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 Teen Wolf News 112513



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You'll find a full chronological listing of the filming of Teen Wolf Season 3 right from the start.

 Jeff Explains Character Death on Teen Wolf

During Saturday’s DVD release fan panel, Teen Wolf Creator/Head Writer/Executive Producer Jeff Davis was asked about the tumblr teapot tempest du jour.


 * “Hi, um, I was just wondering like, Gerard and Deucalion kind of get these free passes and chance at redemption and I’m wondering if any of the lady villains will.”

It’s a poorly phrased summation of the “Teen Wolf only kills Women and People of Color” crybaby argument.

The fact is more men died in Season 3 than women. More men than women have died throughout all three seasons but still, the question gets asked.

As to “Gerard’s free pass” Jeff had a quip ready “Gerard’s bleeding out of his face constantly. Does that seem like a free pass? ”

“At least he’s alive!” shouted some in the audience.

Jeff then explained the reason Gerard got to live. Simply put, there is a lot more to do with the character. Specifically he wanted to give Allison’s (Crystal Reed) character a chance to develop through a face-to-face confrontation with the man who so completely manipulated her in Season 2.

Jeff also admitted that, as often is the case with actors, the production genuinely likes working with Michael Hogan and wanted to keep him around.

He repeated the oft reported news that all the writers regret killing off Haley Webb’s character Jennifer “Darach” Blake. That decision was made long before they started writing the season and before they’d cast the part. Again, they really like working with Haley and would like to figure out a way to bring her back if they can do it without looking hokey or typical.

In general, Jeff says, killing or not killing a character comes down to whichever outcome will make a better show. “It’s not an arbitrary decision. We don’t sit there and say ‘who deserves to die or who deserves to live.’ It comes out of how we want to wrap the season up and how we want to end it and also how we want to make it different from the previous season.”

As to one of the most controversial deaths of Season 3(a) - Jeff says the actor’s career choices actually killed her character. “We spent a lot of time crafting a relationship between Boyd and Erica, Gage’s (Golightly) character. I remember calling up casting. I was like ‘why isn’t Gage closed?’ and they said to me ‘She wants to go off and do another show’ and I was like ‘What! We have all these plans.’ Then I said ‘who the hell else is in the bank?’ and we came up with Cora. I mean, that’s a lot of what happens in TV. Sometimes your plans shift drastically."

There’s a lot more about the whys and wherefores of killing off characters – I’ve included a transcript of that portion of the panel below. You can also watch the whole thing in the Teen Wolf Wiki Video Section.

Transcript

Unidentified Questioner - “Hi, um, I was just wondering like, Gerard and Deucalion kind of get these free passes and chance at redemption and I’m wondering if any of the lady villains will.”

Haley Webb – (stage coughs into microphone and points to herself) That’s me!

Crowd laughs

Jeff Davis - Gerard’s bleeding out of his face constantly. Does that seem like a free pass? I guess.

Shouts from Audience – He’s alive!

Jeff – Oh. Well. The reason he’s alive actually is because we wanted to bring him back again Season 3 to have a faceoff with uh… Actually there are two reasons he’s alive. We wanted him to have a faceoff with Allison and we had this big debate in the writers’ room. We debate actually killing people in the writer’s room quite a bit. I’ll tell you I was against um…

Melissa Ponzio – I’m tellin’ you what, okay. It happens. I’m just saying.

Haley – Thanks guys.

Crowd laughs

Jeff – There have been a few really strong arguments this season about certain characters to kill and I’ve…

Linden Ashby – Oh son of a bitch!

Crowd laughs

Jeff – I’ve said to the writers “we can’t kill that character.” There are some very strong feelings about it. One of our actual regrets, I will say is um, if we did it over would we still kill Jennifer?

Cries of dismay from audience

Haley – No, no you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t do that!

Jeff – Because we had the idea for the very last scene way before we started writing the show and a lot of the time you start writing the show it takes you in different direction. Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad says they have no clue where they’re going. Even when they’re writing episode 8 of 12 or 8 of 13, they still don’t know what the ending is like. So it’s not an arbitrary decision. We don’t actually… We don’t sit there and say “who deserves to die or who deserves to live.” It’s more… It comes out of how we want to wrap the season up and how we want to end it and also how we want to make it different from the previous season. One of the big reasons we didn’t kill Gerard at the end of the season of Season 2 is because we’d killed Peter and we didn’t want to make it was the same beat. And one of the reasons… Oh I can’t spoil anything this season but you’ll see. I guess it’s a matter of perspective too. I guess that answers your question? (Directed at questioner)You don’t seem satisfied. What would you like to hear?

Panel Moderator asks question about bringing people back from the dead on supernatural shows.

Jeff – We sit in a room and say “what would be a fun story to tell?” and it’s like “well, what if we brought this person back?” and a lot of the times we say “no, we can’t do that. We keep bringing people back. No, we can’t bring everyone back from the dead!” “Alright fine.”

--Edit in video --

Jeff – …what are great obstacles for our characters to face or what is great conflict or great drama to face so one of the reasons we kept Gerard around was because we wanted to see more of Gerard and Allison. I wanted to see a scene where Allison has to face him again. We talked about it being like a Clarice Starling/Hannibal Lector relationship almost. The other thing is, sometimes, you become very close to actors too and I love Michael Hogan. At the end of the season he was like “you’re not going to kill me are you?” and I said “We might.”

Crowd laughs

Jeff – Like with Haley we miss her desperately. We sometimes sit there and say “how can we bring her back?” Cause you really start to like actors and like to have them on the set and killing someone on a show is terminating them. I don’t know how they do it so quickly and easily on The Walking Dead.

Crowd laughs

Melissa – Oh it’s easy. I can tell you how easy it is. You’re dead!

Crowd laughs

Jeff – Sometimes it changes the plot drastically. We spent about a month creating, this is a, like a story line maybe for comic books or another offshoot, but we spent a lot of time crafting a relationship between Boyd and Erica, Gage’s (Golightly) character. We got the news, like, I remember calling up casting. I was like “why isn’t Gage closed?” and they said to me “She wants to go off and do another show” and I was like “What! We have all these plans.” And I said “who the hell else is in that prison with her… is in the bank?” and we came up with Cora. I mean, that’s a lot of what happens in TV. Sometimes your plans shift drastically. It’s not like writing a novel where you have the whole world at your fingertips and you can decide what happens. There are very real things in the industry that happen like Gage felt like it was the right time to go off and try being a star in a pilot and she got it a pilot which I think was probably really good for her career as an actor. You have to wish people well in these kinds of things. We were at a certain point where we were going to lose Seth Gilliam to a TV show and I was very unhappy about that because I really like the character of Deaton. I have more plans for the character of Deaton. But these things happen. And sometimes you get lucky with it. You get to bring in new characters like these two guys (indicates Carver Twins) which I think have added a lot to the show as well.