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 Teen Wolf News 081314



 Teen Wolf Can’t Tell Time Part XXV

Even with Argent’s fancy “, Teen Wolf still can’t keep to a timeline. This latest error is one that even casual viewers will notice.

On Monday, we got a look at Malia’s birth certificate. For superfans and the creative writers in the audience, this kind of prop is gold since it can give us solid details about the characters. Unfortunately, when Teen Wolf provides such detail it’s usually a source of consternation and confusion.

The document shown says Malia was born in 1998 – late in 1998 and adopted in the final week of the year.

That makes Malia 13 years and 2 months old in the established Teen Wolf Timeline because it is very early in 2012 in Beacon Hills.

“Ah! But,” I can hear the folks in Northridge saying, “we don’t accept your timeline and we keep the show current. While only 1 year has passed for our characters – it’s this year.”

To which I reply – you screwed up even your own limited timeline then.

Let’s stick to THEIR timeline for a moment.

It’s early 2014 right?

Malia just turned 15 in November. So she was 14 when they found her in the woods in October (in Anchors the Halloween episode was Illuminated). They said at the time that she disappeared 8 years ago when she was….

6 years old?

No, because it was established in the dialogue (Agent McCall in More Bad Than Good) that she was 9 when she went missing so she must have been 9. Right?

We also know it was 8 years ago because her disappearance and [[Claudia Stilinski|Claudia Stilinski’s] death all happened at around the same time according to Sheriff Stilinski.

We know Claudia died in 2004 (according to the production’s timeline provided by another tragically dated prop in Silverfinger) so Malia was…

6 years old?

“Well, see,” the folks at Teen Wolf HQ counter, “we wrote those scripts in 2012 and 2013 so they were right. But now it’s 2014. See?”

Unfortunately for them (and us) the episodes in question aired barely 8 months apart meaning, for the audience, hardly any time has passed between the two.

The most insulting part of all this is how simple the solution really is – stop showing dates.

Just stop writing yourself into ridiculous corners. Never mention the year - ever. Y'all know Breaking Bad spent 4 seasons in 2008 with only one glaring timeline mistake that I can remember (a 2010 banner in Los Pollos Hermanos). It can be done simply and easily by never mentioning the year and not making dated props.

Most of Malia's adoption form was obscured. How hard would it be to simply put 11/28 and then, in the blank provided for the year, either smudge it or make the second number unreadable in some other simple way?

How hard would it be to fix this glaring error in post-production? Really y’all, it’s one number that creates a sinkhole of a continuity error in the minds of even casual viewers. You couldn’t take 6 minutes and a few hundred bucks of CGI and fix it?

Officially, as far as show canon goes, we here at Teen Wolf Wikia are ignoring the whole birth date. She disappeared 8 years ago when she was 9 years old as established in previous dialogue.

Please - I'm begging you gentle reader - tell me I'm wrong in the comments section. I really want to be wrong about all this.

 Simplified Teen Wolf Timeline


 * Season 1 – January to February 19th 2011
 * Dates provided by the newspaper in the final episode.


 * Season 2 – February 22nd to April 2011 with a coda scene in May 2011
 * Dates from Kate’s funeral three days after the end of Season 1 and Lydia's Birthday in March.


 * Season 3a – August /September 2011
 * Dated from the “4 months” references in Tattoo.


 * Season 3b – October/November 2011
 * Dated from the Halloween Episode


 * Season 4 – January/February 2012
 * Dated from the beginning of the school semester and the “few weeks” reference to Lydia’s Birthday in March.