The Case For Season Two of Teen Wolf
Fuck y'all, I don’t care what anyone says, the second season of Teen Wolf is the superior season!
Sorry for that aggressive intro, I had to make sure everyone knew I was serious because I know people will protest.
Let’s take a second and think back to 2011 to fully set the mood. We’re three years into the Obama era, EDM rules pop radio and teenage girls everywhere are wearing peplum shirts and dresses to look like 37 year old secretaries.
The start of the 2010s saw the rise of the supernatural young adult subgenre. Twilight was killing it at the box office, The Vampire Diaries was making headlines with it’s racy, blood soaked episodes and somewhere along the way the youth centered network, MTV, decided it was time to cash in.
MTV, more known for their music and reality programming, was looking to pivot as YouTube started hemorrhaging their music video business. While MTV had experimented with live action scripted content before, none of those shows lasted more than a season or two. It wasn’t until 2011 when MTV rebooted the 1985 film, Teen Wolf, into a series that they finally saw their first real hit in the space.
When Teen Wolf premiered in June of 2011, I was fifteen years old and enamored with their CW competitor, The Vampire Diaries, which had just finished up it’s electrifying second season. It was hard not to compare. Where TVD was broody and violent, Teen Wolf’s season one campiness felt like child’s play in contrast.
Teen Wolf’s early premise (which is nothing like the original movie) is quite simple;
Regular teenager Scott McCall, is bitten by a werewolf one night and is inexplicably turned into one himself. As Scott tries to adjust to his new supernatural life, he also deals with ordinary high school problems like sports, romance, keeping up with homework, etc. The main conflict of season one has our characters searching for the identity of the alpha werewolf that is violently murdering people across Beacon Hills, California.
While I did tune into the premiere and watched those twelve episodes weekly, my sisters and I usually just made fun of the show. Our biggest points of derision were; the corny star crossed affair between Scott and Allison Argent (see she comes from a family of werewolf hunters, shock and gasp!), the bad special effects and the horrendous fight scenes set to dubstep (I would argue the music dates this show more than any other aspect).
Teen Wolf season one ended and I didn’t think much about it for the whole year afterwards, already deciding I probably wasn’t going to tune into season two. Though I did decide the only character that didn’t annoy me was Stiles (don’t look at me, if you weren’t at least a little infatuated back then with Stiles or Dylan O’Brien back then you are lying!).
Fast forward to 2012 and season two is here. While I couldn’t tell you exactly why I watched that first episode back (maybe the DVR automatically picked it up, maybe my standards were just lower, maybe I was just bored) but something was… different.
I found myself engrossed in the mystery of the season two premiere. The jump scares were more effective, the gore was bloodier than ever and the writing felt more purposeful than the limpness of season one. I was hooked more and more every week and by the time the season finished, I could call myself a full on Teen Wolf fanatic. While most fans prefer the highly regarded season three, as evidenced by this highly scientific twitter poll I took, I always kept coming back to the small scale and tightly plotted feel of the second.
I’m here to make my case for what makes season two of Teen Wolf so damn good.
Here’s a quick recap of the main players and where their fates lay at the end of season 1:
Scott McCall - our protagonist and overall good guy™. By the end of the first season, his werewolf identity is revealed to his girlfriend Allison and her father, Chris Argent, a werewolf hunter. Scott is finally starting to accept his fate as a supernatural being and protector of Beacon Hills
Allison Argent - Girlfriend of Scott who is shaken to her core to find out he’s a werewolf and that she comes from a long line of werewolf hunters. At the end of the twelfth episode she accepts Scott for what he is and is resistant to her family’s legacy
Derek Hale - Our anti hero. A few years older than our teenage crew, Derek was born a wolf unlike Scott. He spends most of season one trying to figure out who killed his entire family leaving only him and his uncle, Peter Hale, to survive
Peter Hale - Derek’s uncle who spends most of the season pretending to be comatose in a hospital until it is revealed he is the alpha werewolf. He kills Allison’s hunter aunt, Kate Argent, in retaliation for setting the fire that killed the entire Hale family. Derek slashes his throat and becomes an alpha at the end of the season
Jackson Whittemore- The asshole jock. He’s jealous of Scott’s increased athletic abilities after turning into a werewolf and asks Derek to turn him as well in the twelfth episode
Lydia Martin- Queen Bee of Beacon Hills. In the finale she’s attacked and bitten by Peter and left for dead. Or worse…
Stiles Stilinski - Scott’s ride or die best friend whose father is the sheriff of Beacon Hills. He’s the brain where Scott is the brawn.
Ok whew got it?
Because shit’s about to get more complex.
When Season 2, Episode 1, “Omega” starts, the stakes already feel higher than season one. We have a new theme song and main title sequence. While Teen Wolf was always horror adjacent, the show creatively ups the terrors (remember when Jackson hallucinated a snake bursting from his eye?).
Our characters spend this first episode running around town trying to find Lydia after she disappears from the hospital. After being bitten by an alpha, everyone suspects that she is turning into a werewolf herself. Similar to season one, people are being mysteriously murdered and everyone thinks it’s Lydia’s werewolf latent instincts waking up inside of her. The Argents call for backup and bring in Gerard Argent, Allison’s grandfather who is even more vicious than Chris and looking for revenge for Kate’s death.
While all the characters share a common goal in attempting to find Lydia before the full moon, everyone has different motivations. For Scott, Stiles and Allison, they’re simply trying to find their friend and bring her home safely. Chris Argent is continuing his mission to protect Beacon Hills from the supernatural while still following a code that shows mercy to those beings who remain nonviolent. Meanwhile Gerard is ignoring the supposed hunter “code” and attacking anything non-human that comes his way.
It’s a fascinating way to set up the season, where the main conflict works in tandem with the personal relationships amongst all of the characters. “Omega” ends with us finding out that Lydia isn’t a werewolf but that a lone wolf, an omega, was the creature sniffing around Beacon Hills. He was looking for an alpha. See in this universe, being alone is dangerous, packs are a necessity.
Even though the omega wolf claims he wasn’t the one killing people, Gerard chooses not to listen and ruthlessly severs him in half with a sword (we’re also treated to an amazing grisly shot of a man’s bloody entrails dangling outside of his body). While Derek and Scott witness the horrific killing in secret, Derek says that the Argents are “declaring war”.
War is the thesis of the whole season. Like an intricate tactical game, our characters will make alliances, double cross each other and play different sides as they all attempt to reach their goals.
Similar to season one, there’s a new creature terrorizing and killing the citizens of Beacon Hills. Replacing the fur and claws of an alpha werewolf, is a reptilian-like creature simply known as a kanima.
Season two starts off with our characters split into three rough factions.
Group 1: Scott, Stiles and Allison
Group 2: Derek and his new pack
Group 3: Chris, Victoria and Gerard Argent
What makes season two of Teen Wolf so brilliant isn’t necessarily the mystery. While the kanima is a fun creature on screen, it plays pretty similarly to season one’s basic arc as well. It’s that all of our characters can’t work together to bring down the kanima even though they share a common goal, because they all stand to lose something.
For Scott, working with the Argents puts him at risk of losing Allison forever. He also refuses to align with Derek because he doesn’t trust him since he became an alpha.
Derek wants the Argents gone from Beacon Hills after Kate murdered his family.
Chris doesn’t want to encourage Allison’s relationship with Scott and is trying to pass on the hunter's legacy to her as well.
Gerard wants revenge for Kate and hates all of the supernatural no matter their actions or morals.
Stiles is attempting to solve the kanima mystery to protect his father’s job as sheriff.
Allison is trying to learn to be a fighter while still staying loyal to her friends.
It’s an intricate chess game being played. Every conversation is loaded this season. It’s fun as hell seeing all of our characters speak in half truths and carefully choosing their words when they have to cross “enemy lines” and engage with another faction in this small town war.
A good example is in episode four, “Abomination'', where Gerard invites Scott to dinner at the Argents’ house. Gerard doesn’t know that Scott is a werewolf. Allison’s parents try to hide their displeasure of Scott in front of Gerard, while Scott and Allison try to hide that they never stopped seeing each other in front of Allison’s family. It’s a brief scene, but it’s a complicated one to navigate as a writer.
Along with our main characters carried over from season one, season two introduces some fresh faces into the mix to further complicate this war.
For Derek to reach his true potential as an alpha, he needs to turn more people into werewolf followers to join his pack. Unfortunately Jackson’s body rejected “the bite”, so Derek resorts to manipulating three teenagers’ vulnerabilities to convince them to turn.
Isaac Lahey wants powers to fight back against his abusive father, Erica Reyes wants to eliminate her anxiety and epilepsy symptoms and Vernon Boyd wants… friends? (He’s very underdeveloped compared to his white counterparts, an unfortunate Teen Wolf trend with most non-white characters).
Our last major new character is Matt Daehler, a fellow student and photographer who takes an interest in Allison.
At first glance Isaac and Erica are a bit goofy as characters. They start off as these meek, shy, damaged students but once they get the bite they instantly transform into leather wearing, mean, sarcastic assholes with an uncomfortable attempt at sex appeal for high schoolers.
Considering Scott’s personality didn’t shift much once he became a werewolf, Isaac and Erica’s Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde transformation is something we just have to take at face value. You know why this change works? Because at the end of the day, Isaac and Erica are just plain fun. Daniel Sharman and Gage Golightly don’t hold anything back in their performances, they sink their teeth into their new supernatural roles and aren’t afraid to lean into the corniness you could only get on an early 2010s teen show.
While they may have switched personalities, the Teen Wolf writers never forget what makes them tick and the audience is moved when we see them grapple with their pasts and struggle with their allegiance to their alpha, Derek.
Boyd, one of the few black people, unfortunately gets little character development this season, instead acting more as a sidekick to Erica and Isaac, which is ridiculous considering they’re already sidekicks themselves.
Derek’s anti hero trio acts a nice foil to Scott, Stiles and Allison as they attempt to find the kanima.
Season two smartly sets it apart from its previous by showing us the kanima’s identity relatively quickly in the fifth episode, “Venomous”.
Jackson is revealed to have taken the shape of the kanima instead of a werewolf when he was bit by Derek. While in hindsight the creature’s identity feels obvious, the writers neatly throw enough misdirection at us in the first four episodes to leave us to believe that Jackson was unaffected by Derek’s bite.
See, the true mystery our Teen Wolf characters now must solve isn’t who the kanima is but who is controlling it, as Jackson is merely a vessel for someone else’s master plan.
The second half of the season now has everyone searching for the kanima’s master while they all have different perspectives on how they should deal with Jackson. Scott wants to save him because he feels that Jackson is innocent, while the Argents and Derek think killing him would be the best option.
Some of the best jump scares and thrills come from the kanima’s brutal kills and in my opinion the VFX makeup holds up better than expected.
The chessboard is redrawn once again later in the season when Derek bites Victoria Argent in self defense during a fight. Turning into a werewolf is a fate worse than death in an Argents’ eyes and Victoria chooses to kill herself rather than go through the transformation. While up to this point she wasn’t the most sympathetic character, her death scene where she has her husband, Chris, help stab herself in the heart is one of the most memorable of the entire show.
Crystal Reed gives a fantastic performance as Allison when she finds out her mother is dead. I still get chills when I see Allison's face break when she arrives to the hospital and starts sobbing in her father's arms as she realizes what happened.
Gerard uses Allison’s devastation to manipulate her into finally turning against her friends and fulfilling Argent history. It’s a great call back to when he said “question the trust of people closest to you, even your closest friends.
So as the season goes along, we figure out some oddities about the kanima. It’s scared of water and its victims are all of similar ages. It’s in episode nine, “Party Guessed”, that we get my favorite reveal in all of Teen Wolf history.
At a drug and alcohol fueled party at Lydia’s house, someone jokingly pushes Matt (remember him? creepy photographer student) into a pool where he freaks out and reveals that he can’t swim. A lightbulb goes off in all of the characters’ heads and we’re treated to the money shot of Matt and Jackson as the kanima standing together at the end of the episode, revealing that Matt is the master.
It’s nicely set up from the very beginning of the season, with enough red herrings to still leave the audience gasping.
Where as Peter Hale was seeking vengeance for his murdered family, Matt’s rage comes from a more mundane incident.
When he was a kid, he found himself at a high school swim team party and some older students pushed him into the pool where he nearly drowned. While he physically recovered, the trauma and humiliation stayed with Matt for years. When he encountered the kanima for the very first time, he saw the opportunity to enact revenge on the former swim team all those years later.
In a show that always believes bigger is better, season two’s relatively tight knit and subtle nature is refreshing. Matt isn’t trying to take over the world, gain more power or form a dangerous pack like most Teen Wolf villains.
He’s just a deeply scarred teenage boy.
While most of us (hopefully) wouldn’t go on a killing spree as a replacement for therapy, I think Matt is the most relatable and grounded antagonist Teen Wolf has ever seen.
It’s what makes his death by drowning at the hands of Gerard Argent even more tragic. He started this journey as a scared boy in water and ended his arc the exact same way.
When Gerard kills Matt he takes over as the kanima’s master and becomes the final boss of season two. Gerard is trying to convince Derek to turn him into a werewolf to save him from cancer. In a clever twist, Scott pretends to be on Gerard’s side then manages to double cross and defeat him.
When episode twelve, "Master Plan" comes to a close, all of the characters have overcome challenges and changed significantly. Scott is fully coming into himself as a werewolf and leader and is learning to trust Derek who himself is demoted back to beta werewolf after having his alpha status ripped from him. Allison is regretful of her time fighting on her grandfather’s side and breaks up with Scott for good this time. Jackson finally becomes the werewolf he desired so much. Then there’s Lydia…
I’ve glossed over a major plotline in my analysis of season two and that’s because Lydia Martin’s storyline breaks off from the main plot drastically after the first episode. After her nighttime stroll in the woods, Lydia spends most of season two hallucinating strange, vivid scenes that at first seem like a PTSD symptom from Peter’s attack. But nothing is that simple in this show.
It’s revealed at the end of the season that the mental torture Lydia is going through is coming from Peter himself, somehow they’re psychically linked even though he should be dead. He manages to use werewolf trickery to come back to life with Lydia’s help.
It’s a good storyline to see unfold on screen and it helps break up the plot that’s so singularly focused on the kanima mystery, but I always felt like it was a weak point of the season.
For one it asks us to suspend the belief on Lydia’s awareness of the supernatural dealings around her.
She gets mauled by a werewolf in season one and has been near enough unexplainable happenings that it’s hard to believe that she wouldn’t figure out something unnatural is going on in Beacon Hills. She’s also shown to be the smartest character in the show, yet the writers seem to only use that information when it suits their agenda.
The audience is also supposed to buy that none of her supposed friends seem to notice that she’s being psychologically terrorized. It isn't subtle either, Lydia spends most of the season screaming, crying, disassociating, self harming and sleep walking in public as she tries to stay sane from Peter's mind games.
Instead they choose to keep her in the dark about the supernatural even though it directly affects her.
It’s a sore part of an otherwise fantastic twelve episodes of television.
The supernatural mystery of season two of Teen Wolf is used as a set piece for a battle of wills. Every character has purpose and the writing is laser focused.
As our characters navigate complex alliances and rivalries, the real reward isn’t the thrills, the jump scares, or the growing mythology, but the rich development characters received during this period.
Your favorite moments of Teen Wolf would not exist if season two didn't lay the necessary foundation.
Scott's rewarding show long arc as he grows into a true alpha werewolf starts here.
Allison's growth as a skilled archer and fighter starts here.
Stiles' relationship with Scott and his father in this season is what allows his much beloved possession storyline in season three to hit as hard as it did.
Season three will always be a favorite amongst Teen Wolf viewers. The budget increased, the world building got even more complex and the writers took even more risks with the writing but, I will always argue that season two helped pave the way for more to come.