Welcome to week three, wolf fans! I saw the WHOLE EPISODE this week, and I have no idea what is going on. Like, less idea than when I missed the first few minutes the last two weeks, even. So starting now, let's build in some structure to these recaps.
Let's hand out some awards!
WEEKLY REMINDER THAT BEACON HILLS IS ON A HELLMOUTH
Take your pick. This week was a smorgasbord of the horrific. Like, they literally used AN ENTIRE genre of monster (wendigo) as a throw away twist. When you can throw wendigos out with the bloody bathwater, you know--you KNOW--you live on a Hellmouth.
BEST REACTION TO SOMETHING SUPERNATURALLY RIDICULOUS
Coach Finstock, witnessing Kira's Kitsune powers in lacrosse action.
via teenwolf
MOST ADORABLE WOLF PACK PUPPY
Malia, watching Kira intently to learn/mimic the right human girl expressions to use when watching your kinda boyfriend fail miserably at The Sports.
via shippingwolves
REIGNING PRESIDENT OF THE SCOTT MCCALL FAN CLUB
Stiles steals back the crown from Baby!Derek, what with his insistence that Scott believe that it's okay for him to want something for himself sometimes, because, "…team captain? alpha werewolf? You're still human."
Mama McCall comes in a close second:
via threedayduration
Awards awarded, on to the show!
PREVIOUSLY ON TEEN WOLF
Using Norse Berserkers as a decoy, Kate (well, presumably Kate; Peter is sure it was Kate) made off with $117 million of the Hales’ fortune. Which, naturally, was hidden in a claw-keyed vault underneath Beacon Hills High. Naturally. Also, Derek was Baby!Derek for a whole episode, only returning to his Hoechlin form after singlehandedly beating all the unbeatable berserkers in a bid to protect his favorite alpha cub, Scott. Then his blue killer's eyes turned non-killer gold.
PREVIOUSLY PREVIOUSLY ON TEEN WOLF
Using a barely tame Malia and Lydia's unsurprisingly competent Spanish, the team made off with the Cavaleros werewolf hunting family's mercenery-on-retainer, Badass Braeden, who led Scott and his newly lady-heavy wolf pack into the Mexican desert where they discovered a magicked Baby!Derek entombed in an ancient Aztec temple.
So…
Why two Previously Ons? Like I already said: I am totally confused by what the Teen Wolf creative team is trying to accomplish this season. Aside from Derek's storyline, this episode felt like the third of a "possible season opener" sampler pack. As in, it seems like the creative team couldn't decide which direction they wanted to take things--aztec werejaguar magic? unstoppable norse berserkers? my literal childhood nightmare american horror story?--so they just did all three. In a row.
Basically, this season's storytelling is crazy so far, and not in the good way.
HOWEVER. The dialogue and acting is as snappy and wonderfully weird as ever. And in the battle between snappy&weird characters and faultless logic for my weekly supernatural teen shenanigans fix, I will always take the former. So. As much as I think you are CRAY, Teen Wolf creative team, keep giving me this:
via threedayduration
…and I'll let you have your werejaguarberserkerhorrorstory half-season.
With that out of the way, I present you with--
THIS WEEK ON TEEN WOLF
American House of Horrors
Given that last week we ended on the twist of a SUPERNATURAL HEIST, naturally this week we open on a completely unrelated, half-naked teen boy calling for a Willow from a stationary position at the end of his front walk. How do we know he's a teen boy (especially given his VERY MANLY, Teen Wolf Approved™ physique?). Easy: he determines that thirty seconds of calling half-heartedly for a missing pet while looking equally half-heartedly into the shadows on his hushed nighttime street totally counts as LOOKING. "Mom!" he calls, re-entering his obviously haunted house sans Willow, "I couldn't find her anywhere!"
Ah, lazy teen boys. What would we do without you.
So because Teen Boy's house is so obviously haunted, and because this is Beacon Hills, and because the missing cat is named Willow, you know for true and real that the next three minutes of the show are going to be strange and horrifying. And they are.
To wit: Teen Boy finds Willow the Cat. She is under his bed. COVERED IN BLOOD. Then--THEN--he hears a woman screaming from the hall, and when he finally has the guts to open his door and check out what's going on (which, to be fair…he GETS that courage. I would have jumped out my window long before, or died of fright), he sees a shadowy figure walking away from a now silent bedroom, trailing a dripping axe.
THEN said axe comes flying at him through the dead air, slamming into the flat of the bathroom door he manages to close between himself and the person of nightmares.
AND THEN the person of nightmares speaks! And it is in the most awful, distorted voice imaginable! And it is telling Teen Boy to defend himself by smashing the mirror to make a Macgyver glass knife!
Teen Boy wraps the towel around his fist, and we cut to the mouthless horror figure waiting to hear his next move. SMASH! The door flies open, and…
Teen boy has smashed his bathroom window and fled into the night.
Mouthless horror figure looks on, unreadably. Unreadable because, in case I didn't mention, he has no mouth.
The Hale House of Heist(-solving)
Back at Derek's (Peter's?) ridiculous, barn-doored loft, Peter the Worst and Badass Braeden are negotiating her fee to find Kate…and the $117 million in bearer's bond she (Peter is certain) tricked him out of.
Brazenly, because she is a baddass and brazenly is her only way of doing anything, Braeden opens the negotiating by throwing her booted heels up onto Peter's shining table. So pretty much if you know anything at all about Peter Hale, you know about how the rest of the negotiation is going to go down. DEREK definitely knows how the rest of the negotiation is going to go down.
via teen-wolf
Derek is either laughing at Braeden's brazenness, or he is staring into his own golden gaze in the reflection of his aviators.
Peter offers Braeden a number. Braeden scoffs and pushes it back. They're not hiring her to find Kate, she notes; they're hiring her to find Kate first. As in, before she does so for the cutthroat Cavaleros family. Peter rolls his eyes and pushes back a new number. Braeden doesn't even look at it before pushing it back.
Before hackles can rise further, Derek jumps in and promises Braeden that she'll get paid. She just needs to go find Kate. Now.
Once she is gone, Peter turns on Derek. Or Derek turns on Peter. To be honest, I got a bit distracted by…well, just by Derek. I normally don't care for him either way, but he was a bit radiant this episode.
via teen-wolf
Also at some point the possibility of losing the bearer's bonds entirely comes up, and Peter hollers the hilarious rejoinder, "What do you think I'm going to do then? GET A JOB?!?!?"
I lovehate Peter so hard.
The many loves of Scott McCall (AKA: welcome back to lacrosse, boys!): Part I
A billionty minutes into the episode, we finally cut to Scott and Stiles. They are having a totally casual and not at all arc-setting-up jaw about how Scott finally got his grades up like he promised Coach (Finstock! Welcome back, Coach!) and now he is eligible again to play lacrosse but Coach didn't say anything about his position as team captain and…
"Scott!" Stiles interrupts, "we've got 117 million problems, and lacrosse isn't one of them!"
Oh isn’t it? That new series regular killing it as goalie says it is.
via teen-wolf
According to Ponytail Extra, he may be the "first ever freshman team captain," Stiles, that's who it is.
Also, Chris Argent is in France, apparently. And Scott only texted him re: Kate, because he didn't have the money to call. Stiles finds this whole exchange very upsetting. As do I, because of the implied Isaac absence.
The interlude of the parents
Setting the audience up for plots in the back half of 1) the episode and 2) the season, we take a brief interlude from lacrosse practice to see…
1) …Melissa McCall discussing recent hospital cuts with a new doctor who is played by an actor I only know from the tragically shortlived Chicago Code, and who I shall be henceforth, then, be referring to as Cop Doctor. Cop Doctor knows they come at a bad time for the hospital in general, but with all the frankly bizarre and staff-killing shenanigans that have been happening on the reg in the past year or so…but anyway! Melissa shouldn't be worrying about it just then. He can see her falling asleep on her feet! She should go home! And she is about to do just that, but then…
via liam-dunbarr
Teen Boy collapses in the hospital's front doors. And since Melissa McCall is generally the only competent medical professional still on staff at Beacon Hills Hospital (and Cop Doctor just got through explaining to us that she totally is), she scrubs back in and sets to work cleaning Teen Boy up.
2) …Kira's infuriatingly unhlepful kitsune mother packing up…bars of silver? sure, why the hell not…into egg crates. Surprise! Now that the Nogitsune has been vanquished (and RIP, Argent Archer of all our hearts), they can move back to New York City.
Kira, understandably, is NOT happy with this development. But, but, but…Dad's an important teacher at the high school! True enough, their only other competent teacher is Coach Finstock, and he took an arrow to the gut like a month ago. Also: Kira's dad was a professor as Columbia, so. Point, moving. Okay, sure, Kira, says, but…Lydia! And Stiles, and Malia!
"…and Scott?" Kira's mom says, knowingly. "He wasn't your first boyfriend, and he won't be your last." True enough, although, as Kira points out under her breath, "he isn't even my boyfriend."
The many loves of Scott McCall (AKA: welcome back to lacrosse, boys!): Part II
Back to the lacrosse epic (Sidebar: I have no clue what time of day it is supposed to be. Morning? Morning lacrosse practices are probably a thing, right?)!
Stile and Scott corner freshman Liam in the Locker Room of Interrogation and demand to know why he was catching all those balls in practice. "I was in goal," Liam says, slowly. "Yes," Stiles rejoins, "but you caught ALL of them!!!" Liam blinks. "I was goalie," he repeats. "Have you never actually played the game?"
Sure, fine, Stiles allows. But where did he learn to play? Why wasn't he at Beacon Hills High last semester? Is he really just that good?
His stepdad taught him. He transferred in from some prep school. He really is just that good.
Only! LIES. Scott's alpha ears know Liam didn't transfer; he was kicked out! But whatever, doesn't matter how it happened, Liam is at BHH to play. And maybe even become team captain as a sophomore, like his stepdad. "And like you did, Scott." And with that compliment, Scott's little puppy face perks right up, the big softie.
Malia + Math ≠ True Love
Basically, Lydia is the best, and Malia's transition to human high schooler continues to be amazing.
via teen-wolf
Family Murdering Axe Murderers For EVERYBODY, also kisses
Next is the scene in which Stiles says the phrase "family murdering axe murderer" enough times that Beetlejuice would have appeared thrice over had it been his name being said. Anyway, Stiles' dad texted him about this development more or less to say STAY OUT OF THIS BUSINESS, and Scott already knew because his mom called him, also more or less to say STAY OUT OF THIS BUSINESS, and so Scott is totally cool, well, staying out of that business. As is Kira.
"The two of you just want stay here, go to class? That’s the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever heard in my life!" Stiles storms off, and Scott is so frazzled by that and lacrosse and Liam and just life in general (he's Scott, he's easily confused), he asks Kira if they can "have that talk" later, then dry pecks her on the mouth before zooming off to class…whereupon he realizes what he's done, and that it was their first kiss, and that he made things totally awkward and…yeah.
via teen-wolf
Speaking of Family Murdering Axe Murderers…
Oh. Holy. EFF.
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.
Werejaguars I was willing to be on board with. Bring in the Berserkers, a bit of Norse mythology mixed in with old Aztec motifs? Sure. Why not. Derek Hale was turned into BabyDerek and Isaac Lahey was allowed to LEAVE THE SHOW, so why the hell not an Aztec/Norse mashup season?
But add a family-murdering axe murderer with smooth flesh where his mouth should be and a NECK PLUG to feed himself blood (?) while he absorbs (feeds?) the entire internet…
via imgur
That's it. That's all I'm giving you guys. I REFUSE TO EVEN THINK ABOUT MOUTHLESS HORROR MAN, let alone gif him for you.
The many loves of Scott McCall (AKA: welcome back to lacrosse, boys!): Part III
The actual tryouts are finally here! Along with most of my favorite scenes, as well as my eternal favorite, Coach Finstock, who proclaims loudly that this is a rebuilding season. "Jackson’s gone (yawn)…Lahey’s gone (WEEPING)…and Greenberg, well. He’s still here." And Scott? ALL positions are open. Team captain included. Now go run laps!
Coach, I’ve missed you. Stiles, I love your face.
via teenwolf
Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with your Maze Runner.
Malia and Kira are in the bleachers to watch the(ir) boys lacrosse tryouts. Kira is being weird, like normal, and Malia demands what’s wrong with her…but only because she reeks of anxiety and it’s distracting. Malia!! Keep being your weird coyote self.
The boys in question have reached the batting (throwing?)(goaling?)(I don’t know lacross in the least) part of the tryouts. Stiles? Throws the ball right into the goalie’s stick-net thing. Liam? Jets it past the goalie’s ear like he’s a regular old magician. Scott? Winds up like the hero he is and…bounces it off the goal frame.
Stargate’s "Savant" revs up as we all watch Liam dominate the field, and Scott…fail. A lot. “Isn’t the captain supposed to be better than the rest of the team?" Kira asks nervously. "Or…good?" It's nice that you and Malia are friends, Kira, but asking her these questions isn't going to get you anywhere. The only sport she knows is the hunt, and this…well, this isn't it, at least not right now. Malia is actually looking to KIRA for pointers as to how to feel about what they are seeing, and her expressions watching the plays are so cute, like a puppy watching its big dog sister for the right reactions to use in a given moment.
Stiles, too, is weirded out by how poorly Scott is playing. "You're not making any goals, either!" Scott argues. “That is because I’m terrible, though, Scott," Stiles reminds him.
Stiles' delivery is perfect this episode. How nice for him to have some comedy to play with after all that NogitStiles drama.
After making us all laugh, Stiles suggests that Scott use some alpha power to get the edge. Scott has the most honest heart of anyone ever, so can barely listen to such a suggestion without getting Cheating Hives, but his eyes do glow red for a moment, so it seems like when the tryouts change to a new skill I won't even try to understand and Scott and Stiles start dominating, that he MUST be using his alpha powers. But he's not!
How do we know this? Liam slips right through the defense that so thoroughly stymied everyone else. Scott? Dumbstruck. Stiles? Dumbstruck. Finstock? Dumbstruck. Malia? Pissed off. "That was luck!!" she exclaims, leaping up from the bleachers. "Do-over! Ten bucks on Scott and Stiles!" And since Coach never met a bet with a student he didn't want to take, he gives the boys a do-over. And Liam allllmost gets through, but then is flipped over their backs in such a way that his bones bend ways bones don't bend, and Scott, horrified, races to be the one to take him to the nurse.
Coach Finstock, with trademark frustration, flings a lacrosse ball angrily into the bleachers--right at Malia's face. And Kira, with trademark kitsune speed (and Scott's stick?) catches it the moment before it bashes in her nose. Then when she flings it back hard enough to knock Coach flat? He wants to know if she's ever played lacrosse. And considering the scene of Kira later spinning and twisting the lacrosse stick in her room, she's definitely GOING TO be playing some lacrosse, and soon!
Your regular reminder that Derek Hale is on this show
Comes when Braeden is for no apparent reason changing her shirt right smack in the middle of the ridiculous loft, with Derek's back to her. He wants to know how her search is going. So do I, especially the part about how the Family Murdering Axe Murderer is related in any way to Kate and the missing $117 million.
Anyway, she has some leads--she is a badass murderer hunter. However, she has to go question people who won’t talk to someone like Derek, and she wants him to trust her. She knows what he wants--he wants back what Kate stole from him: his true nature. His blue killer's eyes.
This is a romance in the making. I'm in. Derek could use a mercenary in his life.
via teen-wolf
THAT moment
Liam's injury is bad enough he needs to go to the hospital, so Scott runs to find Kira in the hallways to explain that he has to go, and that they can talk later, and also that he knows what he did with his mouth earlier (dry peck) was super awkward, and made things awkward, and he is sorry, and…yeah. He peaces.
Except he is NOT SORRY and comes racing back and
via teenwolf
Where goeth Lydia (and Deputy Parrish)
On the trail of the mouthless horror figure is Deputy Parrish of the Freshest Face. Sheriff Stilinski warns him off investigating any further, as Agent McCall (who just WILL NOT LEAVE) has brought in an expert from Quantico (Braeden; it is, hilariously and almost certainly erroneaously, Braeden who is the "expert")…but Deputy Parrish of the Freshest Face is DRIVEN and takes the drive right over to Teen Boy's murder house to do some investigating, where he finds, of course, Lydia. Lydia, whose new job--new as in, replacing her all the time screaming of previous seasons--is wandering gruesome murder scenes all vacant-eyed.
Poor Lydia.
via teenwolf
Deputy Parrish is looking at Lydia like he might be a Rosewood-level innapropriate love interest for her and her unusual reputation. Is this why they’ve been fully underscoring how young he is for his job? I mean, I’d be mad, but. He’s kind of adorable? And Lydia is kind of beyond being a teen?
But that is poisonous thinking. Even as a banshee who has probably by now seen as many (or more) gruesome murder scenes than Deputy Parrish has, he is in a position of authority. And as we all ought to have learned from PLL: relationships with figures of actual authority over you are NOT OKAY.
However, since screaming faces in the wood paneling call to the banshee in Lydia and she uncovers a hidden underground cadaver/meat locker presumably maintained by the murdered family…well, these two have been in the terror trenches together, now. And terror trenches are relationship-formative things.
The many loves of Scott McCall (AKA: welcome back to lacrosse, boys!): Part IV, the gruesome part
All of this comes to a head at Beacon Hills Hospital, where Melissa McCall is still ON call, and checks in Liam and his maybe-broken leg at the same time as she is trying to coax Teen Boy of the Axe-Murdered Family (aka Sean Walcott) to eat something. But he won't; he's not hungry.
Scott is convinced this is his fault; even though he wasn't on alpha wolf power, he HAD been wound up about needing to beat Liam for the captain spot, and if he hadn't been doing that, Liam wouldn't have had to push so hard. Stiles isn't having any of it: it is OKAY for Scott to want something for himself sometime, like being team captain. Alpha wolf or not, he's only human. Scott stays to think about this, while Stiles returns home to study make out study with Malia, who uses her highlighters the exact same way Stiles used his colored thread and it is ADORABLE.
Meanwhile, Cop Doctor is Liam’s stepdad! He’s not mad at Liam, and seems like a totally cool dude, which in Beacon Hills means he’s probably a killer. Sprry, Liam.
Also a killer? Sean Walcott! He’s some new sort of many-toothed, white-eyed which Lydia calls to warn Scott about RIGHT as Melissa McCall walks in on the kid feasting on the bloody entrails of the sheriff’s deputy set to guard his room from the family murdering axe murderer.
He was just SO!HUNGRY!
What follows makes very little sense, but given everything else thus far this season, gets a pass. Sean Walcott, his hunger apparently revved to overdrive from his deupty feast, goes searching the hospital for another meal. And what prey is more attractive than the injured! So, naturally, Liam is Sean Walcott's next target. And, naturally, he drags the poor kid to the roof, where he waits until wolfed-out Scott catches up to them to…hold Liam hostage? For…for someone to understand that he (Sean Walcott) is a wendigo and just needs to eat all the time? I mean, if that's the case, wouldn't it be more convincing to just…eat Liam? Like, right away, IN the hospital?
But that wouldn't work because the writers needed Liam to dangle from the roof while Scott tries to simultaneously pull him back up and fight off Sean Walcott, which he obviously can't do, unles he USES HIS TEETH to pull Sean up by the arm.
via mseverdeenes
Which he does. Which means he has now bitten an innocent. Which means the Cavaleros clan will be after his head in no time. Scott! Your mouth made so many bad-good decisions this episode!
Also, mouthless horror guy came and killed Sean Walcott with his axe, then hushed Scott from telling about it. I can't think about it anymore. It's too horrific.
Next week, we meet the merpeople that form the fourth arm of this season's bizarre plot.
I mean, why not, right?