Hi Esc (can I call you Esc?), I'm not planning on watching the Teen Wolf movie but I have unfortunately been exposed to a lot of St*rek nonsense about it. Most of it is obviously hogwash but I am a little confused about the whole thing with Stiles's jeep?? I was wondering if you could explain from a rational perspective what that whole thing was about and what you think it actually meant in the movie.
You can call me Escalus, Esc, or even PEW (as some of my detractors do). As long as it's done with respect, I'm very flexible. And I would strongly recommend watching the movie if you have the opportunity, but I understand if you don't wish to do so. People have called it useless nostalgia, though I really don't understand how you can be nostalgic for a television show that only ended five years ago, but that could be a function of my age.
To me, the movie offered closure on certain narrative beats that I felt didn't get fully addressed in the final season of the show, and opened the door to future stories if they decide to pursue them. Thus, it had to revive those beats, explore them and conclude them, and I think it did so admirably. Was it perfect? Of course not. I'll never be totally satisfied with Jeff Davis's minimalist takes on emotional exploration. In his work, we have to divine what people feel by actions, by symbols, or by using familial relationships as replacements for actual words.
But that is exactly where the Jeep comes in.
To summarize the Jeep's role in the movie. At the end of the series, Stiles had given Scott the Jeep, though he was driving it in the walk-off so it's unknown if the took it back. This happened in the fall of 2013 in the story's chronology. The movie takes place in 2026. Neither Scott nor Stiles have the Jeep; it rests in the yard of Hale Auto, the Hale family business. Eli Hale, Derek's son, in an act of typical teenage rebellion, takes the Jeep for joyrides, getting in trouble with the sheriff, who has had to have the Jeep towed back to the business. Derek believes that Eli steals the Jeep because Derek hates it. The Sheriff says that Derek has conflicting feelings about the Jeep. When the nogitsune-manipulated Allison tracks down Eli and Scott to the Hale Auto, she prevents them from fleeing in it. That's all that happens with it. (If someone who has watched the movie feels I've missed something, please add!)
To me, I think it's pretty obvious which narrative beat that the Jeep is supposed to evoke. The primary relationship for Scott in the series was with Stiles, and it is around that dynamic that the show built itself. Eli's reckless fascination with the Jeep and the way it causes trouble with his parent is supposed to evoke Stiles, just as Eli wearing Scott's #11 jersey to play lacrosse and his reluctance to embrace his werewolf nature due to a violent event is supposed to evoke Scott. The Jeep serves to link Eli to the beginning of the series. Eli serves both as the Ghost of Teen Wolf Past and the Ghost of Teen Wolf Future. I've written elsewhere that Jeff Davis is very fond of recursive motifs. One of the most important scene in support of this is when Eli asks Scott a question while they're on the run.
Eli: My dad told me you almost had to cut his arm off once because of wolfsbane poisoning.
Fans know it was Stiles who almost had to cut off Derek's arm in Season 1, but this wasn't sloppy writing. It was deliberate conflation of Scott and Stiles, because it links Eli to the same exploratory beats of Season 1, the same way the Jeep does.
Now, what is the relationship with Sterek? Many Sterek shippers have taken the presence of the Jeep at Hale Auto, Eli's fascination with it, and Derek's ambivalence toward it as an indication that the Sterek relationship is 'real.' It's a stretch. Derek never mentions Stiles. Eli doesn't. But there is nothing wrong with that elaboration. As with all healthy shipping, fandom can add head canons to the story that enhance their enjoyment without a problem.
Personally, I think that Jeff wrote it this way as an offering to the Sterek shippers, the same way I feel he wrote the Rashomon-like FBI raid in The Wolves of War (6x20). He's saying -- "Sterek didn't happen, but I recognize how much the Sterek shippers have engaged with the fandom and the show. Here, let me show my appreciation."
But as they always do, parts of the Sterek Fandom could not be satisfied, and so they went too far. The Jeep wasn't a nod in the direction of their non-canon ship; to them, it was confirmation. And once they received this phantom validation, they shut off their mind to everything else. They don't even recognize the emotional entanglement between Allison and Scott and its resolution. They don't care about the way the movie readdresses the theme of the uselessness of revenge and corrective violence. They absolutely miss the comparison between the nogitsune's and his weenie pawn's absolute waste of freedom and life to take revenge of people who have moved on and Derek's willingness to fight for the value of all life with the ultimate sacrifice -- the mark of a True Alpha. They're so enraged that he died in flames they miss that this is what closes the loop: this time he saves his family.
And so, as they've demonstrated for a decade, parts of the Sterek fandom act in a bizarre, strange and twisted manner. They despised the movie before it even came out, planning to rewrite it with fix-its in an event that was set up before the movie even aired. And, of course, nursing their ancient entitled grudge (just like the nogitsune and its weenie pawn) they focused their rage on the lead protagonist, because Scott is still the lead protagonist, even now. A large majority of the "fix-its" don't really talk about or grapple with how to fit Sterek into the movie -- they are far more interested in attacking it. They attack Derek's last wish for Scott to take care of Eli, ignoring for the millionth time the good relationship that developed between Scott and Derek. They attack Scott for wanting to save a resurrected Allison from the manipulations of an illusion-casting demon. They hated it, they knew they would hate it, but they watched it anyway, as if I sat down and ate an entire plate of steamed broccoli, complaining "this is so effin' gross" when no one would be making me do it.
And always, the unspoken motivation is their rage that a show they liked chose a non-white character to be the lead. Because the truth is that as much as they like to pretend, it's not the fact that Sterek didn't happen that's the problem, it's the fact that Derek and/or Stiles wasn't the lead protagonist. Tyler Posey and/or Scott McCall weren't obstacles to their shipping; their animosity is completely due to the fact that it was his story.
