Lycanthropes Coming of Age
An Analysis and Review of the Teen Wolf Series and Recent Movie (mild spoilers)
Shocking Confession
Before I dive into the review, I have a confession to make. Don’t get too excited—no bloodshed was involved! And no, I’m not really a werewolf. At least, not that I can remember…
But I was a teacher for thirty-six years, mostly at the high school level. One of the occupational hazards of high school teaching is feeling an emotional connection with YA literature, film, and TV. We who join that particular profession need to have a certain familiarity with such things, if only to understand our students’ pop culture references. But it’s hard not to be drawn into well-written YA material. After all, we were all teenagers once. And some of us have very active inner teenagers. I think this explains the popularity of coming-of-age stories in general. However, they are even more popular with high school teachers, which may color my review somewhat. My inner teenager loves Teen Wolf with all the intense passion of youth. You have been warned!
Context
Coming-of-age stories have been around for a long time, but ones in which the journey to adulthood is twisted by supernatural forces are a comparatively recent development. The first example may be 1957’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf. In this case, the lycanthropy is induced scientifically rather than supernaturally, but it’s just as deadly. A werewolf is still a werewolf.
I’m not sure exactly how early lycanthropy was used as a metaphor for puberty, but one can find hundreds of references in an internet search today. You can see where the idea might come from—behavioral changes, mood swings, difficult-to-resist impulses, hair growing where it hasn’t grown before. Needless to say, there’s an important difference between lycanthropy and puberty. For the most part, puberty doesn’t involve actually becoming an animal and ripping people to shreds. And that was what werewolves almost invariably did, from King Lycaon and his sons in ancient Greece to Larry Talbot and beyond.
But the desire to enhance the metaphoric connection between puberty and lycanthropy led to a softening of the werewolf image. So in the original 1985 Teen Wolf movie, the teenage werewolf becomes the subject of comedy rather than horror. The transformation is embarrassing but not deadly. And as compensation for the unwanted shape-shifting, the main character becomes better at basketball while in his wolfman form—and more attractive to girls. The same is true in the (unnecessary) sequel, Teen Wolf Too.
There is some debate about the point at which lycanthropy started to give people enhanced attributes while still in human form. People point to Twilight as a possible starting point, though that’s more about vampires, who became sexy earlier than werewolves. There’s no question Meyer broke some new ground there. But I think a much clearer precedent for Teen Wolf hit theaters the same year (2005) that Twilight hit bookstore shelves. I’m talking about Wes Craven’s Cursed.
Cursed is the first time I recall a situation in which infected humans developed superior physical abilities even when in human form. This is most obvious in Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg). A werewolf bite transforms him from a nerd to someone who can beat the captain of the wrestling team—even though Jimmy has no experience with wrestling. He and his sister, Ellie (Christina Ricci) also develop heightened senses and considerably enhanced sexual allure. At one point, Scott Baio (playing himself) is immediately drawn to Ellie despite never having met her before.
Cursed also floats the idea that werewolves don’t have to be killers, a notion also present in the Teen Wolf comedies and in the Twilight franchise. They can wolf-out in isolated locations and prey on wildlife instead of humans. Though the character who advocates this (Jake, played by Joshua Jackson) turns out to be a less-than-ideal example, the idea that someone might be able to control lycanthropy enough to not harm other people has definitely become part of the conversation.
The Teen Wolf Series Is Born
The MTV series, Teen Wolf (2011-2017) is built on two assumptions. The first is that lycanthropy enhances abilities, both when the “victim” is in partial wolf form and in completely human form. (Most werewolves in the series follow the Lon Chaney, Jr. precedent of transforming into a human-wolf hybrid rather than a full wolf.) The second is that a person with sufficient will power and training can control the inner wolf. Such a person can avoid transforming even during a full moon, as well as being able to transform at will pretty much any time. But even transformed, a person of strong enough will can control his or her actions. That’s really the only way a werewolf could become a heroic figure. There’s too much chance for random mayhem otherwise.
The story is set in Beacon Hills, a fictional town in northern California with a population of about thirty thousand. The main character, Scott McCall (Tyler Posey) sneaks out with his best friend, Stiles Stilinski (Dylan O’Brien) to see a dead body. Stiles has heard about the body because his father is the county sheriff. In any case, while out looking for the corpse (good adolescent fun), Scott encounters an alpha werewolf and managed to escape, though he gets bitten. Of course, we all know what that means.
Or do we? Scott’s asthma miraculously disappears. He goes from being a bench warmer on the lacrosse team to being first line. And he catches the eye of the beautiful new girl, Allison Argent (Crystal Reed). What else could a guy possibly want?
But a full moon is coming up, and Scott begins to understand that he’s no longer just an ordinary guy. Warnings from a sinister older werewolf (Derek Hale, played by Tyler Hoechlin) that he will kill Scott if he goes out on the night of the full moon and risks exposing the existence of werewolves complicate the situation, to say the least. That’s the night of his first date with Allison.
But that’s far from being the only problem in Scott’s life. Allison’s family has a secret. They’re werewolf hunters. The stage is set for Romeo and Juliet with fangs and claws. What could possibly go wrong?
What Makes the Series and the Movie Work?
How Visual Horror Can Go Wrong
One of the things I’ve learned from years of watching horror movies and TV shows is that it’s easy to make a bad one. A big problem is the temptation to lean too hard on special effects. (Just because you now have the technology to depict someone’s guts being ripped out doesn’t mean you should.) An even bigger problem is relying on violent acts to take the place of any other plot or character development.
Teen Wolf’s Plot
Perhaps because Teen Wolf was intended partly for a YA audience, it avoids the pitfall of too much graphic violence. But its plot and character development go far beyond just keeping violence from being the entire show. In fact, the series is very intricately plotted, and even minor characters get fleshed out with a decent back story.
For an example of intricate plotting, consider the way druids are handled. Deaton (Seth Gilliam), the veterinarian who runs a local animal hospital where Scott walks part-time, ends up treating the werewolves. Try hard not to laugh at that. But there is more of a reason than just that werewolves, because of their fast regeneration, can’t easily be treated in regular medical facilities. Deaton is also a druid, and, as it turns out, a long-time adviser of the Hale werewolf pack before most of them were murdered by arson. He knows how to deal with supernatural creatures.
But druid lore continues to develop from there. Jennifer Blake (Haley Webb), a teacher at Beacon Hills High School, turns out to be a druid mutilated by werewolves. She’s out for something she calls justice but that looks a lot like revenge. She finds ways to acquire enormous magical power with the intent to wipe out all werewolves, good or evil. To do that, she has to take innocent lives along the way but considers such killings justified. Scott and his pack thwart her, but at the cost of letting darkness into the souls of three of them (Scott, Allison, Stiles). Even worse, they activate the nemeton, a druid sacred tree that has been reduced to a stump. The nemeton can be a power source, but it’s also a literal beacon (hence the town’s name) that calls out to all supernatural beings. So Scott, Allison, and Stiles, though defeating the dark druid and saving their parents’ lives, also have ensured that Beacon Hills will be subjected to a constant stream of supernatural visitors. The nemeton plays a critical role two seasons later and becomes one of the key elements in the movie. It takes skilled writing to build on previously introduced material in that way.
Teen Wolf’s Character Development
Equally important is character development. Scott’s a good guy, but the writers take great care to ensure that he isn’t too good. He’s impulsive, especially at the beginning. And though he has leadership skills, he often lacks the planning ability for which he needs to rely on Stiles quite a bit. Stiles is smart but sometimes worries that he can’t contribute enough to the pack, since he has no supernatural abilities. Their partnership is well expressed in this bit of dialog.
Stiles: Your plans always suck!
Scott: That’s why I called you.
Stiles is also the seeming nerd who isn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with supernatural bad guys, however ineffectively. Nor is he afraid to pursue his attraction for Lydia Martin (Holland Roden), who is the archetypal popular girl in school and initially the girlfriend of Jackson Whitmore (Colton Haynes), captain of the ever present lacrosse team. Stiles’ efforts both on the battlefield and in the dating world are often funny, but it’s part of the genius of both the script and the actor that Stiles is never just the comic relief.
As for Lydia, she’s a smart girl who at first pretends not to be smart (which some high school girls actually do, believe it or not). She eventually becomes, with Stiles, the brains of the group. She also becomes a banshee, first useful as a way to find the recently dead but gradually evolving into a formidable fighter whose screams can overpower adversaries.
Like Lydia, Allison is there to be far more than just some guy’s love interest. Her family background leads her to train as a werewolf hunter, and though, like Stiles, she has no supernatural abilities, she is a total badass archer in combat. She’s also an interesting study in how to manage dilemmas, like the conflict between her family heritage and her love for Scott.
(This video contains spoilers.)
“Packing in” the Messages
Teamwork Is Important, and Everyone Has a Role To Play
Structurally, the show is more of an ensemble than a single-hero-with-sidekicks kind of story. Though Scott is certainly the central figure, other characters have episodes in which they shine, and success is almost always a team effort. The same pattern continues in the movie, which could easily be the subject of a guess-who-saves-the-day-in-this-scene kind of game. That’s also one of the reasons why it’s good material for teenagers. No one whose heart is in the right place is rejected from the group, however bizarre they might be. And everyone has a role to play and gets to be the one whose role is decisive from time to time. For teenagers struggling to find their place in the world, the pack structure in Teen Wolf offers hope and inspiration.
The team membership shifts somewhat from season to season. Scott, Stiles, and Lydia are constants. (Sadly, Stiles isn’t in the movie, though the writers at least came up with a very clever reason to explain his absence instead of just trying to pretend he didn’t exist.) The originally sinister Derek ends up as an ally. They are joined on and off by Kira Yukimura (Arden Cho), a kitsune (fox spirit) with electrical powers and great katana ability; Liam Dunbar (Dylan Sprayberry), whom Scott turns into a werewolf to save his life; Mason Hewitt (Khylin Rambo), who is not supernatural but provides more brain power, as well as being a friend of Liam whose common sense and rational thinking balances Liam’s impulsivity and anger management issues; Corey (Michael Johnston), an artificially enhanced human who can make himself and others invisible; Malia Tate (Shelley Hennig) a werecoyote; Isaac Lahey, another werewolf; and a few others. As you can see, many of them are not werewolves, but they are informally referred to as Scott’s pack, especially once he has become a true alpha.
The Power of Redemption
Aside from the importance of teamwork, both series and movie emphasize the possibility of redemption. Scott’s group becomes a magnet for people who have made bad choices (and even occasionally have been major villains). It’s too spoilerish to give examples, but by the end of the sixth season, some of the worst villains of all are fighting side by side with Scott’s pack. Perhaps this is a unrealistic, but at least, the changes are supplied with proper motivation, and it’s good for teenagers who may have screwed up, even badly, to be reminded that it’s still possible to chance course.
Applicability to All Ages
Teen Wolf is notable in that it uses adults as well as teenagers to exemplify its messages. I’ve already mentioned Deaton, who functions as a wisdom figure throughout, and Derek, who becomes kind of a big brother figure.
The Argents display a wide range of different attitudes. Allison’s father, Chris (JR Bourne) is a firm believer in the code—“We hunt those who hunt us.” That means he only kills werewolves or other supernaturals if they’ve killed humans—theoretically. He has a problem with Scott because of Scott’s relationship with Allison, which leads to continuing tension. Allison’s mother, Victoria (Eaddy Mays), is more than willing to kill Scott when she finds out that Scott and Allison are in a relationship—an intimate relationship. (Parents, I’m sure you can relate.) Allison’s aunt, Kate (Jill Wagner) has a cool-aunt facade but is even more willing that Victoria to ignore the code, and with far less reason. Allison’s grandfather, Gerard (Michael Hogan), openly abandons the code after Kate’s “death” and turns out to have a hypocritical Machiavellian agenda on top of that. Guess which of these character lives to become close with Scott and to play a role in the movie. The evolution of the Argent family serves as a series of contrasting examples about the importance of adhering to a moral code. Those who manage to live up to their morals survive. Those who don’t are not so lucky.
Stiles’ father, Noah Stilinski (Linden Ashby) and Scott’s mother. Melissa McCall (Melissa Ponzio) play prominent roles. Both start out ignorant of the supernatural, and both struggle when they first find out about it. They make mistakes, as we all do, but there’s never any doubt that they love their children and will do whatever it takes to keep them safe. Melissa’s care extends to the hospital’s patients and staff—and ultimately to Scott’s pack. Stilinkski’s care extends to all the citizens of Beacon Hills, whether mundane or supernatural.
One of my favorite scenes in the whole series is Melissa’s appearance in one of the more fraught Season Six episodes, holding a crackling stun baton and proclaiming, “We’re taking back the hospital.” (I promise, it doesn’t sound that corny in context.) She’s a nurse, but she seems to have the medical knowledge of a doctor, and in hospital scenes, she often runs the place like a boss. (She also risks her job by dispensing clandestine medical services to supernaturals in the hospital’s basement.) If she were a real person and I were younger, I’d marry her!
As for the sheriff, he somehow manages to juggle his official responsibilities and protecting the town from menaces the law isn’t equipped to handle. In this mission, he’s aided by Deputy Jordan Parrish (Ryan Kelley), who turns out to be a hell hound and has to learn how to control his fiery gift, while reconciling himself to the fact that he must sometimes work outside the law.
The Great Scene
The discussion of adults brings me to the one seeming flat tire among them—Coach Bobby Finstock (Orny Adams). Unlike Stiles, Coach seems to be used mostly for laughs, so much so that when Gerard Argent is tormenting Scott with threats to the lives of various people, the Argent patriarch says something like,
“Or should I just do everyone a favor and kill that ridiculous coach?”
Yet, almost as if the writers had foreseen a different role for the coach, he is a key element in a scene so emotionally powerful that it’s stuck with me for years.
It’s in the second half of Season Six, in which a powerful supernatural force is slowly turning everyone in Beacon Hills against the town’s more supernatural residents. Some of the high school students, who by this time are disturbingly reminiscent of Hitler Youth, think they have a foolproof plan for getting any doubters to see the danger allegedly threatening the town. They’ll capture Liam, the werewolf with anger management issues, and force him to change in front of everyone.
Teamwork is again on full display as Corey and Mason try to smuggle Liam out of school invisibly. Unfortunately, the thugs thwart that plan, drag Liam into an empty classroom, and start beating him up and taunting him. Other students are crowded around, but no one except Corey and Mason try to stop the violence. The other pack members aren’t around at that point and couldn’t intervene very well even if they were. A teacher passes by and refuses to do anything.
By now, Liam is battered and bleeding profusely, but somehow, he holds on, knowing the if he changes, he and his friends are all dead. Just in time, Coach appears, pushes his way through the crowd, shoves the bullies aside, scoops up Liam, and takes him away, angrily denouncing those who stood around and did nothing as he goes.
In one stroke, the Coach becomes far more than just the butt of the joke.
This shift shouldn’t really be surprising. The writers repeatedly demonstrate a knack for packing a lot of punch into one scene. The show is loaded with moving death scenes, unexpected twists, romantic declarations, and characters risking everything to save everyone. That’s another secret to its potency.
The Ending
One of my biggest complaints about TV series is that they get cancelled before their logical conclusion, or they drag on too long. The first case leads to the lack of a satisfying ending and closure. The second case leads to a drift away from the original premise and into less and less coherent territory.
Fortunately, Teen Wolf avoided both. It did broaden out into non-werewolf territory after the first season, but it did so in a way that remained loyal to the original premise and values. As far as endings are concerned, I’m inclined to think the official story is true—Teen Wolf was always intended to end with Season Six. But it seems clear that the production team was well aware of the danger of unexpected cancellations. The Season Five finale could easily have been a series finale. So could the last episode in the first half of Season Six. And the Season Six finale definitely gave a sense of closure. All of them are far better than the unresolved cliffhanger ending that has been the final goodbye of so many series.
For those who want more, Teen Wolf: The Movie offers a satisfying extension of the series, though it is puzzling in a few areas. See below.
Nothing Is Perfect
The cynics among you are probably thinking that there must surely be some spots where Teen Wolf fell short. Of course, no human product is perfect, so it’s inevitable that there will be a few flaws. Here are some examples.
The school year chronology is somewhat hazy in the series. That’s partly because in some cases, the lacrosse season seems as if it covers the full school year. In California, there are three basic high school sports seasons (fall, winter, spring) with lacrosse being a spring sport. But if I recall correctly, the first episode of Season 1 shows lacrosse tryouts happening on the first day of school.
Other sports are alluded to, but only I think cross country is acknowledged as actually having a season, and even that only happens once. Jackson is mentioned as being captain of the swim team, but the swim season conflicts with the lacrosse season in the real world. (And yes, my teaching background makes me prone to notice such things.)Speaking of which, the way in which the Argents take over the high school is crazy. Chris Argent would never have gone along with torturing the principal to get him to quit, but leaving that aside, the very next day, Gerard Argent is the new principal. No school district is that fast at hiring, and there are legal requirements about advertising the position, etc.
Even if we assume that Gerard is an interim replacement, there’s not even been a sentence about Gerard having an administrative credential or any other background, much less a resume that would get him in. (It’s hard to put down werewolf hunter as experience in this case.) Strange as it may seem, school districts don’t usually hire random people off the street.The characterization of Eichen House isn’t consistent. Sometimes, it’s a legitimate mental institution. Sometimes, it seems to be something out of a horror movie. I understand that at one point, the director was replaced by a supernatural with unusual abilities, but I didn’t think one of them was mind control. Wouldn’t the rest of the staff know something was us?
Always, it’s a place where evil supernaturals are contained on a restricted level. But there’s never a clear indication of how the system is put back online after the Dread Doctors have destroyed the electromagnetic protection and Parrish has burned away the mountain ash in some spots.The movie has some odd chronological issues, mostly rooted in the presence of Derek’s son, Eli (Vince Mattis). Eli is fifteen, but whether there is enough time for him to actually be fifteen is another question.
The show ran from 2011-2017, but except for season six, each season is only supposed to be a semester. That would leave us with the following chronology: school year 2011-2012 = Seasons One and Two; 2012-2013 = Seasons Three and Four; 2013-2014 = Seasons Five and Six A; 2014-2015 (fall semester only) = Season Six B.
The chronology frequently listed online is faulty because it equates school years with calendar years and assumes that the show covers three years (2011-2013). But Six B, at the beginning of which a lot of characters are graduated, has to have been the beginning of a new school year. School years begin in the fall. That puts the end of Six B somewhere in the late fall or winter of 2014. The epilog, set two years in the future, would then be in 2016, not 2015, as generally stated.
No son of Derek is mentioned in the original series, not even when Derek appears in the last part of Season Six. But he was absent from Season Five. That could place Eli’s conception somewhere in 2014, in which case his birth would be late 2014 or early 2015. No mother is ever mentioned, and Derek isn’t exactly a one-night-stand kind of guy, but whatever.
The movie is supposed to be set in 2026. Let’s assume it’s spring, though I don’t think the season is ever given. The most Eli can be is twelve, and even that’s pushing it. There are also weird discrepancies online about the time between series and movie. Wikipedia says sixteen years. IMDB says fifteen. Screenrant says thirteen (or eleven, if you count the epilog). To make Eli’s age credible, we’d probably have to go with sixteen, but in that case, the movie would have to be set in 2030. I can’t find any indication that was the intent.In addition to the problem described in the previous point, the characters don’t look sixteen years older. That’s partially because the actors are only six years older.
Interestingly, a soccer coach from another school says that Scott looks thirty, which, if he were eighteen when he graduated, would be twelve years, just as I calculated. But Scott doesn’t look even twelve years older. Lydia, Mason, Deaton, Malia, Parrish, Jackson, and Melissa don’t look much different. In the case of the younger ones, that’s partially the result of the fact that they were in their twenties during the original series. Presumably, the longer time frame was given as a way to try to make Eli possible, but it created other problems.The scene at the beginning of the movie in which the Nogitsune (Aaron Hendry) is released is oddly full of holes. Liam and his love, Hikari (Amy Workman) are running a restaurant in Japan. The urn in which the Nogitsune is imprisoned is in plain view on the shelf behind the counter. Not in a non-public area. Not in a vault somewhere. Right out where anyone could grab it.
When a stranger (Adam Fristoe) demands the urn, we see everyone sitting in the restaurant pulling guns. Are they all part of Liam’s pack or something? It appears so. Yet they don’t figure in the subsequent action.
Hikari, who later on is perfectly capable of conjuring up a flaming fox spirit around herself, doesn’t bother in this scene. Nor does she stay and fight with Liam and all those gunslingers. Instead, she takes the urn and runs. The stranger, who it turns out later is not all that supernatural, somehow gets out of the restaurant in which he is faced by a werewolf and about ten people with guns. He succeeds in shooting Hikari and Liam, after which he steals the urn and has time to have a relatively long conversation with the trapped Nogitsune before releasing it. The gunslingers don’t intervene at this point, either. In fact, they are never seen or heard from again.
Much later, the stranger is revealed to be someone who is supposed to be dead, killed by an evil force Scott’s pack fought against. Inexplicably, he blames the pack for his misfortunes. The identity of the villain is a surprise, but both how he survived and his motive are far more mysterious.That brings us to a flaw in both the film and the series—the tendency of dead people to not stay dead.
Peter: Doesn’t anyone ever die in this town?Malia: I think everyone hoped you would.
Some of the resurrections, such as a particularly spectacular one in the movie, are explained. Some are foreshadowed but not explained. Others are neither explained nor foreshadowed and contradict magic consequences of the deaths involved. In fantasy and horror, I don’t generally object to people coming back from the dead if the resurrection is explained in some way. The Teen Wolf universe is erratic about that, to say the least.
I could do a lot of other nitpicking, but I think that’s more than enough. For all it’s flaws, Teen Wolf is still a considerable achievement. Its flaws pale in comparison to its good qualities. It’s a great viewing experience for both the young and the young at heart.
Where Can You View The Series and the Movie?
As is typical in our modern streaming age, you can’t find both in the same place.
The movie is currently on Paramount+. The series is currently on Amazon Prime and Hulu and probably available on DVD and Blu-ray. Season One is available on Pluto.
Great analysis. The TV show sounds fascinating.
I should point out that there was an animated television version of the original "Teen Wolf" movies on CBS in the 1980s, but it didn't last long and was far less complicated than the MTV version.