What They Say:
Visionary – While looking for answers, scott, Allison and Stiles hear stories told by two unlikely narrators and discover a secret about the color of a werewolf’s eyes.
The Review:
With so many big events going on in the previous episode, and the death of another character, the series has managed to build things well as its progressed so that there’s a continuing sense of danger and uncertainty for a lot of characters. Of course, you do hold that basic idea that the prime cast won’t be killed, but at this point I’ll admit that I woudln’t put it past them to take down someone from those ranks. But with what they’re doing here this season, taking advantage of the expanded episode count, is to try and delve into the characters more and how things work, the real connections between them. And as Stiles says here at the start, there’s a lot going on and a lot of people dying, and there’s a lot that needs to be discussed and revealed in order to handle what’s to come with Deucalion.
As is appropropriate for an episode at this juncture of the season, we get a lot of information revealed through two very differentbut knowledgable sources, which makes it work. With Stiles, he starts questioning Cora and Peter about things, trying to understand what’s happened and having Derek’s origin story as its focus. For Scott and Alilson, that goes a little different as her grandfather has asked for her to bring Scott to him in order to try and heal, at least temporarily, some of what’s ailing him since we know that Scott can use his ability to do that, though at some cost to himself of course.
With Derek’s origin story, it takes us back a few years to be sure to when he was a high school student himself, one that Peter sys is a lot liek Scott in a lot of ways. He’s a bit more cocky though as we see the first time he meets Paige, a girl that would change his life. There’s some amusing tension between the two, with him being the hotshot kid that’s good at basketball while she’s a violion player frustrated by the way he and his friends are. But there’s also the fact that she knows who he is, which of course strokes his ego, and that just reinforces the way he’ll pursue her. Which she does seem to like based on her reactions to what he does, even if she is just frustrated by him and his quasi-bad boy style.
Though things move quickly in order to get to the guts of the story, it’s fun to see the simple pleasure and fun of young love, which has been absent from the series for awhile due to what happened between Scott and Allison. Their time in the dark of the night enjoying each others company stumbles into Argent’s story though, where the death of a werewolf has drawn in three different packs and shows us a younger Deucalion, Ennis and Kali who lead their own, and a Deucalion with eyes, as they talk about what to do to slow up the problems since the Argents are hunting them fiercely through an incidencet with a beta. But it also brings us something very, very new, with Talia Hale also arriving on the scene and being revealed as a powerful werewolf and shapeshifter.
Amusingly, as Petere gets more involved in Derek’s life, we see how he nudges and pushes him into trying to bring Paige over to their side. Peter does try to deflect it some in saying that Derek is probably in the present thinking it’s all Peter’s fault whereas he just describes an intense young Derek who wanted to keep the woman he loved safe. There’s a certain distrust to what you have to have with what Peter is saying since he has his own agenda, but it’s more just a perception than a lot of outright deception. There’s a lot to like in how these small things come out, especially as talking about Derek’s own attempts to bring Paige over leads to the Greek belief of how werewolves came about, and then on to dialogue about the Druids, which brings in Deaton and his sister and the growing roles they’re playing in the season.
As the story in the past unfolds, from both sides, we get a clearer picture of just how twisted and beyond the pale that Gerard is because of his own history, to the point where he would even take down his own people in order to cull the weak from them in order to fight the larger fight. And we also get a very good look at how things twisted and turned for Deucalion who at that time had a vision of peace, but lost so many of his own and his eyes at that. Running this in parallel to the way that Derek changed his mind in tryingt o bring Paige over, but being too late, and her not being compatabile with being a werewolf, shows the confluence of events that has lead to a lot of pain that still exists today.
In Summary:
Teen Wolf takes a bit of a change for this epsiode by focusing on back story and expanding what we know about the packs, the hunters and more. It has a lot of focus on Derek in his younger days and what’s driven him, which will play well into the present with Jennifer but also his losses when it comes to his pack. There’s a lot to really like here with what it does, but I also really like that when you get down to it, both Scott and Stiles are taking in everything that’s being said but with a lot of skepticism as well. There’s the basic accusation made of those telling the stories lying, but also the understanding that some of it is just perception. And that plays realistically and in a great way rather than having them just taking it all as gospel and goinf from there. With just four more episodes to go for the summer portion of the series, we’re now in a position to know more of what happened and what the motivations are and that just makes it exciting.
Grade: A-
