User blog:Paul.rea/Teen Wolf News 080117

Teen Wolf News 080117

Grade Skip Explained
A few observant fans, those not overwhelmed by that amazing coda scene with Dylan O'Brien at the FBI, noticed something odd about the debut episode of Season 6b. It appeared that Mason and Liam had skipped a year in school. They were Sophomores during the last school year (Season 5 and Season 6a), but, when school resumes this time, they’ll be Seniors. This revelation came with no on-screen explanation, but, after some investigation, we managed to get to the bottom of the missing Junior year. After checking our Teen Wolf Wikia archives, we found the very first reference to Liam’s school-class status. In Season 4, Episode 403 (Muted), Garrett says that Liam could be Beacon Hill’s first ever “Freshman captain.”

Then, throughout Season 5, students in their class are repeatedly referenced as "Sophomores." For them to be rising seniors in the school year ahead conflicts with established canon (also it’s just plain nutty).

Rather than just point out the problem, we decided to ask Teen Wolf creator and executive producer Jeff Davis if this was a mistake or was the grade skipping poetically-licensed?
 * “Lol, I said ‘Only Paul will ask.’


 * “Yes, more poetic. It was decided that, as principal, Natalie Martin pushed them for early graduation after the events of the Beast (in order) to get them the hell out of Beacon Hills High School a little faster.”

Jeff and the writers laid the groundwork that Lydia’s mom is trying to cover up everything supernatural back in the Season 6a episode Superposition. Natalie declared the school a “dedicated safe space” and explained how she tried to convince 23 students that The Beast they saw in the library was just a large bear and that Scott’s fangs were the result of “Acute Teenage Hallucination Syndrome.” Now we know just how far she’s willing to go to keep supernatural shenanigans out of the classroom. I can't even guess what this level of "social promotion" means for the quality of education at Beacon Hills High School. That'll be something for the superintendent to worry about.

Who’s That Hellhound?
One might think that the name Halwyn means “hot guy who stands around and listens really, really intently,” but it doesn’t. It means salt in Welsh, and, for Teen Wolf fans, it means we have a brand-new hellhound to ogle, I mean fear, a brand-new hellhound to fear. There was lots of talk before we met him about whether Casey Deidrick’s new character would be a good guy or a bad guy. The answer is “It’s complicated.” I looked up that whole Chaotic/Neutral/Lawful thing but he doesn’t seem to fit neatly into any of those categories.

Halwyn is on a mission to capture some truly big and bad evil thing that escaped the Wild Hunt when our favorite Teen Wolf Pack rescued Stiles back before graduation. He needs to catch this thing and lock it up. It’ll probably save a bunch of lives and stuff (if he can do it) so that would make him a good guy.

Of course, on the way to saving all those hypothetical people, he’s already blown up one guy and beat up another, and that was before he cost Jordan Parrish and Liam so many hit points with their epic hallway battle. That would seem to make him a bad guy. He’s a good guy but willing to do real bad guy things in order to accomplish what he has to do, which is apparently good. In other words, he’s Batman.

History of Halwyn
If you’ve read this far and wonder why I’ve not mentioned the seemingly most important event involving Halwyn from the first episode, it’s because I don’t wish to spoil, and those things aren’t really permanent for supernaturals on this show anyway.

Beyond his penchant for listening intently and punching things while on fire, Halwyn is apparently really, really old. He’s been sitting encased in volcanic rock since at least 1912. That must be one hell of a spa treatment because he looked ah-maze-ing for at least 100+ years old.
 * <p class="MsoNormal">EDITOR’S NOTE: We would like to acknowledge that the choice to have the Eichen House "special ward" open its doors in 1912 seems to be a nod from the production to this site’s dogged insistence that it is currently August of 2013 in Beacon Hills. This makes it roughly 100 years since Hawlyn’s rock body was stored there. We’ll see if they stick to this canonical signpost in the last nine episodes, but, for now, ~bows head toward LA~

<p class="MsoNormal">Halwyn apparently busted out of his hard candy shell because of the events of Riders on the Storm and is now hunting whatever came out of the limbo train station with Stiles and the gang.

<p class="MsoNormal">More details about Halwyn’s past will be fleshed out a bit in Episode 612 when the wonderful John Posey returns to give us an explication download in his role as Eichen House chief supernatural wrangler Conrad Fenris.

Said the Spider to the Fly Review
<p class="MsoNormal">Teen Wolf returned with an ambitious debut in its new Sunday night slot on MTV. Somehow Lindsay Sturman, Eric Wallace, Angela Harvey, and staff writer Adam Karp (with his first solo scripting credit) managed to fit two hours’ worth of crazy into a 40-minute timeslot. Original series Director Russell Mulcahy then managed to make the whole thing look like a feature film.

<p class="MsoNormal">They gave us an exploding hellhound-on-hellhound battle, rats freaking out, a new guidance counselor with a big ole gun, magic bullets, a bloody wolf on the lacrosse field, giant spider webs that talk, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum. <p class="MsoNormal">In the words of the always delightful Claire Andrew as Sydney, “Why does this keep happening to our school?!?” Ah, dear naïve Sydney, I see your hair grew back. That’s a plus. Right?

So Cuddly But Also Cray
<p class="MsoNormal">In addition to all that crazy, we got to spend some quality time with Froy Gutierrez’s new character Nolan. It was a short scene but you could feel the instability rolling off that kid in waves! I’m really looking forward to all the different levels of comic-book-villain crazy he has to offer. Froy kind of warned me in our exclusive Teen Wolf News interview with him last week, but nothing could prepare for just how good he was in that first episode. <p class="MsoNormal">His performance was even more impressive given how nervous he says he was around the Teen Wolf family. “The old school cast members were ridiculously kind to me. Given my admiration for the actors, I'm thankful they sat through my fanboying. In fact, my dad hung out with Tyler Posey on set more than he did with me!”

<p class="MsoNormal">We’ll get more Nolan when Teen Wolf returns next week. Also look for Andrew Matarazzo to make his Teen Wolf debut in Face-to-Faceless (Episode 614) directed by the always amazing Linden Ashby.

Return of the Kings
<p class="MsoNormal">Of course, the best thing about the episode was not the explosions, the clawing and burning fights, or the hot teacher with a big ole gun. Nope. The absolute best thing was the coda scene that caught us up with not one but two fan-favorite characters. <p class="MsoNormal">This time last year, we were not expecting the return of Dylan O'Brien for the final episodes. The plan at the time was that he would return to shoot episode 610 whenever his schedule would allow and then be done with the show. Teen Wolf News reported exactly that in October and December and nobody believed us.

<p class="MsoNormal">Things changed in January. Jeff and his team got with Dylan and his team and managed to work out some more time for him to return to the show. We reported that when it happened too, and, again, nobody believed us.

<p class="MsoNormal">While I was able to scoop everybody on those stories, nothing about anything I’d been told in advance about his return prepared me for just how satisfying the final scene of episode 611 actually was. If you’ve not seen it, I’ll not ruin it for you except to say that Stiles is thriving and still OH SO FUNNY.

<p class="MsoNormal">We also caught up with Derek Hale. Even though the episode did not include Tyler Hoechlin, they showed video of him from Season 1. The actor will return to Teen Wolf later in the season and, no spoilers here, he’s in a whole lot of trouble.

<p class="MsoNormal">If you can’t wait to watch it or just want to read through Stiles’ voicemail again, check out our OVERLY DETAILED recap of Said the Spider to the Fly.

Next Week On Teen Wolf: Raw Talent
<p class="MsoNormal">Next week on Teen Wolf, things may not get crazier (I don’t think I could take it), but it will certainly be a whole lot louder. This was the episode they were shooting when I visited the Teen Wolf set back in October. Let’s just say there are many, many, many, many, many, many guns involved.

<p class="MsoNormal">If you watch the video, be careful beCAUSE IT’S REALLY, REALLY LOUD IN THE MIDDLE!

<p class="MsoNormal">MTV is also hyping this episode around the return of Cody Saintgnue’s character Brett and his encounter with the new Guidance Counselor played by Sibongile Mlambo and a special smoking lacrosse ball.

<p class="MsoNormal">Raw Talent is directed the other original Teen Wolf director Tim Andrew and will feature the return of Chris Argent! <p class="MsoNormal">Raw Talent is out Sunday at 8 PM on MTV and the MTV App. You can also purchase new episode through iTunes and Amazon Video.