AWARDS
THIS WEEK’S WOLF PACK PUPPY
This is a genuine first (since I didn’t start recapping until well after the early seasons when this would have been the obvious weekly answer), but, SCOTT.
He is our hero and he will almost certainly find a way to avoid this in the end, but that is only because television can land on ideal, peaceful solutions. The real world rarely works out that way. But if anyone can figure out how to give us a model to work from now in this, our present moment of cultural pressure so intense it almost daily feels like war is just one more free-speech-sanctioned white supremacy rally away, it’s Scott McCall. Pup! I wish you the very best!
BEST REACTION TO SOMETHING SUPERNATURALLY RIDICULOUS
Theo, his self-serving chimera teeth being pulled to prove he’s got the pack’s back as they gear up to walk out the station’s front doors to take the Hunters head on.
Get you a reluctant chimera who can do both (villainy and heroics).
WEEKLY REMINDER THAT BEACON HILLS IS ON A HELLMOUTH
REIGNING PRESIDENT OF THE SCOTT MCCALL FAN CLUB
Mmmmm Malia. MALIA.
BEST PRODUCT PLACEMENT
Literally nothing about this episode was good!!! Officers of the law = corruptible. FBI = way too little, way too late. Buddhism = ineffective. Anger management training = also ineffective. But that, at least, is temporarily keeping Theo’s salty attitude in line, so, I guess that?
THIS WEEK
Scary Movie MCMXVII
Theo’s not dead!!! THEO IS NOT DEAD. I am so relieved, and also so horrified at being so relieved, because do you not remember him torturing the entire pack just two seasons ago? Scott DIED and now I’m RELIEVED that Theo, whom Price trusts, is not dead. What. A. World.
Anyway, Theo is wet and being electrocuted by the ex-orderly so evil and maliciously abusive even Eichen House, whose head doctor straight up murdered three dozen people, was like, “whoa, dude, maybe too much???” fired him.
WHY is Theo being so thoroughly tortured (and also electrocuted)? Because he got swept up somehow in a neo-Hunter raid on escaped wolves from Satomi’s stacked stone Buddhist pack who may or may not have been responsible for the murder of a few of their fellow neo-Hunters and are now tied up next to him being tortured to out themselves as the killers.
They refuse to break, but Theo refuses to break even harder—in fact, whenever they all get out of this, he’s going to kill them for putting him through it all. Oh, Theo. Give the machismo a rest for a hot second!
He eventually does, literally. Seeing that the constant electric shocks are melting the plastic around Tierney’s wrist next to him, he eggs the sadistic ex-Eichen nurse on, eventually getting the idiot to send through such a shock that Theo is able to bust through his bonds. The shape of his revenge? Freeing Tierney and Jiang, and tying the ex-Eichen nurse up in their place. He *does* leave the electrocution box face down to continuously shock the neo-Hunter on their way out, but he immediately kills exactly no one. Theo! You big softie! You really are working to redeem yourself!
Unfortunately, he still has a lot of karma to work out: the trio doesn’t get halfway through the parking lot before they are stopped by none other than Sherriff Stilinski himself, there to arrest the three of them for murder.
Druid, Please
You know who else is back? Deaton is also back! And, incomprehensibly, so is Eichen House. YEP, Deaton is back, he’s all up in Eichen House, and despite the fact that no one seems to have been even thinking of working with him to investigate the mystery Wild Hunt escapee/dead Hellhound/new Hunter, he’s investigating! Specifically, he is investigating the holding cell the dead Hellhound had been frozen in/Parrish had almost died in, which has in subsequent weeks started radiating the same terror Argent and Melissa felt coming off the body-that-is-not-a-body. According to the last living orderly who works there, no one has managed to last more than 30 seconds even in the hallway outside the cell, so good luck, Deaton, lasting long enough IN it to get any good intel!
Little does the orderly know: Deaton is an effing druid who’s faced down mobster Oni, Deucalion’s sociopathic Alpha Pack, and every emo mood Derek Hale has ever lashed out from. He knows from terror! Thus, he is more than able to last long enough to tear the cell’s cinderblock wall apart with his bare hands and rip an etched stone tablet from the second wall the cinderblock was covering up. Because magic! I guess!
She Fought the Law
The “she” in this case is changeable. One “she” who fought was Quinn, who survived being shot in the head by one of Stilinski’s deputies, but remembers nothing about the incident except that it WAS a deputy who shot her. I.e., not who, which is what would be super helpful at this particular juncture. The second “she” is, of course, Tamora, who has taken the opportunity of her cover being blown by every supernatural in town to just up and hold the sheriff’s station hostage, threatening to storm it and kill anyone in their way if Stilinski/Scott’s pack refuse to hand over Tierney and Jiang, who are currently hanging out in lockup with Theo.
Both Quinn and Tamora present imminent threats, but Tamora’s is the only one with concrete facts to back it up, between Tierney and Jiang’s identities and the arbitrary midnight deadline. Thus, Quinn’s mystery Hunter-deputy issue is pushed to the side, as Stilinski and Scott each try to strategize their own way to get out of this particular mess.
Here is what happens: Scott and Stilinski both agree, full stop, that no one will be handing Tierney and Jiang over to be killed. Whether or not they murdered any Hunters (they did, Scott discovers, after True Alpha roaring them into showing the murderous blue of their eyes, at which point they admit to turning around and stalking the first Hunters they could find after being stalked for weeks after their pack was killed, by those Hunters or others), Scott and Stilinski refuse to accept any kind of vigilante justice in response.
After that, though, their strategies diverge. Stilinski wants to wait, hoping they can negotiate different terms and/or call in bigger guns for backup, the town’s supernatural secret be damned. Scott wants to get his pack, along with Theo (now free from charges of murder), Quinn, and Tierney and Jiang, out of there. At Lydia’s urging/Malia’s terrified reaction to the skinless fear monster that has shown up in the station again (somehow managing to target one person at a time), Scott agrees to lead his pack out through the front door to fight their way through the neo-Hunters.
Before they can storm the lot, though, the traitor in their ranks drops a smoke grenade and Nolan rolls in through the back door. He is immediately caught. Initially, it looks like he has made a huge mistake and screwed up the first mission he was sent on, getting caught trying to steal Tierney and Jiang under cover of chaos, but actually his being taken was all part of the plan. Left handcuffed to a bench in the lockup room, Nolan quickly breaks free, and is about to shatter a vial of wolfsbane in Tierney and Jiang’s faces as Liam sees him on one of the station monitors and races in to stop him.
Nolan is moved to one of the side offices and re-handcuffed, whatever tool he used to pick himself free apparently also taken away. One deputy is left to guard him, while everyone else returns to the main room to discuss how Grant shooting a bloody #7 jersey piece through the station window is intended to rattle them/Liam (7 was Brett’s number). Unfortunately, this is when the fear monster reappears, now targeting the deputy left behind with Nolan. He hangs himself, and Nolan is stuck watching it happen. Then, when Parrish and Stilinski race in to help after Nolan starts screaming, the traitor deputy follows behind and is also targeted by the fear monster, shooting herself in the head in order to escape the worse end she is convinced is inevitable, and they are ALL stuck watching it happen.
There is nothing good or okay about any of this, but Scott and Stilinski do still try to make the best of it, using Theo’s intel about who came and went from their torture bunker (no one except Eichen guard) and attempting subterfuge by using the two deputies’ bodies as decoys, trying to convince Tamora et al they are Tierney and Jiang, who died in an effort to escape.
Unfortunately, while Tamora truly doesn’t know what Tierney and Jiang look like, she does know they have Satomi’s pack tattoo on their wrists. Scott’s pack doesn’t have tattoos, so he never stopped to consider this. It finally looks like the jig is up and Scott/Tierney&Jiang/Stilinski are all in for it, when BAM!
And the Law Lost
Scott’s no-good absentee FBI-bro dad shows up!
And, like, did Scott ever tell him “everything” like he promised? Because if so, is his dad immediately leaving and never once checking back in sort of the ultimate dick-human move? And if not, what good does it do to call him in now, when a very specific and complex question of lives is on the line? IDK this is all so weird, but whatever, hi, Dad! Hope your complete lack of situational insight doesn’t end up killing anyone Scott is trying to protect!!!
Narrator: it did. The driver of the official FBI van Scott’s dad so persuasively and bloodlessly “convinced” Tamora to “let” him take Tierney and Jiang away in? The driver was a neo-Hunter, and he drove two blocks away before stopping and executing the two wolves in ice cold blood, much to Tamora’s—and Grant’s and Nolan’s—smug satisfaction.
The Promise of Anog-Ite
While it seems like all of Beacon Hills AND the FBI have been locked in battle at the sheriff’s station this episode, there’s been stuff happening elsewhere! Namely, Corey and Mason meeting up with (…okay, breaking into the animal clinic and then being FORCED to meet up with) Deaton to work together to solve the next step of the Wild Hunt monster mystery.
Both #Morey and Deaton determined that to solve the mystery of what came out, they needed to go to the beginning, which in this case, meant wolves—specifically, the wolves that died of spider infestations at the beginning of the season, which, I guess, have been chilling in the animal clinic ever since. Do animal clinics generally have morgues? Apparently in Beacon Hills, they have to!
Anyway, as the trio stare down at the still laughable stuffed prop wolf carcass, they start putting pieces together. This is where Mason and Corey’s trail runs cold, but Deaton has the stone slab with half a face etched on it to show them. “IDEK,” he says, hauling the thing out. “You want to see the other half?” Corey asks. Yep! There is another half hidden on the un-etched half of the slab’s face, which Corey’s invisibility powers let him see. He traces it out, and the moment Deaton sees that it is a mirror image of the half-face already visible, he’s like “DUH. ANOG-ITE.” Yeah! Duh!
Anyway, Anog Ite is also known as Two-Face and is a woman with two faces, one beautiful and one hideously disfigured, who feeds off paranoia and fear and discord. From a myth written up as part of the NPS’s maintenance of Wind Cave in South Dakota (a very good cave I highly recommend!), in which a wolf basically plays the part of the serpent in Eden:
There were two spirits who lived on the surface of the earth: Iktomi and Anog-Ite. Iktomi, the spider, was the trickster spirit. Before he was Iktomi, his name was Woksape — “Wisdom” — but lost his name and position when he helped the evil spirit Gnaskinyan play a trick on all the other spirits. Anog-Ite, the double face woman, had two faces on her head. On one side, she had a beautiful face, rivaling the beauty of any other woman who existed. On the other, she had a horrible face, which was twisted and gnarled. To see this face would put chills down anyone’s spine.
Iktomi and Anog-Ite had only each other for company. Iktomi spent his time playing tricks on Anog-Ite, torturing her and never allowing her to live in peace, but this pastime soon bored him. He wanted new people to play tricks on, so he set his sights on the humans. He knew he needed help for this trick; he asked Anog-Ite, promising he’d never bother her again. She agreed to these terms and began loading a leather pack.
Aside from the possibility that, given this monster comes from Lakota myth, maybe Kira will return from HER native-myth journey to help in the final hour, Tamora is definitely Anog Ite, right? Her other face hidden in her fantastic hair? I suppose it could also be disfigured druid Jennifer Blake, who was also part of the Deucalion season when Gerard double-crossed everyone, and who had one beautiful human face and one disfigured monster face and sowed fear and paranoia for fun, and who I *think* I saw in a flash in one of the season’s frenetic trailers?? But she was turned evil by modern circumstance, and this Anog Ite has ostensibly been hidden in the Wild Hunt for over a century, so I’m going, with Tamora as the Anog Ite—or at least as having been possessed by the Anog-Ite somehow after her run-in with the Beast.
Regardless, as useful as naming the fear monster is, part of Scott’s dad’s negotiation with Tamora and her neo-Hunters was that every supernatural in Beacon Hills would hie on out of there—Corey *very* much included this time. And so, he and Mason have to say their goodbyes. They do NOT have to say them in the BHHS lacrosse locker room, but then again, don’t they???
Locker room background and also Mason’s kinda-not-humanity notwithstanding, this goodbye is incredibly sad. Mason is in tears, he wants to go with Corey and everyone to protect them, but no—Corey is standing firm. Mason has always protected him; he wants to be able to do this one thing, this one time, to protect Mason for a change.
Hands on chests, they say goodbye, then Corey walks out of Mason’s life forever.
So Smart, So Stealth
And so Mason is left to return to the halls of Beacon Hills High alone, the last pack human standing, not a single one of his friends or him pausing to consider that maybe Tamora Moore, lone survivor of the Beast of Gevaudon’s school bus rampage, might be holding an extra hot irrational grudge towards him, who was literally the physical vessel for the serial killing monster. This is not me calling out Chekhov’s human: I genuinely think not one person inside or outside of the show stopped to consider this detail.
ANYWAY, former reincarnated French serial killing super wolf or not, Mason has been left alone at a school that barely knows how to school, and he is not doing great! Without Corey, without Liam, without the promise of investigating supernatural shenanigans ever again, the world has lost its color. Nothing matters. Math? WHO NEEDS IT. He can’t even open the exercise book when he’s supposed to be writing his problem on the board. But then, where there was nothing, a message appears! ANIMAL CLINIC it says in giant letters even Greenberg in the back could read. NOW it reads, after Mason whips around to look if anyone else has noticed. 😁 it reads, now in front of Sydney, who smiles back as Mason flees the classroom like a boy on fire.
Cut to: Deaton’s animal clinic, the animal clinic where Scott has worked and half-lived since Season 1, the animal clinic where every supernatural threat has had a pivotal narrative turn. Mason comes running in, sure of nothing except the possibility that Corey might be there, and, SUPRISE!!! IT IS EVERYONE. ALL OF SCOTT’S PACK. EVEN THEO. NO ONE COULD POSSIBLY HAVE ANTICIPATED EITHER THIS TWIST, OR THE LOCATION IN WHICH IT OCCURRED. THE HUNTERS WILL DEFINITELY NEVER FIND THEM THERE.
“We had to make everyone believe we were actually leaving,” Scott explains. What did Mason think they were going to do, though? Run?!
LOLOLOLOLOL. No. Duh. Scott is a flippin’ HERO. And #Morey are back together. Between those facts and the VERY GOOD Ethan/Jackson teaser this week gifted us, things are finally starting to look up…
NEXT TIME
…isn’t until September 8 (VMAs were this Sunday, yo)!! But when we get the show back, oh boy, do we GET. IT. BACK.
About the Contributor:
Alexis Gunderson is a TV critic and audiobibliophile. A Wyoming expat, she now lives in Maryland, where she runs the DC chapter of the FYA Book Club. She can be found talking about Teen TV on Twitter, and her longform criticism can be found on Authory.
