‘Teen Wolf’ season 5, episode 2 review: Is Stiles right about Stiles?
During Monday night’s season 3 premiere of “Teen Wolf,” we had a worthy introduction to the character of Theo. Played by Cody Christian of “Pretty Little Liars” fame, he is a lone wolf who is finally starting to understand that if he really wants to survive in this insane world, he needs to find a pack.
Yet, we learned tonight that honesty was not necessarily a quality that was a part of him wanting to make that happen. Stiles was suspicious of him from the start, wondering why he would turn up in Beacon Hills after so many years hoping to forge some sort of bond with Scott McCall, whose exploits he had heard about through some sort of supernatural grapevine. For most of the episode, it looked as though Stiles was the metaphorical boy who cried wolf given that most of Theo’s story checked out … other than some signatures that were just a little bit off.
We discovered at the end of the episode that Theo basically hired some fake parents to set up this whole ruse, and therefore his true motivations are not entirely clear beyond him being a werewolf, and him seemingly wanting to be a part of the pack. He’s a compelling character this season mostly because he appears on the surface to be yet another normal kid, his origin story at least bears some similarities to that of the other characters.
There was a mixture of good and bad throughout the night’s other stories. For one, Lydia spent some time attempting to help Tracy, a fellow student with a history of “night terrors” and coughing up mysterious black goop. What we learned as a result of all of this is mostly that Tracy may be a little more active in these visions than we so thought. Her story is connected in some way to the doctors and the testing and the other insanity we saw during the flash-forwards in the premiere. The show so far is taking a methodical approach to introducing this mythology, but we can at least say right now that it is severe, dangerous, and exciting.
In other “Teen Wolf” news…
1. Parrish is really creepy. He’s right up there with Wren on “Pretty Little Liars” in that department when it comes to potential targets of his attention / affection.
2. Scott and Kira are actually having normal-couple concerns, mostly courtesy of his fear that he will not get into a great school. Granted, if we were him we would just camp out somewhere and then hope for the best.
We are not entirely convinced as of yet that season 5 is completely delivering the goods, but these first two episodes have given us the right mixture of horror of humanity that you would want from the show. Now, the only things missing are answers. Grade: B-.
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