User blog:Godechaud/Teen Wolf Werewolves - Always evolving Art to the detriment of good story telling?

Teen Wolf Werewolves

Always evolving Art to the detriment of good story telling? 

After five seasons of Teen Wolf it is safe to say that there are very different forms of wolves in this realm. While the Beta Forms look very similar (or the humanoid form if you will, since Alphas and Omegas can take the same shape aswell), Alpha shapes vary a lot.

While I agree that personal elements of each character should be included in their “beast-form”, I find it annoying and sometimes confusing when all these Alphas have basically very few in common. When setting up a fictional realm with supernatural creatures, one should define rules that apply to the whole story line. If not, (in my opinion) the story loses appeal and credibility. Let us compare the alpha’s we have come across so far.

Peter Hale (Season 1) was able to shift to full wolf and looked like a terrifying beast.

Derek Hale (Season 2 & 3) never showed his Alpha form and only shifted to his already known Beta form. Apparently he didn’t want to go “full wolf”, at least that was the official explanation. The more likely reason is that CGI wasn’t in the budget.

Deucalion (Season 3), leader of the alpha pack at the time, showed us something in between… While he clearly became larger and his skin became very dark, he didn’t fully shift into a beast. To me it looked a little bit as if the transformation had gone wrong.

Sébastien Valet, aka la bête du Gévaudan, showed completely different aspects. While technically he never was an alpha, he seemed even more powerful. It is the first werewolf in Teen Wolf who was neither born a werewolf nor was he bitten. He drank from a werewolf’s paw print. Even though he was no alpha, he was the biggest and scariest beast we have ever seen. When adopting this monstrous shape, Sébastien didn’t need to transform as other werewolves do, but the beast shaped itself around him, as if a spirit or ghost was around him. The beast itself didn’t remotely look like a wolf or werewolf (at least not to me). Jeff Davis stated that this beast was inspired by Venom, a Marvel villain, which has absolutely nothing to do with werewolves. Furthermore, his eyes turned white (not yellow blue or red), which until then was an unknown eye color for werewolves. La bête du Gévaudan defied everything we had known about werewolves. Most of the rules did not apply (lone wolves are weaker, eye color etc…) to it. This comparison is supposed to underline the “variety” of werewolves in the Teen Wolf realm and to show what a lack of continuity Teen Wolf has. While some of these differences can be explained by budget issues, most of them, I think, are simply creative choices. In my opinion, the need to be more specular, to have a villain who is even more evil and more powerful than the one’s before pushed the writers in that direction which continuously led to rule changes, shape changes etc…

While creativity certainly is a must to keep a story going, I think that this permanent “evolution” compromises the show’s credibility and ruins the story telling. What do you guys think?