Teen Wolf News Special Report:
- EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second in a series of articles on one of the more interesting aspects of Teen Wolf Fandom. User Calicokat approached me with the idea of introducing folks to the "META" concept of Teen Wolf. There are many facets (as there are with each portion of the fandom) but the simple premise behind the META movement is that there is a hidden narrative across the seasons. These articles are not designed to be a comprehensive treatise on the subject, we're only touching on the basics. These articles should in no way be considered canon.
Guest Author: Calicokat
Last week, in part one of the META Teen Wolf series, I talked about the show's use of water and the possibility of an malevolent, aquatic entity moving beneath the surface and behind the scenes. This week I take a look at a phenomenon marked by sets that change significantly from scene to scene, reversed images and characters who appear or disappear in an instant. Some speculate that these are not mere changes in set dressings but are instead pointing to shift between different dimensions.
Shuffled Surroundings[]
One of the clearest examples of objects and set pieces shifting locations or transforming into other versions is found in Stiles' room during Wolf's Bane.
When Stiles arrives home from school he enters a clean and empty room, one with a werewolf hiding in it. After warding off his father and closing the door, Stiles comes back to a room where Derek's presence is one of the few things that hasn't changed.
Taking a clearer, similarly framed long shot from later in the episode: The dresser and headboard are suddenly covered in clutter, the carpet has changed from blue to grey with fewer dots, there is now a chair and small table to the right of the dresser, and the poster above the bedside table has changed to a Spite Records poster.
Small details have changed, too. The cut-out of the snowboarder is larger. The poster of the black mass over a watery background has become a whirlpool. Even the hand drawn sunset has been swapped out for another hand drawn sunset.
While the original sunset has only the top two frames, close-ups reveal the words "Tomorrow Never Knows" are now written beneath, the title of a Beatle's song that in its lyrics suspiciously reads: "Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void."
Getting down to the details of the set it becomes clear that the re-dressing is total. Besides the added clutter, the lamp shades on both lamps have been changed out, the coffee mug has been exchanged for a candle, and the kleenex boxes, radios, and travel mugs switched out. The bed is lower to the ground and the skateboard is flipped.
These are details I hadn't noticed at first, and I want to thank my friend certhia-pi for pointing them out to me.
This is, by far, the clearest example but, once you start looking for these set changes, you'll find similar shifts throughout the series.
Some believe these changes are purposeful and indicate that the characters have shifted from one dimension to another.
A Mirror World[]
Often when the dimensional transition occurs, entire shots or a few objects in the shot get reversed or "mirrored." This is one of the most frequently documented Meta phenomenon on the show, found in episodes from each season. In Illuminated the DJ and his tattoo mirror when Derek enters the loft to end the party. He also gains a necklace.
While haunted by Peter Hale in Venomous, Lydia suffers a supernatural hallucination and writes backwards on the chalkboard. A case of physical mirroring as part of the narrative.
The wolfsbane-inspired hallucinations in Party Guessed also seem to take characters to a mirror dimension. After Allison's shadowy double appears, the scene with the painting flips to the mirrored version.
Mirroring seems to be a primary transition when mundane scenes take a turn toward the supernatural. In Restraint, when Jackson transforms into the kanima during detention, the library bookshelves mirror. The book titles are reversed.
Often these dimensional shifts are signaled by the use of actual mirrors within the scenes, giving the audience a look into the supernatural side before we enter.
Appearences and Disappearences[]
The sudden appearance and disappearance of characters is another cue to suggest multiple dimensions are at play within the show. It jumped out at me during a rewatch of Anchors that, without any changes in the surroundings, Kira suddenly just appears within a shot.
As Mr. Yukimura introduces himself a slow pan over reveals there’s nobody sitting behind the blonde haired boy in the row adjacent to Stiles and Scott.
- Mr. Yukimura: I’m sure, by now, you all know my daughter, Kira. Or you might not since she’s never actually mentioned anyone from school. Or brought a friend home for that matter.
As he speaks there’s another slow pan, revealing a girl now sitting behind the blonde haired boy.
- Mr. Yukimura: Either way, there she is.
This scene involves deliberate camera work, adding an actor to a scene mid-scene, and dialogue drawing attention to Kira never having interacted with the other students alongside her sudden presence.
Despite these cues, the natural and automatic first assumption of the audience is that the character we just noticed has been in the scene the entire time, suggesting that Kira's appearance is background world building.
While Kira's appearance caught my eye, the sudden disappearance of characters is much more noticeable.
We often see this happen with the Hales but we've seen that Derek can move faster than other people can keep track of. This might be part of the phenomenon but the Hales are really suspicious in ways that deserve their own meta.
A clearer example involves Matt, there's no suggestion of super speed with him. When Matt instantaneously vanishes amid the chaos at the end of Party Guessed he just disappears. Perhaps he stepped away into this other dimension?
The characters that appear and disappear suddenly more often than any others are the oni. At the beginning of De-Void, the Sheriff's line implies that Stiles has disappeared in the same way as these completely supernatural creatures.
Because later in De-Void Stiles crawls out of the floor identically to the oni crawling out of the floor of the loft's balcony in front of Lydia in Galvanize, I suspect that a similarity to the oni is, in Stiles' case, the explanation. A dimension shift could even explain how Void Stiles escaped with Lydia unseen at the end of the episode, and how he similarly escaped from inside the MRI into the hallway in Riddled.
With Kira apperating, too, and potentially the Hales and Matt, these events hint at the physical nature of the supernatural in relationship to the natural, or the surreal versus the real.
Alternate Dimensions[]
The idea of alternate dimensions isn't original to me and has been widely speculated on in Tumblr's #teen wolf meta community. The nature of these worlds beyond 'natural' and 'supernatural' is tough to pinpoint.
One clue the show offers is Kira's printout on the Six Bardos of Tibetan Buddhism. Bardos are a series of "liminal," or intermediary states of being that include the moment of death, the time after death, and the time between lives, but just as importantly they include three living states: waking life, dreams, and meditation.
In detail, the bardos as understood in Tibetan Buddhism are as follows*:
- Shynei bardo (life): between birth and death
- Milam bardo (dreams): between sleep and waking
- Samten bardo (meditation): between dualistic consciousness and enlightened awareness
- Chikkhai bardo (dying; "death point;" moment of death): between life and a larger view of reality
- Chönyi bardo (the time after death; reality): between the death point and the process of reincarnation
- Sidpa bardo (between lives): between reality and birth
Normally in this philosophical system humans occupy one bardo at a time. However, in Teen Wolf in The Divine Move the characters enter chönyi bardo, the bardo described by Kira, while still living their waking lives. Stiles sleepwalking, or in milam bardo, while interacting with the other characters could also be considered living two overlapping bardos.
Tumblr user vidronoliquidificador has speculated to me that characters who enter the white light may be in the bardo of meditation. In a reading where the characters are moving in and out of the six bardos, they might also be in the bardo of dying.
The rearrangement of objects, mirroring of shots and shots of mirrors, and the changing ability of the audience to percieve characters seem to be clues to cue us in on transitions between shifting dimensions, but right now pinpointing whether there are two or six dimensions is beyond my abilities!
Alternately or complementarily, while discussing the history of nemata and the goddess Nematona, thiefofsamhain shares :
- I’ve said before that I believe Beacon Hills to be a closed circuit, one of many places that is both in the human world and in the supernatural world, but also part of neither. A bit like Avalon from T.A. Baron. An In-Between Place.
The important thing to all of it is whatever the nature of reality in Beacon Hills, we, the audience, are already able to discover things about it within seasons 1-4, within episodes we've already watched.
- Beyond my personal knowledge of Buddhism, I have partially relied on Buddhist scholar Robert A. F. Thurman's key words for what each bardo lies between from the introduction to his translation of Bardo Thodol, a text popularly known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a guidebook for the Buddhist's journey through chönyi bardo.