OH. MY. HECK. What a finale. And by "what a finale," I of course mean, what a too-very-short, totally bananas, full-of-plot-holes finale, to this, the show I will most miss looking forward to year after year, season after season, full moon after full moon, since…well, since pre-Dollhouse Pretty Little Liars.
So, for the last time (maybe) ever, let's do this!
AWARDS
THIS WEEK'S WOLF PACK PUPPY
The entire Teen Wolf-specific conceit of werewolves being able to take pain is one of my absolute favorite things about this world, reflecting the compassionate, self-sacrificing ethos of the entire dang experiment, and every time one of our baby teen wolves gets to experience the pure and selfless joy of giving that gift to someone else, my heart grows like four sizes.
So, Theo, my dude, my Wild Mike Montgomery in wolf-drag! You are the final Wolf Pack Pup of the Week! WAY TO GROW, kid. Way to become human, by seeing the humanity in others as corrupt as you. I think many of us should probably learn some grace from you???
BEST REACTION TO SOMETHING SUPERNATURALLY RIDICULOUS
YOU COULD HAVE AVOIDED ALL OF THIS WITH A SINGLE F*CKING BLINDFOLD. YOU BEAUTIFUL DUM-DUM.
WEEKLY REMINDER THAT BEACON HILLS IS ON A HELLMOUTH
We get Imaginary!JENNIFER, but no Braeden, who presumably would have something juicy about her adventures abroad with which to tempt Derek to open his eyes ? Imaginary!Jennifer, but no Isaac, only surviving member of Derek's failed anger pack, who would presumably have something gutting about the guilt Derek seems to have overcome for Boyd and Erica with which to *goad* him to open his eyes??
If those lost opportunities don't show what a Hellmouth Beacon Hills is, I just don't even know.
REIGNING PRESIDENT OF THE SCOTT MCCALL FAN CLUB
I hate having to give this award to anyone but Melissa or Stiles, especially here in the last round of awards EVER, but honestly??? ALL THE DADS FTW! Derek-Dad, Chris-Dad, Stilinski-Dad, Deucalion-Dad, even Scott's FBI Dad-Dad—save for MIA Deaton-Dad, they all STEPPED. UP. Way to Dad, dads!
Melissa and Stiles win Lifetime Achievement Awards, naturally. But give the dads their moment of glory here in the finale! They earned it.
BEST PRODUCT PLACEMENT
I know that I should say Toyota, what with the Meeting of the Beautiful Toyotas (& Roscoe) at the very end of the finale, or that I should say Apple, for so clearly showing how Theo continues to keep Scott McCall No.1 on his speed dial, or that I should say The Truth campaign, for re-airing the mini-film starring Lydia/Holland as the face of The Generation To End Smoking, OR that I should say classic metal bed pans, for making a surprise, last-minute big save (hurrah, bed pans!)—BUT.
But.
Teen Wolf would be nothing if it did not go out being thirstily meta, so naturally, this final award has to go to the Dylan O'Brien action vehicle/YA-franchise finale, Maze Runner: Death Cure.
Hi, Dylan! I guess you really ARE alive!
PREVIOUSLY ON TEEN WOLF
Nolan betrayed the rest of the murderous, revved-up neo-Hunter humans by cluing Liam in on a part of the War Day plan in the hospital, and got his whole nymph-like face bloodily bashed in by lacrosse bro/automatic rifle-happy Gabe for his troubles, which, considering Nolan is human, probably means the end for him, I am very sure; Gerard managed to find a way to lure both Derek AND Kate back to Beacon Hills from the wild industrial parks of Brazil/North Carolina, the latter stealing a vial of yellow wolfsbane from Derek to use in a bullet for Scott, which the former had as a…cure?…for something?…both points of which I am also very sure will come back to make exacting and perfect sense here in the final hour; Scott and Malia spent whole HOURS training with Deucalion in blindfolds to learn how to fight the Anog Ité without looking at it and turning into stone, which seems like not enough, but at least they will have those blindfolds handy for whenever the Fear Demon shit hits the fan; Lydia had a vision of Peter, Derek, Malia, Jackson, Ethan and even Scott being turned into stone before beating the Anog Ité, and so, along with Peter, raced to warn Scott and Malia about it, which will definitely give them all time to get their own blindfolds ready before said demon shit hits said fan; Jackson and Ethan were inconceivably captured by a human woman half their size and strung up as torture spectacle/propaganda for all the normal human citizens of Beacon Hills; Parrish was inconceivably lured to the basement of Eichen House AGAIN by rogue neo-Hunter deputies who knew he knew they knew what he was, when we knew HE knew not only what they thought about that, but what actions they were taking in response; Theo started thinking really hard about how to make his kindling fucks given for any living thing other than himself as big and numerous as his muscles; and Corey and Mason were lured by the neo-Hunters by way of Nolan's naiveté by way of Liam to the hospital, where they immediately caught on to the trap and hid in an empty room to make a plan.
Yes, this seems like the appropriate number of very clear plot points for a 50-minute, super-cast finale to knock out. I'm optimistic!
THIS WEEK
Scary Movie MCMXVII
It's Scott, alone in bed in a sweaty tank top in a dingy hotel room in an unfamiliar city. He is woken by a pounding on the door. Hunters??? Kind of! It's Chris! And they are off in Chris' Beautiful Toyota/Scott's Beautiful Motorcycle to race across a green screen of Los Angeles (???) at sunset so that Scott can narrate the story of a 16-year old kid running for his life from werewolf hunters…
And now it's a teen wolf, running through the empty concrete alleyways on a rainy night, chased by bow-wielding Hunters while Scott McCall narrates from on high! Don't let the floppy brown hair fool you, though—this teen wolf is NOT a flashback to Scott's early teen wolf days. It is a brand new teen wolf named Alec! And you just know that he's being groomed to be the lead in the possible 2019 reboot, because he looks exactly like what would pop out if Central Casting took Season 1 Tyler Posey and The 100's Season 1 Bob Morley and put them into their Hot, Racially Ambiguous Teen Lead machine.
Anyway, Alec T. Wolf is on the run from Hunters, and has now been shot in the thigh by an arrow, and seemingly has no friends in the world. Only wait! There's some mysterious punching from behind a cleverly hung painter's curtain, and then the curtain is pulled back, and then there is SCOTT and CHRIS and SCOTT'S RED ALPHA EYES. And then Alec T. Wolf's yellow wolf eyes are glowing, and ding ding ding! We have a new pack member. "Did I get your story right?" Scott asks from the front seat of Chris' Beautiful Toyota as the three of them drive to an undisclosed location, Scott's motorcycle apparently no longer relevant. "Is that your story?" Alec asks back, like he's some sort of surly teen. "How does it end?" Scott and Chris exchange a Look, mutter some koans about losses and deaths and friends who are missing and enemies who became friends, and Alec T. Wolf is just like "uh great, everyone in my story is dead," because he IS some sort of surly teen, and then Scott finally answers his question about how his own story ended, and BAM!
We are back in Beacon Hilss on the Eve of Gerard's Final War.
Wolves Be Wolfin'
So the last we checked in, Tamora and her men had just shown up to Scott, Malia, and Deucalion's blind-fighting highway underpass, where, mere minutes earlier, Lydia and Peter had ALSO just shown up to warn them all about how the cell towers had been jammed but not Lydia's Banshee visions and boy oh boy were they all in trouble. And then the bullets started flying, and Deucalion took almost all of them in his waxed cable sweater-armored chest!
Despite the shock at seeing the Demon Wolf, Master of Bagua, felled so quickly and thoroughly before their eyes, the pack eventually scrambles for cover, not a one of them taking a single bullet. One lucky neo-Hunter manages to get the drop on Scott, whose attention is distracted watching out for Malia, but then BAM AGAIN! The opportunistic vigilante is smashed straight into by Roscoe, driven by Stiles, and, from the staging…chased on foot???? by Derek!
So now the whole pack really IS there, and the distraction of Stiles smashing into the neo-Hunter has bought everyone enough time to reset and get into useful fighting position. And by useful fighting position, I mean Signature Wolf Snarl. We've got Scott's True Alpha glower; we've got Malia's feral leap into the void; we've got Peter's synchronized chin-chest thrust; we've got Derek's angsty, snapping growl. Inexplicably, we have no Banshee power screaming whatsoever. All the same, eventually Tamora and her men get it in their heads that they are outnumbered and they retreat, leaving time and quiet in which Stiles can finally Stiles it up about how offended he is over no one calling him about any of this, and in which Scott can first hold Deucalion's hand as he, right before dying, declaims over Gerard's knowledge that he can't beat Scott, and then stand and embrace Derek from coming back to Beacon Hills for him. Bros! DO YOU EVEN BRO, BRO?? YES. YOU DO.
Poor Peter, forever left out of the Bro-ing.
Also RIP Demon Wolf. You brainwashed and killed a lot of good wolves, but in the end, you had good taste in sweaters and possibly also peace, and for that, I thank you.
The wake/reunion is short-lived, however, as just then the walkie in Roscoe starts crackling, and Gerard's hateful voice comes sniding through, reciting Shakespeare and mocking Scott's perceived lack of book smarts. Thankfully, Derek is there, and if he can be beieved to be king of anything, it is having a deep enough knowledge of any and all angsty Great Literature that might ever serve as a handy meatphor for whatever current tragedy he is living through. So while Scott, who, through no fault of his own, probably never made it through enough English classes to even read a whole Shakespearean sonnet, has no idea what line Gerard is prompting him to come up with, Derek most definitely does: Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.
Oh, really, Gerard? REALLY? At the moment of the war you have been goading everyone into for months, THAT is the clever Shakespearean line you land on? REALLY??? Gerard. GERARD.
YA BASIC.
Basic as this particularly literary allusion is or not, Gerard is feeling some justifiable glee over having manipulated everyone on Scott's side into strategically weak positions, all before Scott knew the battle had even begun: Liam, Mason, Corey and Melissa are at the overthrown hospital; Ethan and Jackson are still in chains, being tortured; Parrish has been captured by the deputies waiting for him outside Halwyn's special freeze-cell in Eichen House; and Scott's FBI dad has been locked up at the sherriff's station. Plus, no one even CALLED Hayden, or Isaac, or Braeden, or Kira and her new crew of badass ancient underground desert warrior sisters!!!!
What Gerard doesn't mention or even make allowances for is the Anog Ité, which, if it seems like that is a major oversight on his part, it is! YES, I guess he had that tête-à-back-of-tête with the monster in the morgue last week, but I don't remember what came of it. I feel like the Anog Ité basically laughed at the mere idea of Gerard helping him? If I'm misremembering, or really, regardless of what happened in that one meeting, how does he see his victory against Scott lasting if the Anog Ité is still in the picture? Like the Anog Ité isn't going to see Gerard and a global cabal of fanatic neo-Hunters a threat? Like Gerard is going to be able to convince Tamora and her young blood recruits to cool their heels when that Biggest of Bads is running free?? It's all ridiculous, is what it is. But that's Gerard for you! And what Gerard cares about is destroying Scott/the world's truest well of purity and humanity, and the way he plans to cultivate that care is by isolating Scott's friends and making it impossible for Scott to save them all.
Unfortunately, he was not around for the season when Theo had the exact same plan, but did it better and with much more insidiousness, and nevertheless was still utterly DESTROYED by Scott and Scott's very capable and loyal friends—and that AFTER Scott *literally died.*
Gerard, you myopic old man. This is going to go so poorly for you.
The Plan, AKA Stiles is Back!
Armed with both the knowledge that Gerard has let slip all his dogs of war, and the vigor that only Stiles and Derek rejoining pack strategizing can bring, Scott et al set off to make their plans of counterattack. They do it in the Animal Hospital, natch, which OPEN sign Lydia has to flip to CLOSED—despite the fact that Deaton clearly has not been there since he helped Mason and Corey identify the Anog Ité so many weeks ago. Also natch, their planning can't get anywhere until #Sterek recount their two versions of how the two of them found each other while Derek was on his walkabout/Stiles was at his FBI internship.
Stiles' account is the only version of American Assassin I'll ever need; Derek's is of the true #Sterek chemistry we all know and love. I appreciate them both equally.
Once that very welcome Comedy Break concludes, Scott brings their attention back to the matter at hand: the Anog Ité, and the previously undisclosed fact that one of its tricks is to throw your specific worst fear at you. Which is not at all how its powers have manifested thus far, and was not part of the mythological breakdowns in the last few episodes! Also they frame its freezing power as "when it looks at you," NOT "when you look at it," which seems very messy, show-Bible-wise, but at least accounts for a major plot hole involving some Stiles ex machina in the third act, so, w/e!!!!
This show is not about the plot. This show is not about the plot. This show is not about the plot. ::breathes out::
Since Scott will never lose his True Alpha optimism and hope, he believes that if they just focus on defeating the Anog Ité before the war really hits its stride they can still save everyone, and so he sends Stiles and Lydia off to the Armory to save Jackson (well, he sends them off to find Chris, but Lydia pushes back that they arae short on time, and she knows how to get into/fight through the Armory on her own, thankyouverymuch, and so takes Stiles off to do the rescuing all by themselves), and brings Malia and Derek with him to the high school, where, for reasons he never elucidates, he knows the Anog Ité "will find them." Sure! Okay!
Stoned In Action
Of the pack not at the Animal Clinic Summit, Peter is sent ahead to the high school to scout, and Theo is sent to the hospital to give Liam, #Morey, and Melissa some reformed villain backup. Peter is immediately caught out by the Anog Ité pretending to be Malia in trouble (lolol at Peter's worst fear simultaneously belying the teddy bear he doesn't want to be), and he doesn't even TRY not to look before being turned into stone, and the moment he is, it is clearer than the muddiness of any Teen Wolf night scene: no one who has been turned to stone is dead, and all will be resurrected by the end. I mean, we're barely a quarter of the way into the episode, and Peter hadn't had ANY good lines before he got caught!!! There is ZERO chance that's the end of him.
This is confirmed when Scott and the Hale cousins get to the school and find Peter frozen, and Derek listens hard enough to hear a faint heartbeat that somehow Scott hadn't heard already. Once it's clear to all of us, then, that being turned to stone isn't the death sentence Halwyn/this show has made it out to be, two more things become clear: for Scott, what becomes clear is the way to defeat the Anog Ité; for us, what becomes clear is that everyone else in his school-based pack will be turned to stone before he achieves final victory. It's just basic Teen Wolf math!
And so the three of them split up, and we know well enough what is about to become of Derek and Malia (stone; they'll turn to stone) that we can shift our attention to the Armory, where Stiles and Lydia are on the Jackson-freeing case.
Only, Jackson, using his bi-boy charm, his kanima mystique, and, oh right, his unshackled tail (good god, Gerard, HAVE SOME SENSE), has already freed himself! Not just freed himself, but made it all the way to the last steel door between him and Ethan, which he doesn't knock down only because Stiles kicks it down from the other side first. And Lydia is squealing, and Jackson is shellshocked, and they are hugging hugging hugging and dang. I knew I was looking forward to Lydia and Jackson seeing each other again after all these years, but man oh man! It was so fun! While I couldn't totally get the Lydia's S1 "Trust me—I do a LOT of sucking for his benefit" line out of my head as she nearly burst with relief over him finally figuring out he likes guys (too? only? unclear, but ultimately unimportant), I think that the execution of their reunion fit their relationship narrative perfectly—which, going off our comments from the last many episodes, I know none of us were optimistic could be done, or was even being considered. But their interaction in this rescue scene hit home, for me, at least, how deeply they each care and have cared for the other, whether that ever made sense or not—Jackson may be with Ethan now, and Lydia may be relieved and ecstatic to hear it, but just five seconds of them together confirmed that there was a love connection deep enough to pull Jackson out of his kanima-haze all those seasons back.
Anyway, then they rescue Ethan, Lydia and Ethan bond over Jackson's gross kanima tail, and the three of them (minus Stiles, for reasons that will become only half clear later), head off to the high school to take their turns getting turned to stone.
Medical Sidebar
I could have sworn that mere days had passed since the McCall living room shooting, but I guess not! Because while all this Animal Clinic/Armory/BHHS nonsense is happening, Melissa is alive and well and strong as hell, working her regular hospital shift in spite of half her colleagues being on the side of the people who put her in the ICU, armed with her electric wand and a fierce sense of heroism. WE LOVE YOU, MELISSA. Enough to not even care about how time passes and doesn't on this wild show of ours. Long live Melissa!
Speaking of no time at all healing all wounds, the reason we even know Melissa is so hale and hellbent is that she has found Nolan in the morgue and is waking him with smelling salts to grill him for intel, and also to dab at the single, tiny wound at his hairline, the only evidence of the epic beatdown Gabe gave him at the end of the very last episode. You know, the one which produced so much blood???? Apparently the real mystery to why Nolan has felt so ambivalent towards the existence of supernaturals is that he IS one! No, the show doesn't say it out loud, but honestly, no one has healed faster on this show that Nolan and his delicate porcelain face between the penultimate episode and the finale. My guess? He's a ghost.
While Melissa "saves" Nolan, Liam stalks around the room full of wolfsbaned patients Nolan left him in, waiting for…something. Anything, really! An attack, which he knows has to be coming. And it is! But it's coming (like any good horror twist) from *inside the house.* Or rather, room. Because psych! Those patients aren't supernaturals being poisoned by wolfsbane drips. They're neo-Hunters, waiting for their moment to shoot.
Liam catches sight of the gun being aimed at him just in time, and escapes the room before he can get shot. Only, he escapes right into Gabe's line of sight, and my dude, the teenage sociopath, could NOT be more gleeful to get to take the kill shot. But just then, the elevator door opens, and a hand shoots out and pulls Liam in to safety! It's Theo, much to his chagrin, there to save the day!
"I'm not dying for you," Liam says to him. "I'm not dying for YOU," Theo says back, and like, so often tumblr is clearly 'shipping gays where there just isn't anything, but here? You could cut the sexual tension with a set of dull wolf claws! Which THEY even seem to realize, as they immediately shift gears and agree that they are willing to fight together, and so they open the elevator doors and leap into the fray.
What. Did. I. Say. About. Melissa. SLAY, GIRL.
Speaking of sexual tension, Mason and Corey are still hidden in their empty room, trying to come up with a plan. They don't know that Melissa has found and recruited Nolan, or that Theo has found and teamed up with Liam, so they have to figure out how to put up a fight, just the two of them. Well, they could choose to simply survive, using their low status in the pack/Corey's invisibility to just stay under the radar until the smoke clears, but yo, these dudes have been part of Scott's pack for too long, and have been inspired by each other's heroism and self-sacrifice too often, for anything but putting up a fight to be an option. "Just the two of us?" Mason asks when Corey suggests it. "Yeah, why not?" Corey says back, making both me AND Mason look at him with pure, no-coming-back-from-this love. "Is this a weird time to say I love you?" Mason asks, since he is the one actually there with Corey and actually in a relationship with him. "Not if I love you, too," Corey replies, and then they kiss, and they join hands, and then they go kick a bunch of neo-Hunter ass.
What. A. Great. Ship. What. Great. Dudes.
Meanwhile, over at the other terrible medical facility in Beacon Hills, three junior deputies are smirking over a slowly-freezing Parrish. "Think it'll kill him?" the jerks wonder aloud. "Nope!" says Noah Stilinski, barrelling in in nothing but his dad sweater to take them all down a peg. The junior deputies, still high on the fals sense of supremacy Gerard's manipulation lent them, try threatening Stilinski to back off. When that only provokes Stilinski to threaten them right back, oh, and by the way, "it's Sheriff," they turn to age-shaming him. At which point Stilinski laughs at how there are only three of them, and then singlehandedly fells them all, one after the other. And THEN he makes THEM set Parrish free, and makes them call him Sheriff while they are at it. Then he and Parrish march all of them to the station and set Scott's FBI dad free.
Let this be a lesson for all the young kids taken in by soaring propaganda feeding off misplaced grievances. They mostly aren't lost causes; just real gullible.
Ghosts of Beacon Hills Past
Back at the high school, it is Derek's turn to face down his biggest fear, which is, improbably, that Jennifer The Fire-Scarred Evil Druid might come back. I genuinely can't remember if she died because she wouldn't accept his mercy, or if she escaped (I maaaaaaybe remember he crawling back to the Nemeton and facing Gerard? or Deucalion? but nothing after that), but also, this is a very confusing fear! It feels an awful lot more like a regret, which…I guess if you are Derek Hale, and your whole family but one evil uncle, one MIA sister, and one feral cousin were murdered by Kate Argent in a fire, and you were responsible for the death of your first teen love, then maybe regret would be your biggest fear? But also it seems like Scott getting corrupted, or his sister or Malia dying, or Braeden being murdered, or Kate making good on her Brazilian promise and actually killing Scott—not least since Scott WAS just shot by a yellow wolfsbane bullet by Tamora minutes earlier—might be higher on your fear list! IDK, whatever—Jennifer is back! And while Derek puts up a valiant fight, he eventually just…gives in and looks, and turns immediately to stone.
So, yeah, Scott got shot, with yellow wolfsbane. But not by Kate, who last had the vial—by Tamora, who got the yellow wolfsbane from Gerard, "enough for one single bullet." Scott is weakened, but not killed, because A) Derek…kills?…the wolfsbane poison with a chem lab blowtorch, and B) Gerard was lying to Tamora and only gave her enough to weaken Scott, not kill him. Why? Because he kept the rest to use on his own daughter, Kate, who has turned up at the armory to frantically look for something he has hidden from her. My impression until just this moment, when I was trying to make sense of it for this paragraph, was that what she was looking for was that last dose of yellow wolfsbane Gerard had on hand, because when Gerard turns the lights on on her and calls her out, she sneers at the realization that he "gave it to her," as if realizing that Tamora has replaced Kate in whatever constitutes Gerard's heart. But that makes zero sense, as Kate tracked Derek down specifically for a completely different vial of wolfsbane. So either there was something that happened between last episode and this in which Gerard got the vial from Kate, OR the wolfsbane could only be put into specially Argent-designed bullets, and the last of those is what Gerard gave Tamora that makes Kate so bitter.
It truly doesn't matter. This show is not about the plot. It IS about relationships and emotional growth and stagnation and blood and found family, and while Kate and Gerard are facing off, Chris shows up—half to watch the last of his poisoned Hunter family face off, half to alert Gerard to the fact that Scott has victory in his sights. "He's alive," he tells the awful old man, "and he knows how to defeat the Anog Ité, which is, at the end of it all, a shapeshifter just like the rest of them."
At which point Gerard blanches and intones, "Mountain AAAAAASSSSSSHHHHHHHHH," and I actually crow from my couch.
Satisfied that he has seen all he needs of the family that failed him, and failed itself, Chris says goodbye to both sister and father and walks out. Gerard spends a few precious seconds haranguing him for being weak, but whoops! Turned your back on the wrong werejaguar, my evil man!
Cut back to the BHHS library, where Scott alone among his pack is left to face the Anog Ité (Jackson and Ethan were tricked hearing each other in the locker room and ended up both frozen; Lydia found Malia in an empty classroom, and, I guess, just…stayed with her? and Stiles is still MIA). Scott has faced so many evils and so much tragedy that the Anog Ité can't settle on any single fear with which to goad him. It tries Void Stiles; it tries the bandaged, bloody-mouthed Nogitsune; it tries the Dread Doctors and the Viking bone warriors and the Oni and the reminder that Scott let Allison die (way harsh, Tai).
But none of it is enough to push Scott into opening his eyes. Still, just to be safe—and, obviously, to be extra dramatic (and just…extra)—Scott tells the Anog Ité that he knows how to beat it, and then proceeds to gouge out his own eyes.
LOLOLOLOL oh, Scott. YOU BEAUTIFUL DUMMY. Literally any blindfold would have prevented this!!!! Like, you could even have welded a piece of metal around your eyes, if you were going to trust yourself to heal anyway. Waiting until the last possible moment to gouge your own eyes out is just, like, the DUMBEST plan!!! But it does make GREAT television, so, sure. Between that, and the fact that his eyelessness is styled by closed eyes painted with charcoal and blood streaks and not some kind of nightmare-inducing eye socket CGI, I'll take it.
In any case, it isn't this self-inflicted blindness that is thing Scott figured out would beat the Anog Ité—that's just a means to an end to get the Anog Ité distracted by a physical fight, so that Stiles can run in with the real coup de grâce: a bucket of mountain ash! Which, staring directly at the Anog Ité from the moment he enters the library, he throws over the dread creature's whole body, at which point the Anog Ité turns into the ashy stone of its victims, then crumbles to dust, which simultaneously frees every en-stoned person throughout the school.
HALWYN. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. You built a nightmare mental hospital that tortured generations of supernaturals and nearly killed our Lydia, all to *secretly* defend the possible future that Anog Ité would be set free from the Wild Hunt in which it was trapped, all without appointing a single mortal trustee or writing a single line of useful mythological direction down for anyone not frozen in Hellhound time…and the whole time, all that had to be done was dousing the demon in a single bucket of easily sourced mountain ash?????
Oh, also Malia's kiss inspires Scott's healing powers to kick back in just in time to save his eyesight. Sure!
This show is not about the plot. This show is not about the plot. This show is not about the plot. ::breathes deeply::
You Lost.
So, yeah! The Anog Ité was defeated, the en-stoned pack was freed, and all of Tamora's neo-Hunters went running the moment their assassination attempts of the trapped and defenseless were foiled. As Liam so succinctly declared from the neo-Hunter walkies left on the unconscious men at his, Theo's, Melissa's, Nolan's, Mason's, and Corey's feet over at the hospital when Tamora calls frantically to check in: "You lost." At which point, Tamora goes running, too.
And thus it turns out Scott was right—defeating the Anog Ité DID defeat the neo-Hunter war! Only, I'd argue that it was less that the human neo-Hunters lost their sense of heightened fear once the demon went down, and more the fact that the neo-Hunters never took any time to deeply consider that supernatural evil the whole town but mostly Scott's pack was up against, nor what it meant to be actually enmeshed in the middle of the worst of that fight, nor what it might mean that the supernatural pack they had targeted came out of fighting the Anog Ité in basically one piece. Like, they hadn't even steeled themselves to pull the trigger on the pack when they were still stone—these guys were all way out of their league. Tamora, too. Of COURSE they ran.
Um PARRISH. This is a skill we could have used LITERALLY A THOUSAND TIMES BEFORE????
The saddest and most frustrating part of all of this, which obviously mirrors our history and our current moment more than is comfortable, is how easy it is to pull people with malleable wills into fights they aren't ready for or haven't thought deeply enough about, and how much easier still it is for those same people to get hurt or die as a result. In this case, Tamora, like so many purist fanatics before her, is fighting what she has decided is a righteous war, but the people who ended up suffering most were the people she had the greatest responsibility to guide and protect—kids, both the innocent and the impressionable. Kids like Brett and Lori, kids like the werecoyote Aaron infected and Gabe snuffed out, kids like Gabe, himself, who got caught in friendly crossfire when Tamora's obsession made her give the order over the walkie to take the shot against Liam regardless of Gabe's being in the middle of it. Nolan knocked the neo-Hunter shooting out, but not before he caught Gabe multiple times in the chest. And those bullets are real, and they are deadly, and they hurt. Theo steps up and finally proves his redemption by taking another impressionable, corrupted kid's pain away, but that doesn't save his life. He still dies. And it is awful, and it was preventable.
Hurt people hurt people. Good people work hard to get past the hurt and forgive. There is zero doubt on which side of the equation this show wants us to land.
You know who is already on the right side of the equation/history? COACH MOTHERFLIPPIN' FINSTOCK, OBVS.
What a glorious exit for a glorious character. In Jackson's very own words, nice to see you, Coach!
Teen Wolf Too
And so we reach the end, and jump back to the future, where Scott is finishing telling this story to Alec T. Wolf—all of it, we now understand, a prologue to the story Alec was already in, running from Tamora's ever-growing global network of neo-neo-Hunters. It is also a preamble to Scott's now-signature lesson—"You're not a monster. You're a werewolf, like me"—and to his invitation to Alec to join their pack and their fight against Tamora's hate.
At which point Chris takes his leave (to return home, to Melissa, whom he greets almost at a run, grinning before wrapping her up in a kiss, ugh, my soul), and Scott and Alec wait in the middle of the rainy parking lot as a battered blue Jeep, a shining black Camaro, and a perfectly serviceable Beautiful Toyota pull up, and Scott, Lydia, Derek, Malia and Liam get out to greet them. Alec sees the pack; Scott sees his friends. And they all walk off, in a long line of power and friendship, into the rain, together.
NEXT TIME
THERE IS NO NEXT TIME. THERE IS ONLY OUR MEMORY.
That is, unless Alec T. Wolf takes up the reboot mantle in 2019. Which, considering Jeff Davis wants to see Isaac and Braeden back almost as much as we do (see EW interview for more), is almost certainly going to happen!
This finale did feel different than most Teen Wolf finales. It was almost less conclusive…
That was very specific. We didn’t want a finale that said “the end.” We wanted it to be an “and the adventure continues…” I like imagining that they’re going off to continue the fight. I didn’t want to see an end where they all have children and they’re happy and at home. That felt anticlimactic to me.I know you had an extended finale, but was there anything you had to cut or couldn’t work in?
There were a few things. There were a couple actors that I would’ve loved to have back, like Daniel Sharman as Isaac. I would’ve liked to have Meagan Tandy’s Braeden. I had been planning a whole plot line for Deaton, but the episode was getting too long and there was too much difficulty with his schedule, with getting him back from The Walking Dead. That’s one of my regrets. There are definitely things we couldn’t fit in. I would’ve loved to have a 90-minute finale but we got 50 minutes, which is pretty long anyway.
In the meantime, I guess anyone who's behind just has to catch up on Jane the Virgin, since in a twist of TV fate straight out of the personal fan-fiction dreams I keep thinking can't get any better, that (along with the third season of Scream, which I will NOT be watching) is Tyler Posey's next longish-term stop.
<-- Teen Wolf 6x18: Genotype/Teen Wolf 6x19: Broken Glass
Teen Wolf 2019: New Wolf on the Block (& Isaac)* -->
*(I wish) (Here's to dreaming) (Dreaming of Isaac, Kira, Hayden and Braeden kicking ass around the world, a misfit, badass team) (oh heck do I have to write fan-fiction now????) (TV gods: please, just drop this one in my lap, too, whenever you're done with TPose on JtV) (thx uuuuuuuu)