Well, now that all (well, most) of the season's early loose threads have finally started weaving their way into the same tapestry, I guess the writers felt we deserved a moment to catch our collective breath. Cue the quiet mid-season story, all steady suspense and extended character/arc development.
I'm down.
THIS WEEK’S WOLF PACK PUPPY
Malia, who storms off at the discovery that she is the coyote pup of a Hale wolf.
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Just because daddy's the Devil in a V-neck, doesn't mean you have to be like him, Malia!
WEEKLY REMINDER THAT BEACON HILLS IS ON A HELLMOUTH
Quiet episodes like this don't offer much in the way of Hellmouth surprises, but the Hale vault--which, reminder, is under the high school because of course it is--having a second "secret" entrance that is even more obvious that the first one, and the school administration just…stores old lacrosse gear in front of it? I mean, this town KNOWS shit's up. They can't not. And still, they let their teens go out and die for it all.
Nice job, Beacon Hills.
BEST REACTION TO SOMETHING SUPERNATURALLY RIDICULOUS
Kind of a stretch, but since the dead pool is all about the supernaturals: Malia shrugging off her (relatively) low 4 million dollar bounty…because
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PROGRESS.
REIGNING PRESIDENT OF THE SCOTT MCCALL FAN CLUB
Scott wasn't at the center of anyone’s drama this week, so I'll go with Kira, who believes that if Scott is keeping secrets, it’s for a good reason, and also that even with them all fever-blind, he might still be able to save them all. Which, of course, he does. Because he is True Alpha McCall.
A secret Buddhist wolf pack led by an ancient wolf named Satomi was revealed to have been living in the woods of Beacon Hills THIS ENTIRE TIME. But then they were all killed in one night, too bad. Braeden was found shot and near death in their midst. Meredith, the only other known Beacon Hills proximate Banshee, hanged herself. Lydia discovered that Malia is actually Peter's daughter. Scott and Stiles secreted away Orphan Garrett's $500k bounty payment, amongst which was a tape cassette marked PLAY ME.
THIS WEEK
The Set-up
Okay, so even if we hadn't known that with five episodes left of course our heroes would make it through one more day of Beacon Hills hell, we would have known this newest mad scientist assassin was bound to fail because of how much precious twinkling mountain ash the dolt wasted securing himself from the fevered utter weakness of the werewolf he was testing his superbiological weapon on at the top of the episode.
Dude: your subject is bleeding black from the pores, and is actually blind. You don't need mountain ash a knuckle deep keeping you safe from that.
While Mad Scientist assassin is keeping actual mountains of mountain ash between him and his dying test subject/victim, he daintily drinks tea from a Russian Caravan-style glass and puts on some soothing tunes, AKA the Benefactor's dead pool instruction tape. Just, you know, your regular Monday night mood music.
Also listening to the dead pool instruction tape are Scott and Stiles, who have not only identified what this ancient artifact of sound recording is, but have also managed to unearth an actual tape deck (I'm not sure a single teen I know could do the same; then again, none of the teens I know are starring in their own supernatural horror fest). The taped instruction is all wire transfers and ghost IP addresses and VISUAL CONFIRMATION REQUIRED, but Scott and Stiles have only ever had a dozen Reese's and a bag of Macy's swag between them, so all that complicated big money talk is way over their heads. Not over Stiles' head, though, is the fact of 500 thousand stolen Orphan dollars lying there on the floor between them. Scott: do you even KNOW how much that much is?
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They're both beautiful idiots.
Because Scott has been able to imagine and successfully execute precisely one deception his entire life (mountain ash cancer pill switcheroo, ftw), it doesn't even occur to him that they might not at least TELL Derek about the money. And since half the money does technically belong to Peter, of course Peter would have to be told, too. What--was Stiles seriously considering not telling them? he asks, tucking the cash pile safely back under his bed.
Yes, Scott. That's exactly what Stiles was considering. And you brought the money home in the first place. Stop with the innocent act.
He is saved from having to confront his own subconscious by Malia busting through his door, soaking wet, with the news that she and Derek found the secret Buddhist wolf pack--dead.
"ALL of them?" the boys ask, horrified/shocked/desolate.
"All the ones we found…" Malia answers cagily, as the camera cuts to a dripping Deaton being attacked outside the animal clinic by a small figure in hooded black.
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I will never stop loving the sheer cinematic drama of this show's fight scenes.
And of course, the wolf they hadn't found dead in those woods was Satomi, the Hale family's old, intemperate friend. Of course she isn't dead; she didn't earn her paycheck last episode. Well, she will this week! As will Braeden, who is obviously not dying from her bullet wound--the lady survived a full-on Alpha Pack attack two season ago, and then she didn't even have Handsome Hero Hale to carry her away to the ministrations of the world's most competent medical professional.
The Game Terror Begins
And it begins, as for most American teens, with a standardized test.
Surprise! It doesn't matter that as recently as the night before a pair of ice-hearted orphan teens were after their collective supernatural heads--the rain is gone, the sun is up, and our heroes, they've got the PSAT to take.
No one is happy about it, not even Stiles. Scott makes the wise and heart-pinching declaration that, even while they're trying not to die, they still need to live. He, after all, would like to go to college if he survives…a good college. And as our Extra of the Week, Sydney, so helpfully reminds us later, the PSAT is the qualifying test for National Merit Scholarships. Which is why Lydia took it her freshman year. Obvs.
Oh eff that, Malia exclaims (well, more or less)--she could have taken it another time? First, Malia, no. Freshman year, you was galloping around the woods in full coyote glory, and national testing boards have not yet perfected a scantron for the clawed and fanged. Second, you have studied harder for this test than the rest of the others combined! And I believe it. That girl is trying very, very hard to be a successful human teen. However, she doesn't quite believe it, especially after Stiles has to correct her misuse of good/well. Still…
And those three hours start NOW, whether they like it or not. They all file in to the testing room, rolling their thumbpads across a communal inkpad to thumbprint their answer sheets (MAN security on these tests is tight these days!), and leave their phones in numbered manila envelopes. Then they sit down to await the proctor's instructions, and what a crazy random happenstance! The proctor is the Mad Scientist Assassin. Because of course he is.
Amazingly, the actor they found has the perfect face for both despicable roles. Nice casting, TW team.
Also meant to be lending an official adult presence to the testing room are Lydia's mom (the new Biology teacher, you may recall from last season) and Coach Finstock. Lydia's mom is there, but Finstock is missing. As the kids start the test…
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PERFECTION
…Lydia's mom--Natalie, she tells us, at the same time as she reveals that Finstock's first name is Bobby (YEAH IT IS)--finds Coach passed out over his desk in the locker rooms. Shortly after Natalie reveals Finstock's first name, she also reveals a major piece of his backstory: he is 15 years sober.
Thinking he's fallen off the wagon, Natalie goes to cover for him in the testing room, claiming not have seen him anywhere. I'm not sure how asserting that an education professional has just abandoned his duties is preferable to claiming he has a severe flu, which would have been not only an equally plausible lie, but one that couldn't be easily disproven by someone walking into Coach's office, but Natalie is saved from having to face any consequence by the fact that a) the test proctor is an assassin of supernaturals who couldn't give two figs about the professionalism of local high school educators, and b) Extra of the Week, Sydney, chooses that very moment to fall out of her chair in a faint.
Rushing to her side, Natalie discovers a spreading, blotchy rash on her wrists, which prompts her to race back to Coach's office to check his skin. When she finds a plane of lesions across Finstock's back, she races next into the hallway, just in time to frantically warn off some idiots coming to play basketball, on their day off, at a school known to kill people on a whim. Plague shmague--what are you kids thinking? Anyway, after Natalie locks the rest of Beacon Hills out of the accursed high school, she calls the CDC. Yes: the Center for Disease Control.
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She is the biology teacher and she isn't fucking around.
And because not only time but also space mean nothing in the world of Beacon Hills, the entirety of the CDC descends upon BHHS within hours--and this in spite of the fact that they appear to only operate in dramatic slow-mo. Nice teamwork, CDC!
The yellow-suited crew pops up a dozen bubble pods for individual patients and stretches plastic across windows and doors. They do not, however, separate the visibly ill from the visibly fine. Obviously this doesn't matter in the end, but it does seem like a step that couldn't hurt to take, even in quarantine scenarios. But I studied literature, not medicine. Mass illness management is obviously not going to be my area of logical expertise.
Also, if the CDC had forced a sparation between visibly ill and not, we wouldn't have gotten to see Scott show his alpha kindness to Sydney, who it turns out is another Beacon Hills teen with family money problems--although, alas, not one with a multi-million bounty on her head she might be able to steal out from under her very would-be-killers' noses.
Oh, well. We can't all be lucky.
When Druids Fail
Also unlucky is the last werewolf left from Satomi's pack, who she has brought to Deaton for help. There is no help for the poor wolfman, though. He is oozing black from his eyes and mouth, is involuntarily transformed, and has gone completely blind.
"Completely??" Deaton demands, struck by a thought. "You know what that means?" Satomi reacts, frantic. "Oh, ha, no," he replies. "I actually know absolutely nothing about anything going on with wolfman here. But I know someone who might…"
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#BAMFMamaMcCall (THE ACTUAL HASHTAG on mtv)
Ah, yes. The human who only a year ago found out about this supernatural world you have been using your Druidic wisdom to care for for decades.
Seriously, if any family deserved to potentially lose their house less, it would be the platinum-hearted, steel-willed McCalls.
So Satomi and Deaton bring the dying wolfman to the human hospital to rendezvous with Melissa. But human nurse and one-woman hospital Melissa McCall is not satisfied to simply await the druid and wolves' arrival; no, instead of twiddling her thumbs, she blazes past heart attack victims and weeping women to Braeden's recovery room with a syringe full of WAKEUPNOWGIRL because if one wolfman is sick, her son is in danger. And she needs answers NOW.
Braeden springs awake, looking briefly to Derek for confirmation that Melissa is telling the truth that Braeden is safe and that Melissa herself can be trusted. Derek is on hand, of course, because he is in lurve keeping watch on his investment. He tries to remind Melissa that the wolves he found Braeden amonst had been poisoned, but Braeden interrupts him: it wasn't poison, but an infection.
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An infection that devours its host almost manically--which speed is proven shortly thereafter as the dying wolfman, well, dies while in the elevator up to Melissa's personal examination wing.
OH MAN OUR HEROES ARE IN TROUBLE.
OH MAN, OUR HEROES ARE IN TROUBLE
Scott may have looked fresh as a spring day the last we saw him, but now he has barricaded himself in the boys' locker room because:
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Natalie seeks out Mr. Yukimura to go in and check on him, which is lucky, as Mr. Yukimura is the only teacher in the school who is willing to admit to knowing about the supernatural shitstorm that is life at BHHS, and thus, the only teacher who could possibly help. Also, he is a boy. And it is the boys' locker room.
While Scott is fangs to the wall in the locker room, Malia and Kira are still standing strong in the hall, waiting in line to have their blood drawn for CDC testing. Putting on her pleasantest human smile, Malia tries the teen girl way of getting information by asking around the question you want answered. Do you ever wonder if Scott and Stiles aren't telling us everything? Like…if they are keeping secrets? Kira is, understandably, wary of this bizarre tone coming out of this bizarre smile on Malia's face. Sure…she says, but if they are, it's probably for a good reason. I can't remember how much she knows re: Malia's parentage, so I can't read how much of her discomfort here is related to that, and how much to Malia just being weird. Let's call it 50/50.
Malia is fed up with the weirdness, too, and drops the act. Look: does Kira know what they boys are hiding under Scott's bed, or not?
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Thankfully she is interrupted from having to say anything more by a woman offering to poke a needle in her arm. Small mercies.
Only, the needle doesn't poke, but instead sizzles and cracks and sends a mini bolt of lightning straight through the top layer of the CDC woman's fancy yellow suit! Not all is as well with Kira as we thought.
As the CDC woman flees outside to examine the damage and snap at the recently arrived Agent McCall that the other worried father, Sheriff Stilinski, can brief him on what's happening inside, our heroes all decamp to the boys' locker room, where we see that Malia has suddenly sprouted intractable claws, Stiles is fainting, and Kira, though she claims to feel fine, is suffering neurological damage. It's obvious, Mr. Yukimura says, naming their greatest fear, that this is a sickness that is targeting supernaturals.
"We have to quarantine you," Stiles declares, "…from the quarantine."
And where will they manage to find a safe enough place to do that? Why, the Hale vault so conveniently located right under the school, of course! Somehow, either Stiles or Mr. Yukimura produces a set of pristine BHHS blueprints--really, I'd buy the story either one could tell about the prints' provenance--and the motley group scours it for any indication to where there might be a supernaturally claw/DNA coded door to break through. Surprisingly, there is no corner marked Secret Vault Entrance Here, so they head to the most logical point of entry: the basement.
They are all about to give up after precisely twenty seconds of looking, but then Stiles moves a single object on a spindly, easily moved metal shelf and finds… a very obvious Triskelion crest that isn't even trying to look like cracks in the walls, no matter what the script makes Stiles say.
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At least it’s claw-keyed, not openable by humans. Or at least, that’s what Stiles says, but Scott gives him a nearly imperceptible shake of the head--not claw-keyed, but HALE claw-keyed. They turn to Malia to open it, using the excuse that Scott can't because a) her claws are out and b) Scott doesn't have control of his. It looks like she is about to argue, and…she does. She blackmails them into telling her the big secret they are keeping from her, because that is definitely more important than gaining entrance to the safe space that will keep their rapidly deteriorating were-abilities from wreaking havoc on the humans upstairs.
But before Stiles can work up the nerve to tell her the Peter secret, Malia guesses that the thing they aren't telling her is that she is on the final dead pool list, which: true. And after she wheedles out of them them her bounty, and makes peace with the fact that it is lower than Scott's AND Kira's, making her further from the assassins sights than they are, she is happy. She sticks her Hale-claws in the Triskelion crest and twists. It works. The stone door grates open. The four sickies enter the vault.
Lydia's Still Life
While all of this plague drama has been bringing the PSATs and BHHS to a standstill, resident genius Lydia has been off at the lakehouse, enjoying a well-deserved lie out in the sun with all the books and margaritas she can stand. JK, she's camped out in the creepy silent white room, surrounding herself with Meredith Walker's heartbreakingly meager personal effects likes totems, staring and staring and staring at the silently revolving record player with red, raw eyes, trying to figure out how to be what her friends need her to be. As the spinning vinyl wobbly reflects Lydia's wet, unblinking eyes in the most hypnotic way, she addresses Meredith's memory, unsure what exactly she is looking for, but knowing that at the very least, at the very least…
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She also asks for Meredith's help. Lydia's not psychic, and she's apparently not even a very good Banshee, but she has to be able to do something. It doesn't even cross her mind that she has one of the highest bounties on the dead pool. She only only wants to be able to help her friends. Lydia is the queen of my heart.
When no response comes, either from Meredith or the creepy faces in the wall, Lydia gathers up Meredith's totems and prepares to leave. But her fingers alight upon a photo she had missed earlier, and she flinches as she realizes what it shows: Meredith Walker herself, standing in front of that exact record player, in that exact silent room. And Lydia's tears stop as her eyes harden with a plan.
C'mon, Lyd: OBVIOUSLY your mom knows more about this Banshee business than you suspected, if that room even exists in the first place. GO FIND HER.
Dying for the Truth
So go look for her mom Lydia does, only to discover the CDC quarantine on the high school. She pushes through the cordon to the sheriff, who explains what is going on and asks her if she has any…feelings about whether or not someone is going to die in there. Staring at the building, she says yes, someone is going to die.
And it isn't a feeling.
God Lydia's life is the worst.
So inside the building, deep in the vault, our heroes are barely shells of their usual selves. All the supernaturals have black-rimmed mouths and pale, pale skin. Stiles is holding a collapsed Malia, while Scott and Kira hold each other's hands. Stiles reflects on how this is the very place their newest nightmare began--where Peter had those bearer's bonds hidden, and whence the Benefactor stole them to set up his dead pool. He also reflects on how bearer's bonds are nearly extinct, and how easy it would be to keep that kind of untraceable cash if they came across it. That money could help a lot of people. And then he and Scott both open up about their families' various money problems: Stiles' MRI and Eichen House bills crushing his dad; Melissa's "game" of adding up budget items and calculating how many months before they lose their house. Real fun one, this episode.
Then Scott hears commotion from above, and he and Stiles move to the stone door to eavesdrop on the CDC's progress. It turns out that people upstairs are looking for these four, which surprises the lovable idiots. They realize that one of them needs to go top-side to make explanations/seek help from outside, and that that someone has to be Stiles, who is least sick of all of them, and not likely to tear anyone's throat out. Scott wants his permission to tell Malia the truth about Peter, in case no help comes--he doesn't want her dying without knowing the truth, which is commendable, although I can't think of many deathbed truths I'd want to know LESS than that of Peter Hale being my real father, tbh--but Stiles insists that that's a terrible plan, since they both know that the first thing impulsive and pack-loyal Malia will do will be to go straight to Peter to confront him. At which point, he reminds Scott, Peter will twist his way into her mind, because he's not a good guy, and that is exactly what he does. To everyone. Them, included, who have let him waltz around like a tolerable guy, if not a good guy, since he psycho-seduced Lydia to magic him back from the dead in Season 2.
Point, both. Malia should be told, and by someone she trusts, the truth about her parentage. But Peter is a risk. Probably the worst thing to happen would be her finding out all on her own in a way that makes her mad at everyone involved. Which, in case you don't watch much tv, is exactly what happens…well, not now, even though she has the dead pool list from Stiles' coat pocket in her hands. Because now she is completely blind. But you can bet that before the episode is out, she will know.
The Great Escape
But before we get to that: Stiles' great escape! And by "great" I of course mean "horrifying."
Stiles does go topside to make an appearance and try to get information from Mr. Yukimura. Before he leaves the quarantine room, though, he catches sight of Finstock in one of the bubbles, and realizes that he is the only adult that got sick. Which prompts the question: why him? So rather than racing to find Yukimura, Stiles races instead to Finstock's office, where he just happens to notice a stack of blank late slips pre-stamped APPROVED, which he just happens to think to flip through, at which point he sees that the red ink eventually ran dry and Coach resorted to a solid black--black ink which got all over his hands and left smudgy fingerprints on his coffee mug.
And because Stiles has a genius it took me two watchings to catch up with, he realizes that the vector of this particular assassination plague was the PSAT inkpad, the one only students and no adults touched. Which means the assassin is…the PSAT proctor, basically confirming every high schoolers worst suspicion about the PSAT.
Mad Scientist assassin walks in on Stiles discovering his secret, and pulls out a giant, silencer-fied pistol to use to wrest the location of Scott et al from his human brain. C'mon, he wheedles--the virus won't kill humans, but the gun will; why don't you just give up your friends? But Stiles is a rock. He has face a billion times worse than a gun to the forehead. He will never give up Scott.
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Again, just as solidly as we knew going into this ep that our heroes were at no real risk of assassin plague death, we know that Stiles' brains are not going to be blown out in the same hall in which NogitStiles faced down the Oni last season. They just won't be. But then BANG and BRIGHT RED SPLATTERS on Stiles' face and it is effectively shock-inducing, even for the split-second before they cut to Mad Scientist assassin's shot-through forehead, to believe that Stiles might be the dead one.
And he might have been: that shot went through Mad Scientist's skull. THROUGH. As in, to the space inches away where Stiles' face was.
So I guess it's not surprise that the shooter was Agent McCall. Those McCall men and their dangerous, poorly thought out plans.
Anyway, Scott's dad has a message from Melissa: the antidote is the jar of mushrooms in the vault. He doesn't know what it means, but was told Stiles would. And Stiles DOES, and races away to save his friends.
Oh Yeah, That Antidote
In another lightbulb moment, Deaton figured out the antidote to this manufactured canine virus (after he and Melissa dissected wolfman to discover that it was a manufactured canine virus) must be the one type of mushroom that Derek vaguely recalls that Satomi-san used to bring as a gift to Derek's mom when he was a little boy. Because Derek's first random reminiscing re: Satomi would naturally contain the vital piece of information, and also because natural substances generally counter viruses? But whatever. They are werewolves. Who can't cross burned tree ash. Mushrooms cure assassin diseases, okay.
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And so Melissa called Agent McCall with that information, and he stole an extra-lanky yellow disease suit and barged into the school to save the day.
Crawl Along the Floor if You BELIEVE
Stiles makes it to the vault in time to relay the news about the mushrooms to Scott et al, but not in time for Scott to have enough strength to let Stiles in to find them. Kira is collapsed in the middle of the room, as blind now as Malia. Scott is blind, too, but when Kira hears Stiles explain the thing about the mushrooms, and she exclaims that she saw them on a certain shelf earlier, Scott pulls together all his alpha strength and turns on his red-eyed wolf vision long enough to stagger to the correct shelf and knock the glass jar to the floor, where it smashes and atomizes the dried old mushrooms into magic antidote dust clouds.
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All is better! Fathers Stilinski and McCall know their sons are safe; Lydia has reunited with her mother. All the humans miraculously and instantaneously got 100% better, so the CDC just packs it in and rolls on out of there, because that makes total safety sense. Kira and Malia are better, too. But before Stiles can reach her, Malia has read the list and seen--she is a Hale. And just as he/Scott/we predicted, she stalks out.
NEXT WEEK
WE GET CHRIS ARGENT BACK. Chris Argent and Stiles setting a trap for the Benefactor, complete with banter and Argent-Stilinski shenanigans.
Now, just bring me back Isaac and his acid attitude from New Orleans, and I'll be happy.
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