why theo raeken is a bad person
Now, i haven’t actually rewatched teen wolf since the final episode aired, so my memories of specific timelines and events is as good as my granpda recalling his tenth birthday. But i’m still gonna address his character in a very wide net that I hope makes sense.
Now some of you are probably frantically typing away ready to whip out your swords and defend Theo’s honor. Maybe some of you are manically laughing because you hate his character and agree with the title of this post. I’ll tell you straight up: Theo Raeken is my favorite character on Teen Wolf and I don’t think the writers properly handled him at all. But that’s to be added to in a moment.
I’ve seen many say Theo is a good person. And for some reason this bugged me. I thought at first I was going crazy because isn’t he? Why, the last season would certainly point to yes. He joined up with the McCall Pack to take down the Ghost Riders and became an official ally. He protected Liam many times and showed he cared about him and the rest of the fan-named “Puppy Pack” enough that he could take people’s pain by the end of the show. Misguided in his prior seasons with killing Scott and manipulating the entire pack would show, yes, he definetly wasn’t always good.
But Bella, you say, he redeemed himself!
And I agree with that statemate. I fell in love with his character for the sole fact he was a villain turned semi-helpful ally. It worked well with the dymanics of the show as a whole.
And now I might have you scratching your heads, so let me explain beneath the cut, so I don’t take up your entire feed.
Theo Raeken was raised bad.
Theo Raeken watched his sister drown.
Theo Raeken didn’t care for anybody but himself for most of his adolescence.
He was raised by the Dread Doctors for most of his life, since he was nine or so. I won’t hesitate to say it was probably a mix of Theo having been affected by both “bad soil” and “bad seed” that really made him who he is. The bad soil was the Doctors coming into his life and turning him into a Chimera who taught him that he was a failure and a monster. The bad seed was whatever was already inside him before the Doctors that compelled him to watch his sister drown for his own benefit. All of this taught him since he was young that he was only those two things and the Doctors probably only made it worse and worse as he got older, stronger, more hungry for power.
As a teen, all he wanted was power and the Alpha status. It didn’t matter how many people he slaughtered, like his own Chimera pack, or how it made him look. Theo always only wanted power.
And then he went Underground (Hell, basically) and was tortured by his sister for who knows how long it felt like to him.
Then, Liam brought him back.
And this is when a lot of people confuse being a “good” person with a “self serving so I’ll comply” person.
Theo never truly cared about Liam at this point even though he was the one to bring Theo back. Liam was spiteful towards Theo at first. He kept him on a literal chain as if a dog. Because they couldn’t trust Theo yet, no matter how much Theo argued he was helpful.
And I would argue Liam was right to be cautious. Theo at this point would probably not hesitate to skip town if he thought his own hide was in trouble and leave Beacon Hills to rot. Because Theo was raised to only watch his own back. Why should he care about some boy with a big mouth and his girlfriend who he literally got killed. Neither like him, just adding onto his reasons to want to run.
Theo at no point in life was taught to value others. He is strikingly an outsider to the McCall pack for this very important reason. Juxtaposed to Scott, who doesn’t allow killing anyone for any reason if they can help it, who has undying faith in his friends and family, Theo who would kill his own pack to steal their power could never be one of them.
That’s exactly why Theo never joins the McCall pack.
Liam quickly finds out Theo and him are a match of wit. They both succeed in angering each other, but end up being each other’s anchors and arguably boyfriends by the subtext of the show (and hell, just plain text) in the final season. So how did they get here? What made Theo change?
Simply, again, the keyword is he learned from Liam.
Liam who shows unending faith in Theo by the end of the show and their joint trust in each other was built up beautifully. It could only be Liam, a character not as scarred as Scott and his close knit pack were by Theo, to see beneath his pre-Hell facade (which, post-hell, was more subdued to just lots of jabs and sarcasm, not as murdery and aggressive).
And here you’re now going, bella I thought this was about why theo was a bad person? why are you talking so much about how he’s changed? aren’t you just going against yourself?
It may seem like it. But just because Theo admittedly grew in opening himself up to caring for Liam, I still wouldn’t call him a good person. And here’s why.
Theo Raeken was never meant to be a good person.
Since the minute he stepped foot in Beacon Hills with his murder agenda and the moment he saved Scott from the Ghost Riders in the finale, Theo Raeken was never a good person.
He was morally grey at best.
And that’s simply put down to the story. Theo only shows true concern and care for one person in the show: Liam. And no, I won’t take other answers such as Tracy because the level of care shown to both are so different and subtext shows Liam as being an anchor for Theo, which kicks Tracy right off the boat in my opinion. Liam teaches him what it means to be in a pack.
But it’s really only Liam we see him form a good relationship with. You can argue Mason and Corey and the rest of the Puppy Pack view him better than the McCall pack. Which yes, I’d say that’s true. Both packs have very distinct views of Theo, one more unforgiving than the other. But it’s really only Liam who trusts him. If it came down to it, Mason and Corey and Hayden would only extend a hand to Theo if Liam asked them to because they trust Liam’s opinion the most. Not because they truly think Theo is better than he was pre-hell.
I can’t account for what may have happened later in the show, but I’m not sure how much better relations would have gotten for the two packs about Theo in the future. I think the Puppy Pack would come around soley since Theo is technically in it. And I doubt Theo would busy himself with trying to fix relations either.
So anyways, what does this mean? It means Liam is the only one who cares about Theo and thinks he’s truly “good”.
But narratively Liam may be wrong.
Because if the only thing keeping Theo good is Liam, I wouldn’t say he’s a good person. He’s just a person in love with very self interested tendancies that would be incredibly hard to break.
Theo was always meant to contrast the McCall pack. Their values against his. Their goals against the Dread Doctors.
Theo comes back from hell with these values more mellowed because he just doesn’t want to be sent back. Which honestly is fair. You can’t fault a kid for reverting from killing for power trips to just wanting to stay alive. Theo Raeken never cared about anyone else unless it meant saving his own skin and that’s just not something he can unlearn right away. I wish we could see where he ended up with Liam and the Puppy Pack because I feel he would somewhat unravel some of those knots with their help, but we’ll sadly never know.
Teen Wolf wasted Theo Raeken’s potential.
Now, some of you may think his storyline and arc were beautifully done. And honestly, I’ll be standing right there with you. I loved it. Seeing him go from one of the best villains on the show to a reluctant ally with a budding romance with, of all people, Liam, was so well threaded into the show it was refreshing to watch.
But I think it was missing something important.
And that was Theo Raeken’s childhood.
They completely casted away exploring their villain’s origin, and with a character that becomes part of the ensemble later on, this struck me as strange and narratively unsatisfying.
The Dread Doctors were basically raising a nine year old for evil how exactly? What did they do? How was Theo trained, taught, socialized? He seems to be a charmer and good at manipulation, but that has to be learned. Did he regularly leave the confines of their lab and go to school? The writers never really bothered to go into these details that I think would have made us feel for Theo more. Without even a small glimpse into his childhood, we’re missing a huge piece of who Theo as a character is.
Not to mention, Theo has nightmares about Tara from Hell post-hell. He’s obviously rattled and scared and feels guilt for his sister. Why didn’t we see more of him dealing with this? It would have shown his inner conflict of his old “bad” self and the learning of his “good” self with the Puppy Pack. Would have made him more dimensional than just Theo Raeken, the Chimera who killed his sister and tried to steal the McCall pack.
And to top it off, Theo wasn’t even in that stupid slow-mo walk in the series finale. Which really frusterated me since he was shown as important and a vital character the last few seasons and he (and Cody) weren’t thought of as relevant enough to be in that scene, even though he narratively should have been.
Theo Raeken’s potential was wasted. He could have been a villain with a backstory revealing why he is the way he is. But alas, I never trusted Jeff Davis to handle his character well. Especially as the season neared it’s end and Theo and Liam’s relationship was left irritatingly ambiguous (queerbait who?)
So there you have it folks. This is why I believe Theo Raeken is a bad person. Not necessarily because he wants to be, but because socialization as a child is hard stuff to break. But I like to be optimistic and believe he relearns what it means to be in a pack and be human.
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