My thoughts on the end of Teen Wolf
Well there you have it. Teen Wolf is finished it’s run forever. And while I’d like to say it finished on a high note, really, I’m feeling like it finished more like a college student cramming for their finals.
I started watching Teen Wolf just before Season 2 premiered. I literally binge-watched Season 1 in the span of a couple of nights and was addicted to the characters. I saw Sterek before I even knew it was a thing. I found Season 1 and 2 to be pretty well-written. I even enjoyed Season 3 despite a lot of criticism of Jeff Davis for killing off Boyd, Erica and Allison.
My problems with the show’s writing started in season 4 and honestly, I just stayed disappointed. The one show I used to watch while it aired, became something I streamed a few episodes at a time later on. It just didn’t do it for me anymore.
A lot of people were upset by the deaths we saw in season three; Boyd, Erica and Allison were tough pills to swallow. In my opinion, Boyd’s and Allison’s deaths at least furthered the plot and offered tremendous opportunities for character growth in the surviving members of the pack. Erica’s death was pointless, disappointing, and didn’t honor her character at all, but I suppose acted as realistic motivation to fight the alpha pack.
By season four, we’d lost a ton of characters; Boyd, Erica, Jackson, Cora, Allison, Issac, Ethan, Aiden and Danny were all gone (and later, Derek just dropped off the face of the earth too). And Jeff Davis was scrambling for new material. I get it, actors and actresses grow out of parts and you have to find a way to write them out. Sometimes characters need to head in a certain direction. But 9 (10) characters?!
From here on out, the writing was a complete disaster in my opinion. New characters were hastily introduced, while familiar characters wouldn’t appear for several episodes at a time. Relationships were developed out of nowhere and ended for no reason- versus the slow and steady developments of seasons past. Gaping plot holes were left. And the story lines were uninspiring and poorly constructed Overall the show felt distinctively and progressively sloppy from seasons 4-6.
This is where fandom did Teen Wolf a favor. Because the fandom was so large, a lot of people were jumping on board, even when the writing had taken a steep nose dive in terms of quality. In their own way (minus maybe Liam) each new character introduced seemed forced, almost as though they were bargain brands of various archetypes. From my perspective, newer members of the fandom grew attached to some of these characters, and were therefore more forgiving when it came to poor writing and characterization compared with seasons past.
Being a fan from earlier on in the show, I couldn’t help but feel like come season four, the writers simply didn’t bother to build on relationships from previous seasons, and this got to a point where the characters on the show began to exhibit the same apathy towards their fellow characters that the writers clearly had for them as a whole.
To me, the characters just didn’t seem invested anymore, and this can be seen in the various clumsily strung together hook ups and break ups, friendships and shared experiences that were not fully explored or reflected upon later in the series. One can almost start watching in season four and see the show as something entirely new and different. Let me explain each of those points.
Full disclosure, I will always ship Sterek. There was a lot of unexplored potential there, and some of the best fics I’ve read in the fandom, feature this pairing as the central relationship. I think what was so captivating about it, was there was always a sense of what could have been happening off screen, and what many fans wanted to see on screen, but I digress, Davis never wanted to make this canon, but in order to keep fans, kept stringing many of us along with just enough to keep us wondering. But as the series progressed it seemed like Davis began to deliberately under-write the relationship, and in turn used this under-writing, to make half-assed relationships in its stead.
If I squinted hard enough, Malia and Stiles made sense having the shared experience of spending time in Eichen House. I don’t buy the whole kiss and make-up thing that happened at the end of the season after their fight. And then suddenly they… weren’t a thing anymore. And there was no awkward transition from relationship to friends as there would have been any other time. And don’t even get me started on Malia and Scott.
Lydia and Parrish should have happened, and yet the clear sexual tension and innuendo suddenly dropped off and went nowhere. So what was the point in the first place? Clearly this was a direction someone in the writer’s room wanted to go, but the powers that be (I’m looking at you Jeff) ended it in order to force Lydia and Stiles together by the series end.
I’m sorry to all you Stydia shippers out there, but I will never buy them as any more than really close friends. To me, it was clear when Stiles grew out of the puppy love/infatuation stage of his relationship with Lydia. They matured together and seemed to get to a place where they loved each other as friends and had their own separate relationships. Bringing them together felt clumsy and unbelievable– especially since their other existing relationships/budding relationships just seemed to dissolve without reason.
In terms of friendships, I’ve always found the response to loss shockingly cavalier. Just one example of this was when Stiles accidentally killed Donovan. He was totally shaken by this and there is no doubt it changed his character– and yet there are very few mentions about what he did while inhabited by the Nogitsune, and his actions and friendships continue on almost as though that period in his life never occurred, versus a disproportionate amount of angst over Donovan’s death. Next, very rarely do any of the characters grieve the loss of Erica, Boyd or Allison, and nobody ever seems to mention Isaac, Jackson, Danny, Derek, the twins anyone who isn’t around much anymore, in any detail. Yet these characters were important in previous seasons.
Finally there are the shared events and experiences the characters have gone through together. When in previous seasons this was drawn on to a degree, one of the weaknesses of post-season three Teen Wolf (I’d even give it season four) is that this past isn’t drawn on seemingly at all (or in all of the wrong ways) to bolster character growth OR drive the plot. It’s like nothing in the past mattered, and that has really weakened the characters in the show, and has ultimately led to what I consider a failure on the writer’s end.
Sure, the show brought back some fan favorites at the end, but everything seemed slapped together and contrived. There was closure, and yet it felt… artificial.
The good news is, as bittersweet as the series ending forever is, I’m kind of stoked. I have a million ideas buzzing around in my head in terms of fic ideas (including a total rewrite of things post season 3) and I know I can’t be the only writer who is relieved that they no longer have to worry about screwing up canon.
Anything I’m working on now, I’m finishing, and I hope there are many other creators in the same boat that will see this fandom continue to thrive long after the show.
