‘Teen Wolf’ recap: ‘Lunar Ellipse’

In the summer finale of Teen Wolf, “Lunar Eclipse,” the pack tries to find the nemeton and save the parents, and Derek and Scott fight with the Alpha pack and the Darach.

The episode begins with Stiles, Allison, and Scott all waking up and getting out of the their tubs. They’re in a white room with the nemeton. Scott touches it and then is transported to the night he was bit. He sees the nemeton in the woods, near he was bit. Stiles and Allison also have a similar experience about what happened to them the same night. Stiles was in the woods with Scott, and Allison was in the car with her mother and they almost ran over Scott. All three of them wake up at Deaton’s and say they know where to find the nemeton. Unfortunately, Deaton says 16 hours have passed, so they only have four left before the lunar eclipse.

Scott decides to go back to Deucalion because he promised and he thinks he needs his help to beat Jennifer. Allison and Isaac disagree, but Deaton agrees with Scott. Ethan shows up, asking for Lydia. He tells them Aiden and Kali are going to go kill Derek.

Meanwhile, Derek is recovering from giving away his Alpha power to save Cora. Lydia and Ethan show up and tell him the Alpha’s are coming. Peter implores Derek to leave, but Derek says he might win. Lydia tells him the loft feels like a graveyard to her, and Derek agrees to leave with Cora.

Isaac, Scott, and Allison all go to her house to find something of Chris’s so the werewolves can use his scent to track him. Scott’s father, Agent McCall is there and acts like a jerk. He sks Allison about her dad’s weapons, which she says he has to have some products as a consultant. She uses a smoke bomb and runs out of the room, with Isaac and Scott trailing behind. They head to the woods to look for the nemeton. They’re supposed to meet Stiles out there, but he crashed into a tree because of a big storm.

Kali and Aiden show up at Derek’s, but only find Lydia and Ethan. They tell her Derek is gone, and Kali gets ready to attack Lydia. Aiden growls and he and Kali seem like they might fight over Lydia, but then Jennifer drops in from the ceiling. She and Kali fight, and she kills Kali with shards of glass. She also breaks the twins neck when they are in their creepy Alpha twin form. She tells Lydia to scream. She does, and Derek hears her and decides to come back. He and Cora return to the loft. Cora goes to help Lydia, and Jennifer asks Derek for his help fighting Deucalion. She says she will let the parents go if he helps her because the lunar eclipse only lasts 15 minutes. Derek agrees and leaves with her when she gets a message from Scott and Deucalion. Cora and Lydia realize the twins are still alive somehow and take them to Deaton.

Derek, Jennifer, Scott, and Deucalion all meet at the abandoned distillery to fight. Derek and Jennifer try to attack Deucalion, but their attacks are useless. Deucalion tries to get Scott to kill Jennifer, but he declines, saying his pack can save the parents.

Meanwhile in the woods, Isaac hears the sonic emitter Chris turned on and he and Allison find the nemeton. The storm outside is raging and the ground is caving in when they get in the cellar to save the parents.Stiles shows up out of nowhere with a baseball bat that he uses to stop a beam from falling. He then hugs his dad and they all wait for the storm to pass.

Deucalion tries to make Scott kill Jennifer again, but he uses flash arrows he took from Allison and blinds him for a moment. Jennifer leaves and returns when the lunar eclipse starts. She’s showing her true Darach face and wearing a weird outfit. Apparently in order to kill someone, a wardrobe change is needed. Jennifer attacks Deucalion, bashing his head against the floor repeatedly. Derek tells her to stop, because Deucalion doesn’t know what she looks like as he’s never seen her Darach face. He doesn’t know what happened to her because of Kali’s attempted murder. She heals his eyesight and that ends up weakening her, so she asks Derek to kill Decaulion. He refuses, saying his mother always said they didn’t have to be killers. Jennifer gets angry and starts attacking Derek, but her 15 minutes are up and the werewolves have their powers again.

She surrounds herself with mountain ash and says she will just have to sacrifice the parents now for more power. Scott decides to try and break through the mountain ash, like he attempted when he found Deaton before. He pushes and his eyes turn Alpha red. Scott breaks through the ash and declares he’s an Alpha now. He then tells her she needs to stop the storm and threatens to kill her. He’s too slow though and Deucalion comes up and slits her throat. The storm officially ends, so everyone in the root cellar is alright. Derek and Scott then tell Deucalion as long as he behaves, they will let him live. Derek claims it’s because his mother said Deucalion used to be a good guy, which when did that conversation happen and why did Derek never say anything about it before?

Allison tells her father she wants to continue fighting and that they need a new code, so she made one. “We protect those who cannot protect themselves,” is now their code. Derek and Cora leave town, with Scott saying he doesn’t know if they will return. Scott says the he feels the darkness in his heart, but having his friends helps. His dad is also still in town, and he and Melissa are unhappy with him staying.

The episode ends with Jennifer crawling towards the nemeton once more, hoping she will be healed. Peter shows up and kills her, screaming that he’s the Alpha, when she suggests he’s going to try and kill Scott and become an Alpha again.

Comments:

As with any Teen Wolf episode, there were good and bad moments. Personally, I feel the bad outweighed the good this time. I’m starting with what I liked from the finale because it’s a fairly short list. Allison showing off her weapon skills so she, Isaac, and Scott could escape from Scott’s father and the other agents was awesome. Allison in general was wonderful this episode. I love that she’s officially taking charge of the Argent family, since it was said before women are supposed to be the leaders in the family. It wasn’t really like that before though because Gerard was pulling the strings. Another plus in this episode was the kids finding the parents, and Isaac being the substitute child for Melissa since Scott was fighting. I really want there to be loving moments between both of them because Isaac really needs a parental figure. Also, I loved Stiles using a bat and it working this time.

There were negatives for me in this episode and overall this season. First off, the anchor scene last episode was completely unnecessary since Lydia, Deaton, and Isaac just left Scott, Stiles, and Allison in their tubs. It just seemed like another excuse to push Allison/Isaac (Allisaac), and Stiles and Lydia (Styda) on fans. Also, it was weird because they seemed to be surrogate sacrifices for their parents, but it turned into them looking for the nemeton instead. The fact that they were in the tubs for 16 hours was ridiculous. Did they have to keep adding ice? Were they dead the entire time? What actually brought them back if not the people they were supposed to have an emotional connection to? Did Stiles, Allison and Scott somehow bring each other back?

I have a major problem with both female villains, Jennifer, and Kali, dying this episode, while the male villains all live. Deucalion was not only allowed to live, but also was given back his sight. How are Scott and Derek supposed to know if he’s not killing people? He could go anywhere and they would have no idea what he was doing. We’re supposed to feel bad for Deucalion after seeing he was peaceful before Gerard took his sight, but Jennifer seemed peaceful too until she survived Kali’s murder attempt. I was hoping this wouldn’t be a pattern with Teen Wolf, but so far all the female villains, Kali, Kate Argent, Jennifer Blake, and Victoria Argent, have died, yet almost all of the male villains have survived. Only Ennis and Matt died permanently, leaving Deucalion, Peter, Gerard, Ethan, and Aiden alive. Jackson killed people as the kanima, so one can argue he belongs on the list too. They’ve all killed people, yet they’ve all been allowed to live and there is no valid reason why. If it’s to continue to bring them back to be the “big bad,” then I’m extremely disappointed in the writers.

Peter appears to be one of the antagonists for 3B, and I hope it will end in his permanent death. He’s been around far too long and I will never get over what he did to Lydia, Laura, and Derek. Also, letting the twins live is something I’m not excited about since the two helped kill Boyd, and they’ve been both creepy and violent throughout the season. I get that we’re supposed to like them because they fell for Danny and Lydia, but there needs to be some kind of redemption arch or some remorse shown in the upcoming episodes. Even then, I'm not sure I'll warm up to Aiden.

A few other issues I have overall this season are the consistency in the storyline, and the huge amount of unanswered questions. For instance, we still don’t know where Cora was for years. There also wasn’t much of an emotional connection between her and Derek for most of the season. We never got closure for Erica and Boyd’s deaths.There were just too many monologues overall and too much use of slow motion. Mr. Harris did something to help Jennifer, but we still don’t know exactly what. Also, the finale ends with Peter killing Jennifer and pronouncing he’s an Alpha. I should rephrase that actually. He yells dramatically, probably loud enough for all the werewolves in California to hear, that he is the Alpha. I doubt any fan was surprised by Peter’s insane outburst or thirst for power. It was a lackluster ending. I’m hoping for better things from 3B.

Teen Wolf is on hiatus now, but will return January 6 on MTV. The preview for episode 13 can be viewed below:

Photo Courtesy of MTV