Power Dynamics in Teen Wolf
Scott McCall views being a werewolf as a power fantasy and as an opportunity to be the star of the show (hilariously enough, that's how Tyler Posey saw it too before getting a reality check.) In fact, the first thing Scott does after getting a werewolf upgrade is take full advantage of it to cheat his way into first line and impress the girl he's creepily obsessed with. Remember Garrison, that poor bus driver? Scott couldn't care less about Garrison, or that he could have murdered someone; Scott only cared about Allison, and his main concern was if he could still date Allison or not. And when Stiles and Derek both call him out on it in the very same episode, Scott doesn't even try to deny it, because he KNOWS that Stiles and Derek are right. In Teen Wolf Season 1, Stiles and Derek spend all their time investigating on the Alpha, risking their own life to save Scott's ass and everyone's life, figuring everything out and cleaning after Scott's messes. Meanwhile, Scott spends all his time throwing jealous fits and temper tantrums, getting into dick measuring contests with his rival (Jackson), being absolutely useless, and whining about Allison, lacrosse and popularity.
There are a couple of things that I want to address here. First of all, Scott is fairly self-centered at the beginning of his transformation and--at first--that could be explained away by the fact that he was a teenager. Most teens aren’t exactly the pinnacle of putting others first.
Cheating his way onto first line on the lacrosse team never sat well with me because it was the first time we see him use his abilities as a battering ram. This is when we start to get a feel for how he uses his gifts. He sees them as a means to an end and doesn’t try to think of any other way, unlike Stiles who was warning him and trying to get him to understand just how dangerous it was to use his new werewolf abilities so recklessly.
We should also note that Scott uses his abilities to listen in on Allison in order to gain private information to use to his advantage in trying to date her.
When both Stiles and Derek call Scott out on using his gift recklessly and selfishly, Scott never admits that they’re right. We are never even given a piece of dialogue that has him apologizing for his actions on the lacrosse field, which is even more telling about his character and how he was written.
He doesn’t take personal responsibility or accountability because he thinks it no longer applies.
We only get to see him human for a brief while, but while he was still a normal teenage boy, he actually seemed responsible and level-headed and even pulling his weight with doing work around the house, trying to help his mom as much as possible, to make it easier on her.
The instant he is turned into a werewolf and given an advantage (an unfair one, at that), he completely abuses the power and starts dismissing the fact that his actions have consequences.
One of the things that is reiterated throughout the show is that those with supernatural powers (werewolves, kanimas, kitsunes, werecoyotes, hellhounds, etc.) are above the law. We see them acting outside of the law and only having consequences come to them if they break some sort of perceived code of conduct that solely exists in the world of the supernatural.
Scott seems to not even follow this code, but also never trusts his own werewolf instincts (his id) and has a false superego (his morals) that he constantly tries to impose on everyone around him, even after being told by Derek that that’s not how it works. Scott’s biggest failing as a character is that he never confronted reality; his ego. And when it was confronted by others, he gaslit them into thinking that they were perceiving him incorrectly.
A good example of how he views himself versus others around him is when he gets mad at Stiles for killing Donovan.
In that moment, he suddenly makes the statement, “You weren’t supposed to do this. None of us are!” He then claims that there’s always a choice. And then the writers wrote in the line for Stiles, “Well, all of us can’t be true alphas, some of us have to make mistakes!” and they immediately point out the flaw in their own character design right there.
This is Scott trying to force his own superego onto everyone around him and Stiles calling him out on his bullshit. In this show, power is written as being equal to moral superiority. The more power you have, the more moral high ground you have; hence, the reason why they created the True Alpha plot line--the ultimate moral high ground. They wanted to give Scott a way to defend all of his questionable actions up until that point by putting it through a moral lens that he created all on his own and claim that it was the right one all along.
That is one of my biggest issues with the show.
Scott is given a moral high ground only because he’s a werewolf. Interestingly enough, Derek is not. Instead, they use Scott’s logic ( ”there’s always a choice” ) to try to blacklist other characters into following Scott’s superego.
Derek and Stiles are constantly shown as morally gray characters, the ones who are making the hard calls, while Scott is given the easy moral high ground, yet again, because of his True Alpha calling, keeping him from ever having to make the decisions that get people killed or give him consequences of any kind.
Mind you, he is the reason why Boyd and Erica were both killed, let’s not forget that. And Scott also used Derek’s own body against him.
In summary, by writing in the True Alpha plotline, they negated any and all character development of Scott McCall by giving him a free pass to make others do his dirty work while claiming moral superiority.
