March Makeovers: How can ‘Teen Wolf’ season 6 up the ante?
At the moment, we certainly would not be shocked if there were plenty of people out there with a hunger for some more “Teen Wolf.” It’s been a few weeks now since season 5 came to a close, and there are certainly some storylines that were set up. We have a mysterious new villain with some Nazi mythology tied in, more opportunities for character pairings, and also question marks surrounding the return of Theo.
Given everything that the show has accomplished so far, there is probably going to be this desire to want to continue to build on that and make things more and more intense. Is that really the right move, though? That’s something we want to dive into more now in the latest chapter of our March Makeovers series.
What’s going wrong – If there is one prevailing issue with season 5, it was that the timeline was all discombobulated. We had all of the flash-forwards to Lydia at Eichen House, and through the first half of the season especially it was all rather hard to follow. This show is best to us as a thrill ride, and not so much trying to be like “Lost.” In general, the story was much more complicated than it needed to be, and the cup definitely runneth over when it came to villains. Think about it this way: We had Theo, the Desert Wolf, the Dread Doctors, and the Beast of Gevaudan all thrown in there, and there were also questions regarding where Parrish and Deucalion stood in the midst of all of that. That’s a lot to cover over 20 episodes, and as a result of that certain storylines suffered, with the Desert Wolf in particularly feeling like more of an afterthought.
How to fix it – Three words: Keep it simple. There’s no need for “Teen Wolf” to tell a confusing story. We almost draw a line between it and “Dexter,” a show that tried to do way too much in a complicated sixth season complete with a trick twist. If you just tell a straightforward narrative with strong character evolution throughout, you’re going to make your fans happy. If you try to do too much, what you really run the risk of doing is marginalizing the good stuff you do have.
A way to obviously do this is to cut down your villain total to one per half-season, with maybe one other minor villain thrown in there. Build things naturally over time, and allow these people in Beacon Hills to have their time to shine in the spotlight; we don’t need to see what happens to them in the future ahead of time to be excited about it.
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