Board Thread:False Info and Speculative Discussion/@comment-13965604-20140715134406/@comment-19765459-20140716232233

Paul.rea wrote: Your fan fiction aside (seriously watch it with the detailed scenarios) Gerard's acts are responsible for his condition.

Scott took a defensive move to avoid Gerard becoming an Alpha and killing Derek. If Gerard had stopped being evil for a minute - he would be fine (dying of cancer, but otherwise unharmed).

Scott tried other means to avoid Gerard getting the chance to force the bite. When all other efforts by all the other players failed - Scott's plan was all that remained to stop the greater evil of Gerard as werewolf.

He didn't set out to hurt or kill Gerard - he set out to stop him from becoming an Alpha.

That does not change the moral issue that he carried out a potentially lethal action. It could just as easily be argued that he could have stopped Gerard by putting a bullet in him (and far less convoluted).

Scott does play games with other people's lives when it comes to keeping his own hands clean. For example, a lot of people felt that Stiles was being very cold-blooded in wanting to kill Jackson. Scott was treated as more virtuous, because he opposed such an action. Unfortunately, Jackson ended up getting away and subsequently murdered a bunch of police officers. Scott could claim moral purity, but it cost a lot of other people their lives.

Which is a repeating theme here. It's the illusion of virtue created by not taking direct action, but rather relying on circumstances to work out.

Your exact words: "When all other efforts by all the other players failed..."

Yes, all the other players (Chris, Allison, Derek, etc.) would have probably taken a more direct approach to stopping Gerard had he not had backup in the form of the Kanima. Scott's (really Deaton's) plan was more subtle. But you are running on a false premise here. If Gerard had not been evil and been trying to become an Alpha then nobody would have had to take any action against him, direct or indirect. So it is a false comparison, because regardless, somebody would have had to do something because he was evil. Scott was just one of the people in line, seemingly hoping that his plan wouldn't be necessary and that Gerard would be stopped by somebody else.

Inaction is still an action. It was an awkward one for Scott because for once nobody else was ahead of him on the line to kill the villain for him. But he did know that what he was doing was going to be harmful, perhaps fatal, to Gerard. It was already established that the Bite is an iffy thing (although Argent's appear to take it well). Messing around with it could very well lead to death. Scott just took the long road in the hopes of keeping his hands clean, even though it resulted in a lot of extra lost lives.

My point being that just because Scott is the protagonist does not really mean he is a true hero. Very often on the show, the solution to a threat comes from somebody else. Or, in the case of villains who would not be stopped by anything short of death (e.g. Kate, Peter, Jennifer, Kali...) somebody else always does the deed and Scott is not faced with the choice (and sometimes not even present). Even the Kanima/Jackson was technically stopped by Lydia and Stiles. Scott was merely a bystander.

Which undermines the True Alpha theme. Many of the saves and sacrifices are not made by Scott, but they are to his benefit. He is definitely very lucky in that regard, even though he is obviously not happy about all the deaths (especially Allison).