seriously giving the high school a run for its money in the “deadliest Teen Wolf location” department.
It’s a dark and stormy night at the hospital, and Mama McCall is working her tuchus off to get all the patients evacuated. The only person not out yet is Cora Hale, and when Beacon Hills’ best, most amazing nurse/mother goes to check on her she sees the unconscious werewolf being looked after by Peter. Mama McCall didn’t know Peter was alive, so boy is that one awkward meeting of the exes. It’s cut short when Cora vomits black goo and mistletoe berries. (Who fed her mistletoe berries? I assume it was Jennifer, because that’s her MO, but why? When did that happen?)
Meanwhile, back at the Lair du Hale, Jennifer has come to visit Derek and let him know that whatever those meddlesome teens tell him about how she maaaay be an evil druid who kills people, it’s totally not true. Except Scott and Stiles have beaten her to the punch, and Derek’s already up to date on his (now ex-, I suppose) girlfriend’s tendency toward human sacrifice. She tries to convince him it’s not true, but he’s still suspicious. The final clincher is when Scott flings some mistletoe powder on her, forcing her to momentarily assume her Darach shape.
Derek gets all ready to kill Jennifer, but she pulls out her trump card: You’ll never save your sister or find Sheriff Stilinski without my help. She smiles an eeeevil smile, and then we quite dramatically go to the credits.
At this point I’m a little iffy on her as a villain, if only because she keeps doing that evil smirk thing à la Morgana in season three of Merlin. It’s a far cry from “Mountain aaaaaash!” or “Demon wooollllffff!,” but tone down the ham a little, please. I’m missing Kate Argent right about now.
The quartet carpools to the hospital; Scott and Stiles in the SuperJeep, Derek and Jennifer in Derek’s Camaro godawful SUV. No, I’m not still bitter that they got rid of the Camaro, what do you mean?
Jennifer is sure to let an uncommunicative, broody Derek know that she could run at any time, but she’s choosing to stay and help because she doesn’t want Cora to die. Erm, sure. I’m only doing what I have to, she says. You need to hear the whole story to know how connected we really are.
Well I can’t wait to hear this.
Meanwhile, back in the Jeep, Stiles tells Scott that something’s fishy with Miss Blake. Even though she’s been captured she still has this look on her face like everything is going according to her plan. Bless this show for giving us a character who actually notices when baddies do Evil Villain Smirking. Good luck getting past Stiles, jerks.
The four of them troop into the hospital, Stiles wielding a bat because faaaaanserviiiiice. It can be a wonderful thing. Mama McCall tells them that there are two ambulances coming back, one in ten minutes and one in twenty, and Cora needs to be in one of them when it leaves. Minus Mama McCall they go up to Cora’s room, only she’s not there. Drips of black goo lead our heroes (plus Miss Blake) to a door… out of which Peter comes sliding on his back, pursued by the Frankentwin.
I sense a slow-mo battle sequence!
Alas, there’s only some slow-mo, but the flickering lights gives a nice strobe light effect, so the whole thing still looks like it’s taking in place in some sort of disco. Derek and Scott both get their butts kicked, and Stiles and Peter run over to Cora, who’s unconscious on the floor. In all the confusion Jennifer gets into the elevator and books it away. The Frankentwin runs after her, but she has too much of a head start. She’s not so lucky when the elevator doors open and Kali and Deucalion are right there waiting for her. Still, with the help of a little Druid magic (OK, that was pretty cool, Jennifer-as-villain gets a point) she pushes a charging Kali away and makes her escape.
Now that Jennifer’s escaped, the Frankentwin is back to devoting his attention to the good guys, including Stiles, who hangs behind the rest of the group to literally smash a bat over its head. It’s not effective, but points for trying.
We then take a quick jaunt to the school, where Allison, Chris, and Isaac are among those recovering from the chaos of the recital. Isaac can’t reach Derek or Scott on the phone, so he decides to go to the hospital and help guard Cora. The Argents decide to go with. Aw yiss. This is gonna be good.
Back to the hospital, where Mama McCall comes across Deucalion and Kali. “You’re him,” she says to the former. “The bad guy.” Deucalion’s response is “You have no idea,” and as if to underscore the hamminess of that statement, the lights go out right then and his eyes glow creepy red. Teen Wolf, I love ya, but you need some help in the villain department. Kali’s good, though.
Stiles, meanwhile, is completely (and understandably) ticked that Jennifer’s managed to escape. Derek tries to tell him to calm down, but he’s having none of it, reading Derek the riot act about how he can sit his furry butt down, because your “psychotic mass-murdering girlfriend, second one you’ve dated by the way [oh snap], has got my dad somewhere tied up where he’ll be ritually sacrificed.” If they don’t find her both the Sheriff and Cora are dead.
In a case of excellent timing Jennifer waltzes into the room to remind everyone that she’s the only one who can save Cora, and she’ll only do that if the good guys get her safely out of the hospital away from the Alpha pack that wants to kill her. And she wasn’t escaping, she was just avoiding the Alpha twins! Trust issues, guys! But she’s not the only bad guy who has the good timing thing down: Mama McCall’s voice comes over the intercom to inform the crew that Deucalion is giving them ten minutes to hand Jennifer over. Jennifer points out that Deucalion won’t hurt Scott’s mom because he wants Scott in his pack, because he’s a True Alpha, Derek, didn’t he tell you that?
She says it like it’s supposed to hurt Derek’s feelings somehow, but all I can imagine is Derek making another page in his Scott McCall Fan Club scrapbook while sniffling that “They grow up so fast!”
Even though Deucalion has his mom and may or may not (but probably won’t) hurt her, Scott’s still determined to get Jennifer out. To that end he and Peter decide to fight the Frankentwin to give the others time to get to the last ambulance. Peter injects himself with epinephrine Pulp Fiction-style, providing a little boost for the episode’s second Strobe Light Werewolf Fight.
The rest of them get to the ambulance only to discover that Kali’s waiting for them there. Oh, and she’s killed the driver and taken the keys. Stiles and Cora make it safely to the back, but Derek and Jennifer have to run back into the hospital. Kali’s once again foiled by closing elevator doors, but Deucalion turns the power off, effectively trapping the one-time lovers inside, since using the emergency hatch to get out would cause too much of a racket. After a bit of banter they decide the only option is to hang tight until someone can turn the backup generator back on. Derek texts Scott, whose Frankentwin fight stopped going so well after Peter crashed from his (literal) adrenaline high. The two of them escape down a laundry chute, because Scott might seem like a dope sometimes (though not so much this season), but he has good ideas, OK?
Back in the ambulance Cora’s up and died (!!), but Stiles resurrects her using CPR. “The next time I put my lips to your mouth, you better be awake,” he says. You hear that? It’s the sound of thousands of Sterek shippers tearing their hair out. We then have a patented Dylan O’Brien Acting Moment where Stiles talks about how he doesn’t want to find his dad’s body. I don’t want you to find your dad’s body either, dude! C’mon, Sheriff, you have two and a half more episodes before this druid storyline wraps up. You can make it.
Scott shows up at the ambulance, drops a near-unconscious Peter off, and goes back into the hospital to get Derek, Jennifer, and his mom. He’s attacked by the Frankentwin, and it looks like he’s about to be killed when who comes to the rescue but
Mama McCall
in the hospital
with the defibrillator pads!
Zap zap, Frankentwins! The jolt of electricity splits them (it?) back into Ethan and Aiden, and Scott looks at his mom like she’s his hero, because she is. Heck yes, Mama McCall. Heck yes.
Meanwhile Derek and Jennifer are still waiting for Scott to show up and rescue them. Jennifer takes the chance to explain to Derek who she really is. We get part of the story from Kali, who at the same time is telling her half of the story to Deucalion.
See, Jennifer Blake’s real name is Julia Baccari, and she used to be Kali’s emissary. Kali was ordered to kill her but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, instead slashing Julia/Jennifer’s face up and leaving her for dead. The Druid’s power had been mostly gone for a while now, but as she crawled along the forest floor she found a tiny spark that gave her the strength to hold on long enough to be found and taken to the hospital. The source of that power? A handy virgin sacrifice that had just taken place in the root cellar Jennifer managed to crawl to.
Except it was an unintentional virgin sacrifice, because the virgin in question was Paige, the girlfriend Derek killed when he was a teenager.
There are a few things about this scene that rubbed me the wrong way. One: Jennifer starts it off by saying she hopes Derek isn’t hung up on whether the slashed, mutilated Druid face is her actual face. You know what, Jennifer? I’m pretty sure that “Wait, is my ex-girlfriend secretly ugly?” would not be on the top of anyone’s list of concerns right now. “Is Scott coming to get us out of this elevator?,” “Is my sister alive?,” “Once this hospital thing is over, how do we defeat the Alpha Pack?,” “How do we deal with this evil druid?,” and, oh yeah, “My girlfriend’s an evil Druid who’s killed a bunch of people” are probably the top five. “Jennifer has a weird face?” I’d put that at #4682 on the list. Please, writers. Please.
Two: Jennifer explains her “connection” to Derek like it’s supposed to bring them closer together. And I’m sorry, but I don’t think “Remember that really awful thing you did? The one you’ve been consumed with guilt about for decades? Well it gave me just enough juice to keep me going so I could eventually kill all these people! Paige’s life for mine! Surprise!” would really have that effect. Don’t fall for it, Derek.
And three: It looks like that fan theory about how flashback!Derek was actually flashback!Peter, and Peter was just lying to Stiles and Cora about whose story he was telling, is dead in the water. Shame. I liked that theory.
Jennifer then goes all storytime (well, emissaries do like their storytime), telling Derek the Norse myth of Baldur, whose goddess mom Frig made him invincible to everything except mistletoe, which she forgot about because it seemed so harmless. But the god Loki didn’t like Baldur, so he made a mistletoe arrow and killed him with it. That’s where the tradition of kissing under mistletoe comes from: Frig started it so no one would ever overlook mistletoe again. Emissaries were the overlooked, Jennifer says. The Alpha Pack killed them, and Kali tried to kill her, not remembering that Jennifer had taken her own oath. Now she’s borrowing power from virgins, warriors, healers, philosophers, and guardians to teach the Alphas that their evil would never be overlooked.
Derek brings up that Jennifer has killed innocent people, but Jennifer counters that he has, too. Not that Derek turning Paige against her will and causing her death isn’t a completely awful thing—it is! Absolutely! Which is part of the reason I wanted Peter to have been the one who did it, because we already know he’s an evil SOB—but intentionally killing 12 (so far) people to absorb their life force for your own purposes is kiiiind of a different ballgame.
Still, Jennifer tries to get Derek on her side, saying that by saving her life he’d also save the lives of everyone the Alpha Pack will go after in the future. Derek thinks it’s a moot point, as there’s no way Jennifer can defeat the Alphas anyway, but it turns out she has a plan: Attack them during the lunar eclipse, which causes werewolves to lose all their power.
Scott and Mama McCall, who was set free by Deucalion as a “gesture of goodwill,” meet up with Chris, Allison, and Isaac. Their options for getting Derek and Jennifer out of the elevator are limited: Once the power goes back on the Alphas will hear the elevator, and if there’s a big fight one of them will probably end up killing Jennifer. Allison says she has an idea, and I was pretty impressed until the next scene revealed her big plan was basically that she and Chris would lure the Alphas outside so Mama McCall can turn the power back on and Isaac can roll up to the ambulance in another car and pick up Cora, Peter, and Stiles.
I mean, it works, so no complaints there. But I’m pretty sure a five-year-old could’ve come up with it.
Because this is Teen Wolf, there’s a hitch. Stiles and Scott both realize that Mama McCall is in danger (nooooo), since Jennifer’s going after guardians for her fifth sacrifice group, and one type of guardian is a parent. Jennifer’s managed to knock Derek out and, we see in a later scene, kidnap Mama McCall and tie her up in the root cellar (or “nemeton,” to use the fancy Druid word) where Sheriff Stilinski is also being held.
Scott runs up to the roof, where he sees not Jennifer but Deucalion, who tells him that if he joins the Alpha Pack he’ll help rescue Mama McCall and Sheriff Stilinski. Stiles, who’s up there as well, begs Scott not to go with Deucaion, but Scott says there’s no other choice. Scott promises Stiles he’ll find his father and officially joins the bad guy’s team.
Last time Scott allied with a villain he ended up having a grand plan to poison him with mountain ash, though. And Scott’s known for a while now that Deucalion was trying to get him to join his team. So I think we’ll be good.
I mean, Scott’s got to have a plan, right?
Right?!
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