In a flashback, we see Matt’s perspective of what happened
on the night of the full moon when Jackson filmed his transformation into the
kanima. After loaning Jackson the camera, Matt sits in his car outside
Jackson’s house and uses his phone to tap into the video signal to, uh, spy on
Jackson while he sleeps. Nice, Matt. Stunned, Matt witnesses Jackson’s entire
transformation. The kanima then slithers outside, slinks up to Matt’s car, and
rests its clawed hand against the window. When Matt places his own hand against
it on the other side of the glass, he sees a vision of the kanima slaughtering
Isaac’s father.
Scott and Stiles try to convince Sheriff Stilinski that Matt
is responsible for all the recent murders. They’re clueless as to a possible
motive, so all three traipse off to the sheriff’s station in the middle of the
night to sneak a peek at the evidence files. Even though he’s been officially
removed from duty, Stilinski sweet-talks the pretty deputy working the front
desk—the same deputy Derek flirted with earlier when he and Stiles tried to
break Isaac out of the holding cell—into letting him snoop around. They review
surveillance camera footage of the hospital on the night the woman was
suffocated, and sure enough, they see Matt chatting with Melissa McCall in the
corridor.
In the Hale mansion, Dr. Deaton revives an unconscious
Derek, who was poisoned by Lydia and bitten by Peter. Deaton gets him up to
speed on the current situation: newly-resurrected Peter is still physically
weak, so he’ll need to use his wits to lure Derek to his side. In a battle of
wits between Derek and Peter, Deaton gives Peter the clear upper hand: “You’re
still an Alpha. But, as usual, not a particularly competent one.” Unkind, but
not untrue. As an Alpha, Derek has been a gorgeous, smoldering, brooding
disaster zone all season.
Deaton continues to briskly shuffle the plot along by
telling Derek that Gerard Argent has some kind of diabolical scheme underway
and suggesting he find Scott and get to the bottom of it. Deaton’s whole
function on this show is to deliver bulky chunks of improbable exposition while
looking enigmatic and all-knowing. It’s good to have a niche.
A gun-toting Matt bursts into the station, kills the pretty
deputy, and holds Scott, Stiles and Sheriff Stilinski hostage. He handcuffs
Stilinski to a bench by the holding cell while Jackson slaughters all the
deputies on duty. Matt gleefully tells a horrified Scott and Stiles that all he
has to do is think about killing someone, and Jackson mindlessly does his
bidding.
Gerard comforts a grieving Allison. If something like this
happened to his own mother, he claims, he’d stop at nothing to hunt down her
killer. He calls for blood and retribution and destruction, laying on the
emotional manipulation in a thick, goopy, stinky layer of horse pucky. Allison completely
buys into his act. She sets about smashing a bunch of stuff in her room, then
suits up in spiffy black duds, grabs her bow and arrow, and storms off to seek
vengeance against Derek.
Oh, Allison.
When Derek arrives at the station searching for Scott,
Jackson slinks up behind him and paralyzes him. Stiles, as is his wont, gets
mouthy with Matt, so Jackson incapacitates him as well. Stiles and Derek spend
a goodly percentage of the episode lying next to each other, utterly paralyzed,
squabbling and scheming and complaining up a storm. As you’d expect, it’s
comedy gold. Derek’s been a little flat and humorless this season, alas, but
stick him in a scene with Stiles, and he becomes the life of the party.
While Jackson remains mindlessly under Matt’s control for
the entire episode, he spends most of his time only partially transformed into
the kanima. This was probably a good creative decision—while the kanima visual
effects are pretty snazzy, staring at Jackson is much easier on the eyes, even
when all that beauty is covered with scales.
Melissa McCall arrives at the station to give her statement
about seeing Matt at the hospital. Matt locks her in a holding cell and shoots
Scott in the stomach right in front of her. Unaware of her son’s magical
healing abilities, Melissa understandably kind of loses her shit about this.
Matt threatens to kill Stiles and Melissa if Scott doesn’t give him a complete
copy of Gerard’s bestiary. He’s got a little problem right now, and he thinks
the bestiary might give him some answers. He pulls up his shirt and shows his
scaly torso to Scott: Matt, too, is transforming into a kanima.
Allison receives a text message, allegedly from Scott but
almost certainly sent by Matt, asking her to bring the bestiary to the station.
Chris and Gerard immediately realize there’s some funny business, most likely
kanima-related, going down at the sheriff’s station. Figuring that Jackson and
perhaps Derek will be there, they vote to attack immediately. Since Allison, in
the wake of her mother’s death, is the now the female head of the household,
they defer to her authority in planning the raid on the station. Hey, guys,
that’s just dumb—Allison’s a kid, she’s pretty new to the werewolf-hunting
trade, and she’s shown zero aptitude for making sound decisions in recent
weeks. Maybe leave the strategy-devising to the grownups, okay? Allison can’t
be bothered to care overly much about the kanima, but she really wants
Derek dead, so she calls for Derek’s murder. When Chris asks her about Derek’s
pack members and Scott, she says she’s okay with it if they end up as
collateral damage, but they’re not the primary target: “Scott’s not the one who
forced my mother to kill herself.”
Yeah, Allison? Derek didn’t force your mother to kill
herself, either. Your mother killed herself because she was a bigot who
couldn’t bear the thought of living as a werewolf. I get that Allison’s deep in
grief right now, but… look, she knows Derek didn’t kill her mom, and she
knows her family hasn’t exactly been blameless where werewolves are concerned.
Grief-stricken or not, her current let’s-kill-all-werewolves shtick is unworthy
of her.
Still paralyzed, Stiles and Derek have a hushed discussion
about Matt’s scales. Per Derek, Matt broke too many of the rules regarding the
use of the kanima—namely, that the kanima should be used solely as a means to
punish murderers and not as his own personal attack dog—and thus things are
starting to go terribly wrong for him.
And then there’s a long, rambling, exposition-heavy scene
where Matt spills his guts to Scott about his motivation for all this mayhem:
Back in 2006, when he was just a kid, he was visiting his then-friend Isaac
while Mr. Lahey had the champion high school swim team over for a drunken
celebratory pool party. Isaac’s older brother pushed Matt into the pool, even
though he couldn’t swim; while the older kids partied senselessly around him,
Matt sank to the bottom. Matt mentions that he “drowned”, and while Teen
Wolf doesn’t bridge the narrative gap, I think we’re meant to infer that he
did indeed die and was successfully resuscitated by Mr. Lahey. Thus, Mr. Lahey
and the entire swim team “killed” Matt; thus, he was able to order the kanima
to murder them.
The Argents swarm the station. Lights go off, smoke bombs
are thrown, windows are smashed, chaos erupts. Scott tries to drag a
still-paralyzed Stiles to safety while Jackson charges after him, kicking
through doors and tearing apart the building.
Jackson fully transforms into the kanima (farewell,
unearthly beauty and fantastic bone structure!) and attacks Chris Argent. He
takes one of Allison’s arrows to the brain, which doesn’t even slow him down.
Allison leaps on him and stabs him a whole bunch of times before he paralyzes
her.
Outside the holding cell, Derek, fully transformed into the
Alpha, battles the kanima in front of Melissa while Sheriff Stilinski lies
unconscious. Scott, also transformed, charges to Derek’s rescue. Melissa stares
at her werewolf son in shock and horror.
Matt and the kanima flee. Scott pursues them and runs into
Gerard Argent in the hallway. Scott and Gerard have a hushed conversation,
during which it becomes clear Scott has been assisting Gerard on the sly—he
passed along information about Jackson and Matt and he joined Derek’s pack, all
at Gerard’s request—ever since Gerard stabbed him and threatened Melissa
outside the hospital. Gerard reassures Scott, in kind of a grandfatherly way,
that he can deal with Matt and Jackson himself.
Naturally, Derek overhears all of this. He glowers
magnificently at the revelation that Scott’s been betraying him all along.
Gerard chases down Matt, drags him into the river, and
drowns him. Just to be clear, since Teen Wolf apparently sometimes uses
a definition of “drown” that doesn’t involve, like, dying, he drowns him to death.
And this time, Matt stays dead.
Gerard sees the kanima crouching in the shadows. He talks to
it gently, calling it a “friend”, and holds up his hand. The kanima slinks up
to him and places its clawed hand against Gerard’s. Meanwhile, Peter Hale
quietly watches all this with an expression of what seems to be a mixture of
mild interest and bemusement.
Okay! So Matt is dead, Jackson has a brand-new evil master to replace his newly-drowned evil master, Allison is acting like an inadequately-motivated ninny with emotional problems, Derek is glowering, and Scott has a lot of explaining to do to his mom. Sounds like we’re heading into the final two episodes in good shape.
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