The Nogitsune’s manipulations become realized and a game changer has entered the picture.
What They Say:
Insatiable – Kira finds herself facing an unexpected antagonist; Scott and his friends try to survive against an enemy growing even stronger.
The Review:
With so much being laid out clear with what the Nogitsune is, the past of all and the connections to the present, it’s worked well in exploring a lot of things. It’s also had some good moments of letting Kira stand taller in the season without dominating it like they could have made her, which could have felt forced and unnatural. Instead, you come away from it appreciating what she’s brought to the show and I’ve found myself really enjoying her slow but growing relationship with Scott. Of course, a lot of what we’ve also been dealing with is the way that Stiles has been taken over so completely and used for the Nogitsune’s goals. But now with Lydia having been taken in – after revealing key information – and Stiles seemingly normal once again, it’s all pretty much a very tense situation.
While we do have a belief that Stiles has been freed from the Nogitsune after the way it split completely from him, they have to go through the process of cleaning him out completely and confirming it. It’s not made more dramatic than it needs to be, which is a plus, and it puts the team all on the same page at this point now. Well, sans Lydia, since she’s stuck with the Stiles-cloned Nogitsune that’s tormenting her since he needs her abilities to complete his goal. Which, admittedly, feels ill defined at this point. But that fits in with the kind of panic that it creates for Lydia as he toys with her, making it clear that torture is the way he’ll get what he needs.
After all that’s happened, the show does need to slow down a bit of course. And with it being dawn and the Nogitsune not causing trouble for the moment, we get some good stuff going on. Stiles and has father have a good reunion as Scott makes it clear that the real problem is now drawing near. Kira and her mother Noshiko are working through a strategy game of sorts that will help Kira understand things and we even get an interesting moment with one of the more recent arrivals in the series with Officer Parrish, who talks about how he was drawn to this town and needed a change of pace. There’s also the really fun little moment with Argent and Derek as they deal with what they had just been through and realize a bit more that they truly are not out to kill each other at this point. Which is a huge change from the early parts of the series as a whole.
We also get some really sweet if awkward moments between Isaac and Allison as she talks about what happened a few nights before when they got all intimate and she wasn’t sure if it was him or the possessed him. It’s really cute since they handle it well and do get to the point fairly quickly and all it does is reinforce the way I like this particular coupling. But while we have all of this, events are starting to spiral out of control, though it’s not clear to everyone. Meredith has arrived from Eichen House after escaping and is talking about how everyone is going to die and the twins are off elsewhere being hunted down with someone with a gun that’s using wolfsbane. The growing sense of dread is definitely there but also some really neat little moments, especially with Allison and her father as he gets her to “graduate” to the real thing now since she’s obviously proven herself over and over.
When the noose starts to tighten on events, we get some fun little bits as well such as Stiles realizing that Meredith is a banshee, Scott’s father explains why he left and how the marriage fell apart and we get Kira’s father showing her what the meaning of the game of Baduk (or Go) represents. It’s a teaching moment for Kira, one that works well. But we also get the portent of things to come as Allison works on her graduation side by creating a silver bullet as her piece of closure to her training, though she makes it a personal piece by doing it as an arrowhead as well since she’s been an archer all this time. All of this touches on so many elements of the characters across the range that we have that even though they’re given small nods along the way, each feels weighty enough and important to their overall arc and progress.
So when darkness falls, we get Noshiko making her move with her dark warriors and a lot of the others start making their way towards where they think Lydia is. With it all coming back to the Oak Creek internment camp, it has such an oppressive feeling to it after the decades of ruin that it sets the mood perfectly as it all comes together. It’s a good moment for Scott to lead, especially with the way that this is his pack, and it hits some very good notes overall while being kept short in the way that you’d know Scott would do it. But it goes only so well for so long as the Nogitsune changes the nature of the game along the way, taking control of the fog warriors that Noshiko has as she’s intent on fixing the problem that she created. While she views it as a seventy year problem that is hers to finish, Kira’s trying to push a different line with it and is intent on doing so.
Naturally, this leads to a new round of action that lets Kira shine along the way as the Nogitsune and his new group of protectors go after everyone up there while Scott and Stiles rescue Lydia, which was the wrong place for them to be since that falls into the Nogitsune’s plan. And a brutal plan it is as the fight plays out and we see Isaac, Kira and Allison fight with some great slow motion pieces that Allison is the one that ends up losing her life to it all. With Isaac being sliced apart by the warriors, she does all that she can to save him and has a bit of luck in a way with the expected silver arrow, which helps to change the game. But not before she herself gets sliced through hard by one of them in a brutal and heartrending moment. Naturally, this leaves you to question what will happen going forward, is this a long term death – which the series can fully play with and has done so before – or will there be a long term plan for this that brings her back in some really interesting way.
In Summary:
With so much of the focus this season on Stiles and the way he was being manipulated and controlled, it’s been a solid piece for him that has really given him a lot to work with. But the show has also worked very well with the cast as a whole as new pieces are introduced, new bits of history and connections, and a growing strengthening of the pack that has rallied around Scott. But now, with the Nogitsune having manipulated the big picture in the way he wanted to gain more of what he needed, he’s managed to strike hard at Scott in a way that can hurt him in the most obvious of ways, but can also essentially fracture and destroy the pack because of how everyone will react to this death and cope with it. The moment itself is well done even if telegraphed far too easily, but it leaves you really interested in how the fallout will be more than anything else since everyone will have such varied reactions to it.
Grade: A
