Teen Wolf – Face-to-Faceless

By: Kim Olson

Liam (Dylan Sprayberry) doesn’t think he should go to school or outside or anywhere ever again after the new hunter in Beacon Hills, Tamora Monroe (Sibongile Mlambo), murdered Brett and Lori in a car accident right in front of his helpless eyes and then, in the well-lit intersection on a clear night complete with a full moon, his neighbors saw his secret identity – fangs, claws and all. Liam is trying to play hooky from life! He’d rather be sick, seriously deathly ill, with the flu or pneumonia than leave his bed.  Like the dad he is, Scott (Tyler Posey) doesn’t want Liam to get in trouble for being late to school so Liam has to go. Daddy McCall wakes Liam up, literally drags him out of bed and coaxes him into going to school. In super dad mode, Scott gives his son, Liam, a pep talk full of nerdy, pop culture references. He advises Liam pretend like nothing happened. He says, “Think of it like Superman gets caught with his glasses off. You know, he doesn’t give up. He puts them back on and says, “I’m still Clark Kent.” Superman has to be Clark Kent. Spider-Man has to be Peter Parker. Captain America as Steve Rogers). Scott wants Liam to go to school and be Liam Dunbar. Lastly, Scott recommends, “If you’re afraid of seeing more of your friends die, you’ll go.” Everyone may hate them for trying to save their lives, but if Liam doesn’t get up, go to school and pretend like nothing happened more people could die.

School isn’t as bad as Liam thought it would be, at first. No one’s even paying attention to him. People aren’t staring. It’s not bad, so far. This might be easier than he thought. Until his hyper hearing picks up what people are saying about him. He hears classmates murmur, “What’s he doing here? What are they thinking letting him come to school?” Liam is ready to turn around and leave, but if he does these rumors will never stop. He just has to get through the day like he normally would and convince them he’s a regular kid. Starting with the lacrosse team meeting, in which he’s about to get his ass kicked (off the team)! His dumbass teammates get in his werewolf face, causing his eyes to glow and forcefully threaten him to resign as captain. When Coach (Orny Adams) joins them, looking like he just woke up from sleeping in his office that he’s living out off, he’s pissed they called a meeting without him. With tears in his eyes, Liam informs Coach he’s stepping down as captain to focus on his studies and the team has chosen Nolan (Froy Gutierrez) to be the new captain.

After the meeting, Liam is even more scared, hearing rumors about him spread around the halls. He runs in the closest safe haven: the guidance counselor’s office. That is not the room he wants to hide in! He tells a startled Ms. Monroe he wants to make an appointment with her for now. Monroe was in the middle of something, but she pushes it aside and focuses on the werewolf that freely wandered into her den. He tells her he’s having a lot of issues. “Lots of issues. Big issues.” She says she heard a rumor going around that some kids were giving him a hard time and in order to help him he needs to be honest with her about who’s harassing him so she can give them a little direction (toward joining the hunters’ side) because she won’t condone bullying of any kind. Monroe really needs these names so she can recruit more warriors to her side. To make Liam feel comfortable, she tells him to not think of it as turning them in, but as helping them be better classmates. As he thinks about what to do, Liam looks around the room and sees the books she has on supernatural and hunting, but his eyes mostly land on the scratches on her neck that look like they were made from claws. She tells him she got them from a branch in the woods when she was running, which is a lie. She was hunting. Pressing the issue, Liam asks her who she was running from and instead of answering his question she gives him a grammar lesson. She corrects him, “From whom. Not from who. Whom is grammatically correct. We don’t like to use it because it sounds unnatural. But some things that make us uncomfortable are still the right thing to do.” Liam rewords his question to her liking and she still dodges it, prompting him to give her the names. Liam is as smart as his daddy, Scott, and has figured Monroe out! He is done! He remains silent, then gets up and leaves. “Then I guess I can’t help you,” says Monroe, before looking around the room and disgruntledly noticing her books Liam clearly found. Once out of the office, Liam texts Scott that Tamora Monroe is the new hunter.

Scott and his pack are looking at a war if they can’t make peace with Gerard (Michael Hogan). They just need to know what he wants and then they can bargain. Chris Argent (JR Bourne) isn’t sure his own dad won’t kill him, but he visits the angry old man to try to set up a meeting for Scott. Gerard doesn’t want to hear it. He’s not interested in negotiating. For him, this only ends one way: With Scott’s head on a stick! As Chris sees it, in Gerard’s eyes, “Scott has killed half his family, turned his daughter into a monster and turned me, his only son, against him.” All Gerard wants now is genocide, to exterminate Scott and his entire pack. He just wants to kill them all, each and every one. Chris tells Melissa (Melissa Ponzio) the kids all need to leave, get out of Beacon Hills and go to college, today! He just wants Scott to survive, but Melissa has never told Scott to give up or run and hide and she’s not going to start now.

Since Gerard is being unreasonable, Scott and his pack go above and around him to acquire peace. Equipped with the knowledge that Monroe is Gerard’s new right-hand man, they trick her into a meeting. Ms. Martin calls her into the principal’s office. Right office, wrong Ms. Martin! Ms. Lydia Martin (Holland Roden) wants to talk about coexistence for people like Monroe and people like herself. “That’s a bit of a challenge, especially considering people like you aren’t quite the same as people like me,” says Monroe. Monroe talks to Lydia like she’s one of her students and not an adult. Lydia, the smartest person in this and any room, retorts, “That’s usually where coexistence breaks down: When we highlight our differences.” Monroe is in trouble! “You didn’t become a guidance counselor to hunt people. You’re supposed to help them,” says Lydia. “I’m sorry, I can’t help with this,” says Monroe, done with this conversation. Stopping Monroe from leaving, Lydia grabs her wrist. Monroe asks, “Is that how you do your predictions? You have to touch someone?” Lydia responds, “No.” “Then how do you do it? How do you know who’s gonna die next?” Monroe inquires. How Lydia does that is for her to know and Monroe to dot dot dot. Letting Monroe go, Lydia says, “There doesn’t have to be a next. On either side. Please.”

Scott is going to get himself killed! He is not making it out of this series alive! Monroe agrees to meet with him. Alone. In the tunnels, but she doesn’t want peace. She’s just as unreasonable as Gerard. She just came for a front row seat to watch a werewolf beg for peace. She tells him her side of the story and how she views him and his friends as the enemy. She says she became a hunter after a monster attacked her and she blames it all on Scott. All she saw was teeth, claws and fangs of a barely memorable monster and then there was blood everywhere. She hid, lying under dead bodies, waiting for someone to finally find her, which Stilinski (Linden Ashby) did and saved her. (Bet he’s regretting that decision now.) Everyone else, twelve other teachers in Beacon Hills, died. Sons and brothers, mothers and daughters. To soothe everyone, the reports all read “animal attack.” Monroe couldn’t believe she was still alive, but now she knows why she survived. Her new purpose is to hunt Scott and his pack to the ends of the earth, seeking retribution! This chick justifies killing teenagers because in her mind they killed her friends by association. She believes because one monster hurt her, it was Scott’s fault because all supernatural beings are one in the same. Scott is so pure, sweet, innocent and nice! He insists if they had known… they protect people like her. If they didn’t try to save people there would be even more casualties! But she doesn’t want to hear it. She’s taking this personally and just wants bloodshed.  Unfortunately for her, Scott did not come alone. Malia (Shelley Hennig) and Lydia round the corner, as the former throws one of Monroe’s armed men at a wall! Violence is always Malia’s answer. She could get everyone killed.

At the station, Parrish (Ryan Kelley) looks at pictures of the dead Hell Hound and starts to have a panic attack! He looks up and sees the bloody body of fear. He follows the body around the station, ready to shoot it, but his gun really ends up pointed at Stilinski! Parrish and Stilinski decide to go down to the morgue to investigate the body with no skin or DNA and no face that scared Chris and Melissa. Before Melissa opens the locked drawer, Stilinski reaches for his gun. When she opens the drawer, they’re aghast to find it empty aside from some blood. The body got up and walked away! Earlier, really weird Aaron (Rhenzy Feliz) walked into the morgue uncovered the body of fear, opened up his mouth and let millions of spiders fall out of it onto the corpse’s face. Aaron collapsed on the ground and the body got up and left! That is not a dead body anymore!

The body of fear must find all the tension in such close quarters in the tunnels attractive because it joins the un-peaceful summit. Tensions quickly turn to chaos as everyone’s fear-o-meter jumps to one hundred! The body of fear gets exactly what it wants! Everyone ends up like rats and wolves – so terrified they tangle themselves up and eat each other! Monroe’s scared henchmen start firing their guns all over, not really aiming at anything! Everyone gets down and ducks! Lydia plugs her ears! Malia scratches the body’s head and it disappears! Sooner than later, their backup Parrish arrives with a roar! He just walks into the gun fire and shoves the shooter against the wall. He then grabs the body of fear by its throat and shoves dynamite up it! Fire fills the tunnel and the body explodes into a burnt crisp! Scott and Lydia, who he’s literally cradling, watch in terror from the opposite end of the tunnels!

Back in class, literally no one wants to sit next to Liam. The girl he sits down next to even moves away from him. Mrs. Finch (Michelle Clunie) is not having this. She asks Liam if there’s a problem. “Not with me,” he says. Mrs. Finch asks, “Who will let Liam join their group?” Mason (Khylin Rhambo) and Corey (Michael Johnston) both raise their hands. “Other than you two,” says Mrs. Finch. No one in the class wants to be associated with Liam. Mrs. Finch continues, “You all have one minute for someone to volunteer or the whole class fails the day’s lab.” The whole class erupts in whispers and everyone stares at Liam. Mrs. Finch is just making it worse. Either she’s intentionally singling him out or trying to be nice to him. Either way, she’s failing. Mrs. Finch concedes, “Alright Liam. Looks like you’re not winning any popularity contest, so why don’t you work alone and I’ll decide whether or not I was bluffing about failing everyone.”

When Liam leaves class, the entire lacrosse team is looking for him. They seriously have a death wish and deserve for Liam to kick their ass! Nolan is going to try to make Liam shift in front of everyone. He wants proof Liam is a werewolf and he wants everyone to see it. The lacrosse team blocks all the exits. Liam clings to Corey’s arms while he’s invisible so Liam is invisible as well, as Mason tries to lead them out of the school. But not even Mason can find a way out. They turn around, turn around and turn around until Nolan has them surrounded. In the middle of the hallway, Nolan makes Liam and Corey reappear so everyone now knows Corey is invisible. Gabe (Andrew Matarazzo) grabs Liam and violently throws him on the ground! Liam slides across the floor into a desk! His yellow eyes and fangs start showing. He gets back up and Gabe just kicks him down again. Liam is trying to control himself, his breathing, so he doesn’t change. He chants: The sun. The moon. The truth. He keeps his eyes closed as Nolan punches him square and straight in the face trying to get him to react! Nolan and Gabe just beat the blood out of Liam, kicking his ass and knocking him out! Mason begs them to let his best friend go! Liam could take them, but he doesn’t want to fight back. He won’t fight back! CROWDS of students watch as Liam gets his life knocked out of him! No teacher will stop this! They’re just ignoring it! They’re probably scared of Liam too! Mrs. Finch enters the classroom and just watches. Mason yells for her to do something, but she just leaves like the scaredy cat she is. Nolan and Gabe hold Liam up by his head, as if they’re going to chop it off! Liam still won’t fight back! Lying down on the ground, his face covered in blood, he’s crying from the pain! Liam is fighting the desire to shift, but he can’t hold back forever. His assaulters literally step on him as he spits up blood! The only teacher who matters, Coach, runs in the room horrified and YELLS at everyone for beating up Liam! He grabs Nolan and Gabe by the necks and throws them out, ordering them to the principal’s office! As for the HOURDS of bystanders he SCREAMS at them all to get out too! He yells, “I can’t stand to look at your faces!” He forces everyone to leave until it’s just him, Mason, Corey and Liam. Coach just looks at Liam, lying on the floor drenched in blood. Coach, Mason and Corey help Liam up. Liam is so strong! He successfully fought off his transformation and only showed his classmates “Clark Kent.”

Best Lines:

• Scott: You’re a werewolf. You can’t get pneumonia.
• Liam: We just voted Nolan to be the new team captain. Coach: Nolan? Nolan’s perfect. He’s a great player. Nolan’s got amazing leadership skills. Which one of you is Nolan?
• Mason: (Liam) Could you stop obsessing about what people are saying (about you)?
• Mason: Our guidance counselor is a werewolf hunter?! I’m never asking for guidance again!
• Melissa: The body couldn’t have moved. Parrish: Why not? Melissa: Because it’s locked in a drawer.