Teen Wolf 2-12: “Master Plan”

Gerard Argent takes a kidnapped Stiles to the basement of the Argent home, where he’s got Boyd and Erica chained from the ceiling with electrical current running through their shackles. Stiles claims that Scott will be able to find him by tracking his scent (quoth Stiles, “It’s more like a stench…”). Gerard, who is only trying to make Scott really, really mad, slaps Stiles around a bit before releasing him. Pretty weak, Gerard. I have no wish to see any harm befall Stiles, but this plan is strictly amateur hour. Considering the verve and gusto with which Gerard chopped the poor doomed Omega werewolf in half in the season premiere, you’d think he’d at least have one of his henchmen hand-deliver a box to Scott containing Stiles’s ear or something. That would get Scott’s attention.

A gurney containing Jackson’s corpse is loaded into an ambulance. As an especially nifty touch, the body bag leaks a sticky stream of viscous goo that looks like the kanima’s venom.

As Isaac and Scott make plans to search for Stiles, Derek and Peter join them in the locker room. Scott is flabbergasted and appalled to discover that Peter is: a) alive, and b) in cahoots with Derek. Again. Peter makes some cheerfully inappropriate comments about the hotness of Scott’s mom, then gets down to business: He thinks they can save Jackson. Even after he learns that Jackson is, like, dead, he’s still reasonably optimistic about their chances.

At the Argent house, Allison is still being snotty and stank, until Chris finally loses it. He breaks her crossbow, accuses Gerard of leading her to the dark side, and storms down to the basement to set Boyd and Erica free.

Melissa urgently summons Scott and Isaac to the morgue, where Jackson’s corpse is now encased in a cocoon of viscous goo. As Scott frantically tries to zip the body bag back up, Jackson starts to revive, hissing and growling and showing a lot of pointy teeth.

A heartbroken Lydia stops by the Stilinski house to talk to Stiles. She’s feeling a mysterious compulsion to see Jackson’s body and finally give him back his house key. Frazzled and freaked out about getting kidnapped and beaten earlier in the evening, Stiles blows her off.

Peter and Derek try to work out what’s happening with Jackson. According to Peter’s records (he has his own version of the bestiary on his laptop, which has been conveniently stashed under the stairs at the Hale house all this time), Jackson had previously been in the kanima’s Beta stage and is now evolving into an Alpha. The Alpha kanima is winged and terrifying. Peter and Derek stare at the image on the laptop screen in trepidation. Peter: “Look, someone actually made an animation of it. Maybe it’s less frightening if we…” He clicks on a link, then recoils in horror and slams the laptop shut: “Nope.” In many ways, this episode is pretty shaky—it’s dark and dour, and the energy is unusually low, and nobody reacts to recent events in a plausible manner (Exhibit A: the scene where Sheriff Stilinksi tells Stiles he should feel like a hero for winning the lacrosse game, scant hours after Jackson died on the field. Exhibit B: the scene where Coach Finstock tells Scott he really needs to get his grades up if he wants to play lacrosse next season, scant minutes after Jackson died on the field). Peter, however, single-handedly injects humor and joie de vivre into the otherwise glum proceedings. He’s the life of the party this episode.

Scott and Isaac smuggle Jackson out of the morgue. In the hospital parking lot, they’re joined by Chris Argent, who offers to team up with them against his father. So Scott, Isaac and Chris, with Jackson’s ever-reviving corpse in tow, meet up with Derek and Peter at a warehouse to plan their next move. Gerard and Allison arrive and begin attacking everyone in sight. Jackson emerges from his sticky cocoon, transforms into the kanima, and joins in the mayhem.

Pretty much everyone ends up fighting the rampaging kanima, except for Allison, who decides to stab poor Isaac a whole bunch of times for some damn reason or other, and Peter, who prudently ducks behind a pillar and observes the chaos without breaking a sweat. I’m firmly on Team Peter this episode. When Allison turns her stab-happy attentions toward Derek, Gerard orders the kanima to grab her by the neck and stop her.

Confused and outraged, Allison demands an explanation from Gerard. It seems he’s dying of cancer and thus has been hunting down Derek the entire season not to seek revenge for Kate’s death, but because Derek, as the Alpha, can turn him into a werewolf, which will enable him to heal himself.  On Gerard’s orders, Scott drags Derek over to him and, er, forces him to bite Gerard’s arm. It’s even more logistically awkward than it sounds.

Once bitten, Gerard expectantly waits to turn into a werewolf. Instead, black goo leaks from his ears and nose and eyeballs. As Gerard vomits up tremendous geysers of goo (pretty gross effect, Teen Wolf!), Scott triumphantly explains that he’d figured out Gerard’s master plan earlier in the season. Thus, he’d taken the precaution of swapping out Gerard’s medication for pills filled with mountain ash.

Badly sickened, Gerard bellows orders at the kanima to kill everyone. Before the kanima can attack, Stiles and Lydia zip up in the jeep. Lydia waltzes up to the kanima and hands over Jackson’s house key, which triggers a memory of Lydia and Jackson in happier (i.e. post-coital) times. The kanima transforms back into Jackson, who is very confused and very naked.

Derek and Peter rush forward and simultaneously impale Jackson on their claws, killing him. Again.

Everyone’s horrified and baffled. Lydia sobs. Allison and Scott grab hands, having apparently mended their differences, and you know what? Don’t care, don’t want to see it. Allison has been so flat-out loathsome and gross over the past few episodes that I have no interest in seeing a tender moment of reconciliation between these two crazy kids right now.

Suddenly, Jackson comes back to life again and rises up from the floor, naked and shining, and look, I hate to be the bearer of terrible news, but this is the very last time on the series we’re ever going to be treated to the sight of Gloriously Naked Jackson (blast you, failed contract negotiations!), so drink it in while you can.

Having apparently worked through whatever issues prevented him from transforming naturally in the first place, Jackson turns into a blue-eyed werewolf. He and Lydia embrace. Stiles sobs openly. And somewhere in all this madness, Gerard Argent, sick and dying, crawls out of the warehouse and disappears into the night.

Denouement: Scott and Allison sit on Allison’s bed while Allison tries to apologize for trying to kill Derek, and threatening Scott, and shooting and stabbing Isaac, and shooting and chaining up and torturing Boyd and Erica, and… “You don’t have to say you’re sorry,” Scott says. No, she has to, Scott. She really has to. Then Allison breaks up with him. I do not know why, and I do not care. I’m done with her.

Having escaped from the Argent house, Boyd and Erica flee into the woods. They’re surrounded by a pack of strange, unfriendly-looking werewolves.

Deaton and Ms. Morell get this cool little scene together where they dress in sleek black leather and follow a trail of black blood while carrying on the kind of enigmatic conversation that suggests they’ve had a long mutual history involving plenty of exciting supernatural derring-do. These two should get their own spin-off, because Zeus knows they’re never going to be given any kind of significant plotline on this show.

Derek, Peter and Isaac return to the Hale house, where they find an ominous mark drawn on the door. Peter explains that it’s the sign of a pack made entirely of Alphas. Which… okay, I get it, they’re raising the stakes for the next season—hey, if they had so much trouble fighting one Alpha in the first season, think of how tough it’ll be to defeat an entire pack of them!—but the whole “pack of Alphas” concept seems ridiculous when you stop and think about it. Then again, maybe I’m just saying that with the advantage of hindsight, having already seen how this plotline was executed in Season Three (spoiler: it was ridiculous).

And on the lacrosse field, Scott and Stiles hurl balls around without a care in the world.

A sloppy but mostly satisfying end to a sloppy but mostly satisfying season. It’s been nice spending time with you, Teen Wolf.