Before we get to this Monday's episode, I just wanted to make sure all you gentle FYA readers saw the midseason trailer that was released at Comic Con:
The rest of the season is just going to be daisies and puppy kisses, eh?
via teen-wolf
And now, on to the recap!
THIS WEEK'S WOLF PACK PUPPY
Liam is the season's true wolf pup, and this week we finally get to see him gaining his my-life-is-the-worst-now footing as such. HOWEVER, the more power Derek loses, the more lost and pup-like he becomes. And he was tragedy embodied to begin with. So, TIE.
BEST REACTION TO SOMETHING SUPERNATURALLY RIDICULOUS
This teacher, after asking Malia if she knows where Stiles, Scott and Lydia are and Malia offering to try to catch their scent:
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WEEKLY REMINDER THAT BEACON HILLS IS ON A HELLMOUTH
A Berserker's claw being buried in one's gut is seen as a good thing.
REIGNING PRESIDENT OF THE SCOTT MCCALL FAN CLUB
…is Scott McCall, himself!
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I can lend you a pair of wax wings, Scott, if you don't have a set of your own.
So, while last week finally helped us make sense of the heist and horror story themes (in a word: ASSASSINATIONS), still I boldly questioned the ability of the writers to bring any clarity to their inclusion of Berserkers and Aztec-magicked Baby!Derek.
Ah, me of little faith. Given another week to work their Beacon Hills magic, the writers made good on their groundwork by bringing back the Berserkers…as Kate's henchmen (there's a reason she's worth a cool $15 mil to the Benefactor). Also, they are intimating Peter's ascension to power as Derek's fades. Reasons and connections aren't CRYSTAL clear yet, but, yeah, okay: I believe in your plan, TW writers. I believe.
PREVIOUSLY ON TEEN WOLF
Meredith gave Lydia and Malia the second dead pool cipher clue, and Lydia found Deputy Jordan Parrish's name buried at the bottom. Teen Assassins Garrett and Violet teamed up to perpetrate Beacon Hills' least hidden assassination plot on a beta wolf on the lacrosse team…who was NOT Liam! Then Violet's eyes grew bigger than her stomach as she tried to take alpha wolf Scott down, only to be taken down herself. Chris Argent was brainwashed back into the Hunter's Code by Mexican Hunters who can't even be bothered to hunt their own Hunted huntees, hiring that job out to mercenary Braeden, who, surprise, has gone rogue. Kate stole Derek's blue eyes and is slowly draining his wolf powers. Everyone in the entire wolf pack (well, Lydia and Stiles) revealed their families' sudden, major money problems.
HM. If only there were a flush psychopath hiring assassins to kill y'all for monstrous sums of untraceable cash money. Assassins who just might, alas, be killed in the course of doing their own dirty work, before they have a chance to get to a bank. If only.
THIS WEEK
…starts out, confusingly, FOUR WEEKS AGO, with human-faced Kate Argent asleep in the back of a beater sedan. She's got pretty nice hair for someone who's going around mauling gas station attendants whenever the jaguar mood strikes.
Even though it is pouring buckets outside her windows, a noise startles her awake--a noise from the cassette deck, which she nudges with the butt of her pistol to eject the offending archaic object. Claws and fangs and supernaturally blue skin, and she still sleeps with a gun under the pillow. Old Argent habits die hard, I guess.
The tape Kate finds is blank on one side, and labeled Play Me on the other. Because there is no possible way that in this universe that someone with magical powers--a druid, say, or a banshee--could imbue a regular recordable object with mystical powers of suggestion. No way at all. It's totally safe to just play any old thing mysteriously thrust your way.
Totally safe.
What Kate hears on the tape is an old academic lecture about a family in the Pacific Northwest both fostering a new community and staying isolated from it--a werewolf family, whose natural born wolf youngsters must be taught control through the Triskelion to avoid inevitable extreme violence.
Cue shot of Kate walking through extreme violence with her Berserker henchmen. All the corpses are assassins; not one knew who the Benefactor is. It would be nice to be able to say that the were-monster she's had thrust on her has turned her into more of a human monster than before, but it's not true. The derisive pleasure she takes watching this last assassin bleeds to death on the claws of the nearest Berserker, begging for mercy, is pure pre-jaguar Kate Argent.
What Kate wants to know from this assassin, then, is: Who else got a tape? Who indeed, but "ones that look like kids, like teenagers. They’re called The Orphans." He's kept from saying anything else when one of the corpses turns out not to be a corpse just yet and shoots at Kate’s back, inspiring her to turn to take vengeance, which then inspires her to TURN intto her werejaguar form, at which point she promptly rips the shooter to shreds. The one being held up by the Berserker is whimpering that he’ll tell her anything if she lets him go, but no, she’s too out of control. She grabs him from the Berserker, and in one of my favorite shots this season, the only measure we get of the extreme violence she wreaks is the sudden blood splatters the Berserker's skull faceplate.
via ME…and thus the crudeness
The aftermath of lacrosse is always almost as good as lacrosse
In the chaos following the botched lacrosse scrimmage/attempted double assassination, our main players have changed: Kira's gone home to clue her mom in on her position in the dead pool; Garrett is MIA and in real danger of Finstock kicking him of the team; and Agent McCall has arrived to demonstrate Good Parenting. Or at least, Good Apologizing for Bad Parenting. "I'm sorry I wasn't here [at the game/for the majority of your life] for you, Scott," he says. "Stop apologizing for walking out on us," Scott says back. "And also, it was just a scrimmage, and you're here now. We're totally good."
Liam skulks on this tender absentee father/alpha wolf son moment, and all watch as a mad-eyed Violet is led away in cuffs. By Parrish, who has also arrived on the scene (and dead pool). “JORDAN Parrish?” she asks slyly, eyeing his nametag. “DEPUTY Parrish” he says firmly in reply.
Behind them, the thermo-wire necklace Sheriff Stilinski has in an evidence bag catches Agent McCall’s attention: he grabs it and stalks after Violet, and when Scott uses his superhearing to listen in, he discovers that Agent McCall knows about the Orphans! That very type of thermo wire has been used in over a dozen murders--murders he would like to question Violet about, thank you very much. "But I'm just a kid" she drawls at him innocently. Rowr!
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Looks like Scott's not the only McCall with claws.
While Scott is bonding with his dad over Violet's malevolence, Stiles and Derek are with Deaton at the animal clinic bonding with Jackass Brett and the golden wolfsbane that has made him rabid. Derek’s wolf strength has faded enough that he's unable to hold Brett down. Brett bursts from Derek and Stiles’ grasp and slams Deaton against the wall, but is stopped from further extreme violence by a punch to the nose from Peter and his blue murderer’s eyes. HE still has a bit of werewolf strength, he lances at Derek. “Maybe too much,” Derek ponders. Meanwhile, Brett is out enough for Deaton to make the incision to release the wolfsbane dust. When he whisper-mumbles the same sun/moon/truth mantra the others had done in their dying moments, Deaton recognizes it as Buddhist, and Derek and Peter's shared look turns from daggers to knowing: a Buddhits alpha, hidden in Beacon Hills? Satomi.
Back at the high school that the cops have abandoned while securing a warrant to search MIA Garrett's locker…Scott and Liam are searching Garrett's locker. While Liam acts as lookout, Scott finds a duffle full-full-full of crisp cash money. “Did you find anything??” Liam asks anxiously, certain he's heard someone coming. Scott looks up, a dopey blankness on his face. “No. Nothing.”
The mystery of Scott's reply isn't mysterious for very long: cutting to a darkened McCall kitchen, we find Melissa on the phone with someone, exclaiming that she is a month late. Wait, three months? Collective audience gasp as we all recall Agent McCall's long nights on the living room sofa. But no, it isn’t pregnancy; it’s the power. MCCALL’s family has money problems, too. And Scott, upstairs in his bedroom, is literally sitting on a pile of killer cash.
It is at this point that our main heros split off on three different adventures.
Adventure #1: Super-sleuths Tate and Hale are on the case!
Malia didn't get the memo that the wolf pack never attends school the day after lacrosse games, so she is busy lining all her highlighters up on the edge of her desk and offering to catch her friends' scents for her so-over-it teacher when an unknown man's voice starts whispering her name just loud enough for her coyote hearing to catch. Shrugging, she gets up and makes for the door, much to her teacher's increased exasperation, and our increased amusement.
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The whispering man, it turns out, was Derek, hanging out alone in the BHHS halls like the Hale he is. He's sought Malia out because he needs--and this is heartbreaking, guys--her weresenses. Because his are too weak to be worth anything, and he needs to find Satomi's secret Buddhist wolf pack. Also she knows the Beacon Hills woods better than anyone else, so she will know better where and how to look. Malia is uncertain her skills are up to focusing strongly enough on Brett's lacrosse uniform scent, but Derek looks desperate: probably Satomi knows something that will help him with his waning natural powers. He urges her on, helps her sniff with intent; she finds something.
While the two super-sleuths are traipsing through the woods, Derek fills Malia and us in on Satomi's backstory. Namely, Satomi is the wolf from Kira’s mom’s WWII memory! She is one of the oldest wolves alive, a bitten one, who did something dangerous (threw an incendiary device on a soldier, starting a riot/bringing the Nogitsune to life) and now uses the mantra to help her and her secret pack with control. Malia stops him mid-story; she smells gunpowder. Derek finds an wolf-killing shell, and determines that if Satomi and her pack are out there, it’s not because they're hiding; it's because they’re on the run.
Returning to Derek's car, Malia apologizes for failing, but Derek is cool with it. Satomi and he pack have a certain control over their bodies, he explains kind of late in the game, to mask/alter their scent, even from other werecreatures. Which is why none of our pack ever knew of this other pack’s existence all these years. After a brief moment to show her surprise/vexation that this skill could possibly even be a thing, Malia shows her smarts for a second time in two episodes:
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No. She is suggesting that instead of trying to figure out where wolves would hide, they should look where Buddhists would hide. Staring at his dashboard's compass, Derek recites a thing about the Bodhi tree, and Malia asks if there is an Eastern point in BH.
Surprise, surprise: there is. Surprise, surprise: it's a nauseatingly steep bluff. Nearing the edge, Malia stops, much to Derek's confusion. “You don’t SMELL that??” she asks, nose wrinkled. Shaking his head no, he tells her--her, the currently powerful werecreature--to wait behind, then crests the small ridge. There’s one body. There’s two. There’s a whole PACK, dead eyed stares pointed to the sky.
What happened to them all? Poison. "Oh just GREAT," Malia exclaims. "If the ones with guns don’t get you, the ones with wolfsbane poision will." She suggests they all should just run from Beacon Hills as fast as superhumanly possible, and she isn’t wrong. Derek doesn’t have time to comment, though, because he hears movement in the dead scrum. A bloodied hand shoots up, and he runs over. I had precited it would be Satomi, ready to deliver her paycheck’s worth of wise Buddhist werewolf lines, but no! It’s BRAEDEN. Derek is as confused (and anxious) as we are.
Adventure #2: Stiles adopts a Parrish (the alternative title is TOO DEPRESSING)
Stiles and Lydia start their adventure at the sheriff’s station. But they don’t need to see Stilinski Sr; they need to see Parrish. ALONE. In the closed office, they show him the second list. “This is a hit list?” he asks. “We call it a Dead Pool,” Stiles corrects. WE, Stiles? Don’t give the bad guys the power! Call it what you want! Anyway, does Parrish recognize anyone on it? Sure, he had to run all those names for the sheriff the night before, to look for connections. They unfold the paper to reveal his name. He’s blown away, then immediately and sincerely hurt that he’s only worth five dollars. It’s adorable. They correct him: 5 million dollars.
via teen-wolf
Because he is a champ, Parrish incredibly quickly gets over the horror of learning that a slew of assassins want him dead for no apparent reason (it's unclear how much of the supernatural angle he gets explained to him). So: do Stiles and Lydia need his help?
That the help they needed was to be reunited with Meredith and her Banshee brain nearly made Parrish back right out--not because he's a coward, but because he has a heart of gold and does not want to bother that poor girl anymore than they already have. But he recognizes that Lydia will explode from desperate frustration if she doesn't talk to Meredith again, and soon, and so he acts as their official escort through the halls of Eichen House. They are nearly to their objective when they are stopped short by that awful, abusive orderly who Finstock gloriously put in place last season. Abusive Orderly berates the orderly that was helping Best Trio, explaining how they can’t just let anyone with a badge in to any room they want, and then starts getting in Stiles’ face about being behind on payment for his stay there--even the sheriff has to pay his bills, kiddo. Parrish, being Parrish, tries his most reasonable, IED defusing voice to talk Abusive Orderly into letting them through the door. When Abusive Orderly laughs right in his face and calls Stiles out for abusing official law enforcement power for his own interests, Parrish slaps Abusive Orderly with a different tactic:
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Stiles is IMPRESSED. He’s going to keep Parrish, yes he is. Us too. LEAVE HIM ALONE, ASSASSINS.
Unfortunately, Best Trio's feeling of victory is brief: Meredith can’t give them the third cipher key. She wants to, but she can’t. Lydia gets frustrated, but Parrish, leaning against the side wall, tells them to go easy on Meredith. Who is growing more and more frantic as she keeps repeating that yes, she had wanted to help. But now things have changed. HE doesn’t want her to. Who’s ‘he’? Lydia asks. Meredith looks up.
THE BENEFACTOR.
Now Lydia and Stiles are after a different name--not the cipher key, but the Benefactor's identity. But if Meredith wasn't going to give you the one, Lyds, it's next to impossible she'll give you the other. Lydia pushes a bit more, and Meredith starts shaking and shaking and shaking. Parrish tries to calm them all. Stiles watches carefully. Lydia keeps pushing. And finally, finally, Meredith explodes with a Banshee scream so strong, it makes Lydia's ears bleed.
Back in Stiles' scheming room (even Lydia couldn't pretend that the Banshee scream didn't signal the end of their shot with Meredith), Stiles reasons that the names of the dead are the keys, so they just have to keep trying until they hit on the right onw. However, Lydia is not an idiot, and she has tried a lot of names of the dead they have known; none have worked. Lydia is having trouble focusing on Stiles' mystery-solving, though, worried as she is that Meredith was the only other Banshee they’ve met, and she just drove her over the edge. Stiles starts to tell her it’s not her fault, then has a brainwave: if Banshees predict death, maybe the key isn’t someone who’s dead, but someone who will be. Lydia closes her eyes and starts typing. The third name: DEREK. "Parrish," Lydia declares. "We need to call Parrish."
Parrish, on the other end of the line, has more pressing news than even the cracking of the last third of the list, though: Meredith is gone. They found her an hour ago; she hung herself.
Lydia is static with shock. Stiles pulls her in for a silent hug. We all sit on our couches needing hugs of our own.
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Adventure #3: Liam turns into…a McGuffin
Liam starts the day after the lacrosse game by joining Muggle Mason on a run. Mason is, understandably, freaking out that the Garrett and Violet used them as their covers for murder. He is also freaking out at how little Liam is freaking out. But Liam is freaking out plenty, and wolf-speed races ahead to get away from Mason before he does anything, well, wolfy that might give himself away. He is rewarded for this moment of illogical thought by getting hit by a car.
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Movie night is cancelled indefinitely.
Somehow sensing Scott McCall's alphaness, Mason seeks him out to search for his missing BFF. Well, that or both BFF and Alpha were looking for the same person and landed on the same plan of attack. That plan? Ask Coach. However, Finstock, who is sick and swallowing cough syrup (Fake sickness? Magical? Almost certainly the latter), doesn't know where his star freshman is. After Mason heads off to continue the search in…class?…LIAM calls Scott's fancy phone. Only, it’s Garrett. Obviously. “Where’s Liam?” Scott demands. Also obviously, Garett won’t tell him that. Scott promises he’ll get Garrett the duffle of the Benefactor’s money. BUT! The money alone isn't enough to get Liam back: Garrett wants Violet, too, or Liam dies of golden wolsfbane to the heart. Annnnd cut to Liam soecked to the bone, treading water in a deep, rock-walled well, a gash across his chest.
Knowing his beta is in mortal peril is enough to convince Scott to meet with Garrett the Orphan, professional assassin and genius law-enforcement evade…in the bus bay. At school. In broad daylight. And because Garrett is evincing such believable evil genius, Scott totally agrees to help effect Violet's escape from FBI Agent McCall's custody later that day.
Of course, Scott being Scott, he tries to make a diplomatic tactic work first. He tries to convince his dad that it is a bad idea to take Violet away that afternoon, when Garrett is still out "who knows where," but McCall isn't buying it. Violet is a dangerous criminal and needs to be transferred ASAP. But don’t worry, Scott! He’s taking Beacon Hills’ finest (Stilinski) along for backup! GREAT. Now the dad we LIKE is in danger, too. Violet’s eyes as she passes Scott McCall-25 are wily coals.
Welp, so much for that plan. The next we see Scott, he is in the front seat of Garrett’s big black SUV, where it is suddenly the black of night, because time has no meaning in Beacon Hills. Scott is still trying to get Garrett to give him a way out of attacking his best friend's dad (and also his own), but Garrett's having none of it: "Teeth, claws, heat vision, whatever. Just get Violet OUT."
But then they reach the transport car and it is turned on its side in the middle of the road, Agent McCall and Stilinski sprawled alongside the wreckage. Garrett sees an opportunity to get an alpha’s bounty, but Stilinski warns Scott “They’re still here…they’re STILL HERE!” Who? The Berserkers! Scott manages to fight a few back before getting knocked out. Meanwhile, Garrett swings his bladed staff all fancy and mocks them for not being so big, then
When Scott comes to, Deaton’s face is telling him he wished he’d been out a few more minutes. A Berserker claw is stuck in his gut. Chris Argent (!!) steps out of the shadows, looking no more the worse for brainwashing, and promises that what he’s about to do will hurt. He and Deaton pull out the claw. "It was Kate," Scott pants to Argent while holding a doily to his chest to stop his life's blood from flowing out. And now that Garrett's dead, Kate's kidnapped Violet is the only one alive who might know where Liam is.
Argent agrees it was Kate, but she was already gone by the time he and Deaton got there, and between her Argent skills and her werejaguar magic, she’ll be almost impossible to track But what ho! That Berserker claw? Scott’s pain is their gain: he can use it to catch a scent. HOORAY.
While Scott is working a new angle to rescue him, Liam is busy working a way to rescue himself. After he falls from halfway up the shaft, he flashes back to Scott showing him the window he broke through at Lydia's lake house and explaining how the werewolf strenght healed his cuts. Liam tells Scott that his dad (stepdad?) has a theory about angry kids, who do one of two things: hurt themselves, or hurt someone else. Back in the present, Liam looks up into the well’s heights, eyes set. Then he starts climbing again. AW MAN, Garrett. If you weren’t already totally skewered, you’d so have to watch your back. Also, clearly Liam’s anchor is anger. Hooray?
Argent and Scott pull up to the abandoned building the Berserker's scent led Scott to. Scott is worried about Chris' safety, seeing as how the Berserkers are so strong, but worry not! Chris brought a semi-automatic. Scott's good with that, and leads the charge.
It's a cautious charge. The warehouse is draped with tattered plastic sheeting and lit a sickly green-gold, which is creepy enough until Kate starts talking to Argent and Scott from the shadows. She wishes they'd given her more time to learn control before seeking her out. Her shadow and the Berserkers’ loom large on the flapping plastic sheets, then Kate in full, serene jaguar face comes through and tells her brother to put the gun down. He doesn’t. Behind the plastic, the Berserkers ready their claws; Argent readies his trigger finger. Scott is as anxious as Kate. Well, Kate isn’t anxious, but they neither of them want things to escalate. But then the Berserkers come through the plastic curtains and Chris opens fire and Kate leaps and Scott leaps and the gun falls to the floor and Chris falls to the floor and both halves of what used to be a table before Kate crashed right through it fall to the floor and a Berserker pushes Scott through plastic walls, and then a real wall, and then he turns to find--
Well, shit. So much for Liam's rescue.
Inside, one of the Bersekers is about to do the same to Argent, but Kate roars at it to let her brother go. Winded, Chris calls weakly for Scott. A hand thrusts down to help him up. I thought it would be Kate, changed by brotherly love, but no--she hauled ass like a regular old Peter Hale. The hand belongs to Scott, who tells Chris their last hope has been gutted.
Only! Back at the well, Liam is struuuuuugggling at the very top of the well, struggling so hard he lets out a mighty wolf's roar, and Scott hears him! Alpha ears to the rescue!
via teen-wolf
At the vet’s, Deaton releases the wolsfbane poison from an unconscious Liam. Scott tells Deaton and Argent that enough is enough--he is tired of watching people die. Argent isn’t sure he can stop that, but, “NO ONE ELSE DIES,” Scott declares. And considering the final name to break the dead pool cipher, I am pretty confident in my suspicions that this plan, like most of Scott's, is bound for tragic failure.
What wicked we will do
Speaking of terrible plans: we get another depressing shot of Melissa McCall in the shadowed house, trying to settle bills to the saddest song, while Stiles and Scott sit upstairs, staring at Garrett's dead pool money. They decide to count it, and tip it onto the floor. Inside the bag? A billionty hundred dollar bills, and also the PLAY ME tape that opened the show.
Meanwhile, new and old and newold villains collide, in the dark, in the sewer. Human-faced Kate is trying to get clean in drainage run-off, but even under all that stench, Peter manages to find her. He’s so terrible, it’s great. You know, he says patronizingly, HE used to get angry--used to get so angry, used to break all his toys. But then he realized--why break your own toys when you can break someone else’s?? But it's not her or her toys he wants to break. He just wants to USE her to break whatever he was already planning on breaking. And she, he notes, can use him. She scoffs about power imbalance, but he counters that scoff with the insight that if her goal is to get the Argent family back together and shining in glory (it is), she'll have to learn total control. He can teach her that. And she, in return, can help him to get his money back, and to get what he wants…
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POWER.
Next week, everyone dies of ghost plague!
Happy mid-season, wolf fans.
(PS for the Hoechlin fans out there: a gift)
Teen Wolf 4x7: Weaponized-->