Wherein everything wraps up all nice and neat.
What They Say:
Apotheosis – While Scott and the others work to stop the Beast before Beacon Hills is razed to the ground, loyalties are tested and alliances are forged.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Teen Wolf hits its season finale with this episode and it’s frustrating before even starting it off. The season as a whole has been hugely problematic for me, especially as a real booster for the show in its first three seasons and even parts of the fourth. The last few episodes have started to pick up a bit with what it wants to do but so many of my frustrations have been long baked into it this season that it’s a difficult rally at the end because it was so unnecessary. Finally bringing everyone back together at the end just reinforces the potential of what the season could have been if we had storylines with the main cast working as the pack that they are as opposed to the split that doesn’t really seem to have given them chances to grow and be something more upon the return. If anything, it feels like we’re back to where we should have been at the start of the season as opposed to further along and more interesting.
Being a finale means that they have to wrap up some stuff, but the problem is that a lot of the stuff just doesn’t have any meaning. It’s been impossible to care about Theo in the slightest so seeing him getting all intense and cruel herein killing the chimera that’s been around for a bit doesn’t really do all that much for either character since it wasn’t exactly hard to dislike him. And she was mostly a non-entity to begin with. But just the fact that Theo is somewhat aligned with Deucalian at this point just makes him a terrible character since that was one of the weakest parts of the fourth season that did not need to be resurrected here. It at least whittles away at the cast a little more, which Deucalian calls out clear enough as well. And the show certainly needs some clearing of the decks after this season.
With Valet back out in the world now, the confrontation is slowly coming together with what he needs in the form of the pike from the past that Marie-Jeanne used. It’s been reforged as a cane which the Gerard has and he and Chris are intent on using that to draw Valet out to deal with him. Since Valet is drawn to it and he gets the clue about it as well it only takes so long for him to start hunting it down in a clearer fashion. While this starts to take shape we get Scott and the others working to figure out what’s going on, though poor Liam is just struggling with understanding exactly how Mason turned into a 250-year-old white French guy. This allows for some quick catch up on what’s going on and how to deal with it, which was covered in smaller parts before, so it puts everything into place for the end run here – particularly in reminding us of the importance of Lydia in all of this to stop him.
Naturally, it all goes to hell in a handbasket at the sheriff’s station when Valet shows up there to find out where he can find the Argents and Stilinski does what he can to slow him down. This sequence works well for some great tension and is followed up with some dark moments with what happens to Lydia and Hayden. Valet certainly cuts a solid figure as a villain, but after a season with utterly disinteresting opponents, the bar is pretty damn low. Valet certainly does a good job of cutting through the cast here, giving it the kind of suave menace that the Dread Doctor’s couldn’t nor could Theo and the chimera. The only thing I can’t abide by is that Lydia gets whacked pretty hard here, though they make it uncertain just how far the damage is at first since Valet goes to rip out her throat and she’s pretty key to being able to deal with Valet. She’s really put through the wringer here and it’s just getting to be depressing.
The second half takes all the events coming together and tries to hits as many big notes as it can while bringing things to something resembling a conclusion. One of the best moments is Theo realizing that he’s been had the whole time and Deucalian and Scott working together. While I really, really, wanted Theo to just end up dead and the moment he gets his neck broken is wonderful. But his abilities keep him from being taken down outright, which is just frustrating as hell. But the show gets even more comical as we get the various reveals of alliances forged previously coming to light where everyone was basically playing the game without revealing anything and it’s just so disconnected that it’s impossible to get behind any of it. There are some really nice moments with it as each double-cross is revealed but it’s not enough to salvage the season, either half of it, in the slightest.
There’s also a really, really, uninteresting Desert Wolf storyline that runs throughout this that just reminds you how terrible it’s been for the entire season.
The final act naturally brings everything together and after all the twists and turns it’s hard to find enough to really latch onto beyond the core characters. And that’s difficult in itself as I still haven’t warmed to Liam and his pairing with Scott here to go against the Beast doesn’t change that much either. While I do like seeing that Scott still isn’t the powerhouse that he sometimes could be, with Valet showing him just how much more powerful he is, I also really like the moment of memory that comes back as Valet sees Allison there, which with the obvious similarity in appearance affects him in a big way. It’s a very quick series of turnarounds that happens here at the end with all the disparate pieces coming together so everyone can have a key role in it, which in itself is just too predictable. Visually, the whole thing works well, and it’s not something that’s pulled together easily. But at the same time, it’s all too pat and simple, right down to Kira being useful at the right moment.
In Summary:
This season. I dunno, man. The back half of the second half has had some better material to it as it started to bring the core cast back together, but that’s a quarter of this season as a whole that was somewhat interesting and moderately well done. There’s just a sense that there’s a lot here that simply wasn’t dealt with well or too drawn out, notably with the Dread Doctors. This season, like the fourth, really did too much in expanding the mythology of it all and becoming far more than it could handle while at the same time doing some damaging work with how the core cast was handled. I really hated the whole split the group up thing in dealing with the school year getting closer to ending. I’m really conflicted about whether I’ll be back for the next season as this one really felt like a chore with only the last couple of episodes salvaging parts of it.
Grade: B
Loved it. Even a bad TW episode is better than anything The Vampire Dairies has done in years. Grade A