What They Say:
117 – Anxious to put an end to Kate’s plan, Scott must team up with an unlikely ally to accomplish the task.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While I had hoped for a bit more of a follow-up on the more immediate events of the end of the third season, Teen Wolf certainly took off running with the fourth season premiere as it dropped us into a bigger world, introducing us to the Hunters down in Mexico that have their own ways, showing a bit more of what’s going on with Scott and Kira and nudging Lydia along a bit as well. And, of course, it gave us a younger Derek at the end that really left you wondering what the deal is here with everything. But I still admit that I wanted more of the fallout from Allison’s death and how it was impacting people in the time since. Yet I can admit that with the bigger issues at play with Peter and so forth that just moving forward can be important for the gang in coping with all that they’ve been through.
When they get him back to Beacon Hills for the doc to take a look at him, it’s amusing in that even he’s really unsure of what’s going on and what happened. Sometimes a “wow” can really mean a lot when you get down to it. Deaton’s definitely the best they have to deal with it but even he’s really uncertain about this, especially with the news that Kate’s running around again and brings her own particular danger to things. Just having Kate around in some form isn’t a surprise since she’s a character people love to hate, even if they like her as the after show host, but with the way she’s something more here it definitely gives her a little something meatier to work with on top of what issues she already had. But the show also wants to deal with some of the basic things going on in the characters lives outside of the big threats, which is one of the things that drew me to it early on, and having a touching upon moment with some of the home life aspects works nicely, even if I’m not thrilled with Scott’s father still being around.
While that and the school stuff gets a few nice nods and some awkward moments, the show wants to keep giving us more of what’s going on with Young Derek. While his body is healing quickly and has an accelerated heart rate going on, he manages to escape from Deaton’s place and heads to a place that he can think of as home. Deaton’s got the right idea in that while his body is young, his mind may be young as well and he may not know what happened in the years since he was that age originally. Which means when he goes to the Hale house, he’s completely unprepared for the fact that the whole thing has been demolished and is being dealt with. Derek’s not dealing with it well to be sure and it’s made worse when a couple of cops show up and one of them is your stereotypical ass type that just makes the situation worse all around. Luckily, there’s a good cop to go with the bad cop and he has a little trust to work with that helps to ease the situation. Parish, who was introduced towards the end of the third season, definitely works well here and provides a balance to Haight.
But the real fun comes when the prints are run and Scott’s father is there and sees that it’s Derek. Realizing that it is something even bigger and stranger than some of the other things he’s had to handle, you have to laugh at the way his simple looks and attempts to cope with it all is hilarious. His question about whether time travel is involved is perfect and that if it is, he’s out of this completely. It’s a very human reaction and priceless with the way the sheriff handles it. But he’s also smart enough to shift things a bit to let Scott and Stiles handle this for a bit, to try and get through to him and figure out what exactly it is that’s going on. But because Derek is in his younger state and unaware, and still struggling with some of the things that a young werewolf would, it puts a lot of worry on all of them, especially as Derek keeps asking questions about his family.
Some of the subplot material here is pretty decent as we get to see Lydia and Kira getting along well after all that’s happened, though it feels like Kira may be falling into the Allison-friend territory too easily for Lydia. There’s a nice innocence about Kira that has Lydia being nice to her in a way, though it lasts only so long as they discover the place where the were-jaguar creature had torn apart someone and left quite a mess. It’s certainly not a pretty scene, but they both handle it pretty well in a way that makes sense as there’s a kind of calm about Lydia and a freaked out but controlled aspect from Kira, who is still adjusting to all of this, badass katana wielding Kitsune that she may be. A situation like this definitely helps to bond them closer together and it provides some useful information as well since we learn that Kate’s still learning to control her abilities.
This episode also brings us an interesting meeting that has been in the making for a bit as Malia gets to see Peter, who is described as Satan in a V-neck, which is amusing. While Scott’s nervous about the situation as a whole, even if he doesn’t trust Peter in the slightest, it’s fun to see how Malia basically pushes back nicely against him which gives him a little pause. With him learning that Kate is alive and that she’s potentially somehow managed to turn him into a teenager, he definitely has an amusing reaction about it in wishing that some people would just stay dead. But there’s also the reveal that Derek and Kate had some very intimate relations early on in his life, which he uses to prod Scott in a pretty painful way overall. It’s a complicated family history that they have and seeing how Kate is playing a deep game of potential revenge here really works well. Creepy as it may be when she, in adult form, finally connects with Derek again and spirits him away.
With the larger themes slowly revealed about what Kate’s really after from the Hale family vault, it’s definitely nicely done in the way she’s gone about setting her goals and achieving them by using Derek in the way she has, even if it means a little less manly adult Derek around. While that unfolds, we also get a bit of the action component for the show with the creatures that Malia had sensed back in Mexico as two of them are here now, though they look to be at odds with each other while Scott and Malia are caught in the middle after Peter slips off to deal with Kate himself. It’s not a bad fight as it gets going but we get a clear look at the kind of power the two have as they really push back against the werewolves. Which makes it fun that Kira steps in to save the day, but gets her ass handed to her after she does some pretty moves. I want to root for Kira, but she’s still so new to this that you have ot see her fail and fall a few times before it really clicks for her how to handle this new world she’s involved in.
In Summary:
Teen Wolf does continue to pack a lot into the final ten minutes of the episode as they’ve always done, but it also puts a lot into the rest of the episode as well with what it covers. From family and school matters to the more involved matters with Kate, Derek, Peter and Malia. There’s a lot to like here as it goes on with more nuggets being discovered about what Kate’s after and how Peter is being caught unawares, which is always good and bad. The first two episodes of the season have had a lot going on and little down time but it’s doing a lot to expand the world. I like a lot of what’s going on here, even if the whole Kate thing kind of irks me and the lack of some additional closure from the last season, but I’m also hoping we get some real relationship time factoring into the season with Scott and Kira. There’s a lot going on here and it’s going to be very amusing to see how Peter handles his loss in this episode.
Grade: B+
