The first time I watched Teen Wolf was in 2016. I binged it when I was supposed to study for my German oral exam – a stupid move since I was and still am very bad at speaking German.
The exam started okay having to translate a relatively easy text but quickly started going downhill once we switched to speaking German. I stammered through a single sentence before stopping – my mind totally blank, my heart racing and the two teachers staring intensely at me. That was when I started crying.
The teachers, probably unsure of what two do, just kept staring. My mind was blank. It was going terribly and a close friend of mine had already failed this exam the day before. They were for sure going to fail me too.
One of my teachers left to get me some water leaving me alone with the other teacher. In what felt like an eternity we sat in complete silence except of course for my sniffling. The silence made me want to cry harder but at the same time I was fighting to regain control of myself. When the other teacher finally came back, I manage to stumble my way through a few questions in German.
When it came time to give me my grade the teachers tried there best to be gentle. They told me; “You did really well on the translation part but we sadly didn’t have that much time to evaluate your conversation skills so we can only give you a C-.”
I think they expected me to be disappointed maybe even feared that I would start crying again but I almost burst out laughing. I was over the moon! Like I said I had never been very good at German and even without the crying I had never expected the exam to go well so I had essentially cried myself to a C-. I had a spring in my step and a giddy smile on my lips alle the way home.
For better or for worse those two events – watching Teen Wolf for the first time and my disastrous German exam – will forever be linked in my mind.
Just like my disastrous German exam Teen wolf have some great parts in the first half and some rough parts in the second half but ultimately manages to be something I look back on fondly – with a giddy joy even. But unlike the German exam I can revisit all the great parts of Teen Wolf as often as I want.
Now that that story is out of the way, and you truly understand the almost spiritual connection I have to this show let me actually tell you about it! (Spoilers obviously)
If you ask me and many other the true beauty of Teen Wolf lies in how it seamlessly changes and grows. The tone of the show shifts and bends like a river almost changing the entire genre at points and the characters grows yet stay recognizable.
When the first season start the show is just another teen drama ~ but with a werewolf twist ~. The cast is mostly made of clichés. You have the mean popular girl, Lydia; the love interest who is new to the town and self-proclaimed “not a girly girl”, Allison; the main duo consisting of the funny best friend, Stiles; and the main character, Scott, who is supposed to be ‘the nerd’ (we know this because Stiles says so in the first episode but Scott is conventionally attractive, in to sports and have seemingly no nerdy hobbies so really he is just kind of unpopular) and the two main obstacles is the popular jock, Jackson, who will do anything to stay on top and Allison’s disapproving dad.
It starts of simple but over the course of the 3 first seasons we see these characters be completely turned upside down Lydia goes from being an shallow popular girl to being a genius, a banshee and not least a social outcast; Jackson loses everything in his pursuit for power and end up being nothing more than a tool for other villains to use; Stiles who constantly jokes around ends up being at the center of some of the most heart wrenching plotlines the show has to offer (seriously Dylan O’Brien has the range and the show lives or dies with him); and Scott goes from being a looser to being a true leader, a true alfa.
Season one has some horror elements when focused on the werewolf parts, like Scott being attacked after finding a corps in the woods at night or almost hunting down and eating Stiles around the full moon. But it manages to be mostly cheesy and funny in tone either but failing to make some of the horror parts scarry like Derek always goofily staring at Scott from behind a tree or by being genuinely cheesy-romantic like the thought of Allison being the only thing that can calm Scott down when he is in his werewolf state, Scott clumsily trying to hide his werewolf-ness from everyone but his best friend or Stiles concerned googling ‘Werewolf’. This season is just a good introduction to all the characters and the most basic parts of the lore.
More thoughts on Teen Wolf comming soon... (hopefully)
Teen Wolf: The Movie (2023)
I am nowhere near done reviewing the actual show but the Teen Wolf movie just came out (as of the time of writing this) and I need to talk about it.
First of all, no one can deny that this movie is full of fan service/nostalgia bate but with it being years since we last got any new Teen Wolf content I’ll be dammed if it isn’t working on me. This movie feels like an episode of the show and a good episode of that. It feels like watching season one again and it is no doubt thanks to the characters they chose to include: Scott, Allison, Derek, Lydia, Jackson, and so on. The only character that are missing is Stiles (which is a crime that I will get back to later) but you don’t even miss him that much because they made a new character, Derek’s son Eli, who have most of the same character traits.
The writers really said who are the most beloved characters? You will have them. Who was the best villain from the original show (the nogitsune)? He is back. Who was the best ship? They will be together by the end. And when they just made a movie about that.
I will admit that the plot isn’t the most inspired: The nogitsune, the chaos spirit, decides that the best way to create chaos is to bring Allison back to life but erase enough of her memories so that she thinks that she is a ruthless werewolf hunter. She then try to kill the rest of the characters until Scott (and Lydia) helps her remember through the power of love and friendship. The plot is mostly an excuse to bring all our favorite characters back to Beacon Hills (except for Stiles. He was busy.) and have some great callbacks and character moments.
Now I think I have made it clear that I had a great time watching this movie however it is not without its faults (wouldn’t be a true Teen Wolf project without it).
Worst of all, like I have said twice already, there is no Stiles. It’s probably because Dylan O’Brien either demanded to much money to be in the movie or because he is done being associated with something as trashy (said with all my affection) as Teen Wolf. Nonetheless it is still a crime and not just because Stiles is my favorite character. The nogitsune was his antagonist. It spent an entire season tormenting and possessing him. Out of all the characters Stiles had the closes relationship with the nogitsune. He knows the way it thinks. To the nogitsune everything is a game. It should have been Stiles who played the game. They try to make Scott fill this role. Having him point out that the nogitsune wins if Scott dies in Alison’s arms like Alison died in his but it would have just been more meaningful if it was Stiles who figured it out. They just loss so much storytelling potential by Stiles not being there.
Other than that, I only have a few nitpicky issues I feel compelled to talk about:
1) Why does Perrish always have to be is a weird relationship with a younger woman? They are all aged up from the show so it is not as creepy this time but still why? You are making it hard for me to enjoy by favorite unpopular character.
2) Why is Jackson even there? I know we all like him and he has some funny lines her and there but the movie claims that Lydia explicitly asked for him to come help and he ends up doing two (2) kind of smart things on accident and nothing else. He doesn’t even do anything related to him being a kanima! They mention it twice, but he doesn’t use it. There was even a perfect moment near the end of the movie when the chemistry teacher is threatening Lydia where he could have easily reached out and used his PARALYZING VENOM to save her. Couldn’t the costume department find his claws or something?
3) If it was endgame for Scott to adopt Eli, they should have build on their relationship a little more in my opinion. Or just mentioned that Scott wanted kids more than once at the beginning of the movie. I had completely forgotten about it when they brought it up again during the last two minutes.
Anyways that’s enough complaining! I had a lovely time watching the movie and I kind of hope they make more!
