Whitney Watches: Previously on Teen Wolf Season 5A

Alright, MTV’s Teen Wolf returns tonight, and I thought I’d do a quick recap of what happened.

So… Previously on Teen Wolf.

Last season, the Pack was concerned with the future – most of them are starting their senior year, so they have college and life after Beacon Hills High School on their minds.

Derek left Beacon Hills (again), as Tyler Hoechlin opted to leave the show. Braeden left Beacon Hills, as she’d promised, to track down Malia’s mother – the Desert Wolf. She’s been sending updates to Malia, and it did not look good. Her mother’s a mercenary that leaves a string of violent crime scenes behind her.

Teenagers went missing, started to act strangely and died, oozing black liquid. Turns out that a trio of scientists named the Dread Doctors came to town, in order to experiment on turning kids into supernatural creatures…. chimeras.

They were extraordinarily difficult to understand – and sounded like if you’d recorded someone talking through an old-school drive thru speaker and then overlaid the sound of a blender running. (MTV – I really hope you gave us subtitles this season)

At the same time, an old schoolmate/friend of Scott’s showed up – Theo Raeken. Stiles distrusts him immediately, Scott wants to trust him. (This sparks the first season’s argument, albeit not a terrible one – Scott accuses Stiles of not trusting anyone, Stiles flips it around to say that Scott trusts everyone. This turned out to be the theme of the entire season. Sort of.) So Stiles starts digging, and trying to follow Theo. Liam tags along and falls into a hole.

Turns out burying is part of the process in what the Dread Doctor’s are up to. Also, Theo’s a murderer and a chimera.

Bodies went missing, and it turned out that was the handiwork of Deputy Jordan Parrish – who still had no idea what he was. Lydia figured that out – he’s a hellhound, a supernatural creature linked to death and protecting the supernatural work. Sort of the flipside of the coin to Lydia’s banshee powers. She finds the corpses, he keeps the supernatural world a secret.

There were a few important chimera. There was Tracey, a student that Lydia had tried to help, and who Malia had tried to save – only to have the Dread Doctors kill Tracey right in front of Malia. There was Donovan, a guy who had an axe to grind with the Sheriff (his dad had been the Sheriff’s partner before he was Sheriff, and the dad ended up in a wheelchair and it basically ruined Donovan’s life) He tried to kill Stiles, Stiles accidentally caused his dead trying to escape – but Stiles felt really guilty and didn’t tell anyone what happened. But Theo saw it all, so he held it over Stiles’s head. Then there was Hayden, a sophomore who slowly became involved with Liam. The both of them were taken by the Dread Doctors, and Hayden was left to die. Liam begged Scott to bite her, but Scott didn’t want to give her the bite. So she died in Hayden’s arms and set off Liam…

…because Theo’s entire plan was to split the pack from Scott and swoop in to take it. He’d told Theo that Stiles killed Donovan, and after a conversation where both Scott and Stiles were talking about the situation in different ways (Stiles was admitting it was in self defense, Scott was asking Stiles if he’d murdered him), the two had a big fight. Then Theo hurt the Sheriff and hid him, in order to get Stiles to help him (and get him away from Scott and Liam’s fight) Theo wanted the pack, but he didn’t want the good guys. He wanted Void!Stiles, a banshee, the blue-eyed Coyote, a dark kitsune, and the werewolf with rage issues. So he trapped Scott in the library, they all fought, and Scott was left for dead.

Mason, the season’s literal ray of sunshine, showed up and started performing CPR. Melissa eventually showed up, as Mason was giving up hope and ordered Scott back to life.

The Sheriff’s life hangs in the balance.

We’d been told repeatedly that the Supermoon was important – but all that happened was Theo nearly killed Scott, and when it was clear the Pack wasn’t going to back him, he resurrected a few kanima (including Tracey and Hayden) for his OWN pack. And the Dread Doctors opened up a wall that revealed a mural of a hellhound facing off with a giant monster. So?

A couple things I skipped – The season started with a flash-forward to Lydia in Eichen House, where it looked like the guy who’d been imprisoned with Peter was acting as a doctor. We have no explanation for that, or how Lydia weaponized her banshee powers. (She did learn how to fight, so we learned about that)

Deaton had left Beacon Hills- looking for more information on the Dread Doctors, and was discovered by the Desert Wolf. She believed Malia was dead, but now that her daughter’s alive, she’d have to go back to Beacon Hills to kill her. So Deaton’s fate is up in the air (Seth Gillam had been arrested in the midst of the season – I think this was their way to removing Deaton from the storyline until that was resolved)

If this doesn’t seem like enough plot for 10 episodes, you’re basically right. Most of this happened over the span of 5 episodes. The other 5 episodes essentially had them looking for a chimera, finding them, learning about them, and not being able to save them.

I think that this was by far, one of the weakest seasons of Teen Wolf. It succeeded when it came to creepy gore, but most of the characters (I’d say with the exception of Melissa, Mason, Liam and Malia) were written out of character. And a lot of the episodes just felt as though they’d plotted out a season that was half the length and then stretched it to cover a longer episode order.