Teen Wolf – Relic

By: Kim Olson

Lydia (Holland Roden) is so determined to find Stiles (Dylan O’Brien)! She’s trying and fighting so hard to bring him back! To prove Stiles existed once upon a time, Lydia goes looking for a relic or an object with a fixed association to the past that he could have left behind. Due to the scientific law of conservation of mass – the total mass of any isolated system remains constant – the Ghost Riders can’t fully erase people. Their victims have to leave things behind, such as library cards, bracelets and cars. Oh, cars. Stiles’ relic is his buddy, his pal, his sidekick since episode one – his car, his jeep, his baby, Roscoe. It’s where he first told Lydia he loves her, right before the Ghost Riders took him away. Lydia searches for his relic at his house, but doesn’t find anything (because Roscoe is in the school parking lot where Stiles left it). Lydia keeps, literally, hitting wall after wall trying to find Stiles. After she peels back the wallpaper in Mrs. Stilinski’s hallway, Stiles’ mom (Joey Honsa) forcefully asks her to leave her house. Lydia, sadly, has to return to Scott (Tyler Posey) and Malia (Shelley Hennig) and tell them she’s found nothing on “Stiles.” That the only thing he left behind is them. Scott and Malia start to doubt Stiles was ever even a real person. Scott says “Stiles doesn’t even sound like a real name” and Malia tells her they “can’t keep chasing someone who isn’t real.”

Everyone, except Lydia, is losing hope in Stiles. Lydia keeps reassuring everyone “Stiles is real,” but they don’t believe her. They have no reason to. To everyone, she just sounds crazy, like she believes an imaginary friend exists and she’s trying to get them to believe in him too. She sounds like she belongs back in the psych ward at Eichen House. Lydia is so alone and lonely in believing Stiles exists. It’s so hard on her. At least her mom (Susan Walters) believes her enough to help her get more potential information on Stiles, illegally. Thanks to the help of Melissa McCall (Melissa Ponzio), they take a peek at Claudia Stilinski’s medical records. “Letting the two of you look at private medical records is completely and utterly against hospital regulations. So, we better make this fast,” Melissa tells them. Melissa McCall, always breaking rules to protect her kids! Mom of every year! Claudia’s records reveal she never had a kid, but she did have frontotemporal dementia, the disease she died from in reality ten years ago. “Must be a mistake…. I’m surprised she’s still alive, honestly. It’s a miracle,” Melissa says.

Melissa and Chris (JR Bourne) start the episode off hunting in the woods, during which Chris almost shoots Melissa. “You might want to think twice before you sneak up on a man holding a loaded M-24,” he tells her. In actuality, Chris cares more about Melissa than himself and wants to protect her life over his own. He thinks the world would be worse off without her. That it’d be worse if she died than him. Melissa cares about Chris, too. When he lands in the hospital, after the Ghost Riders beat him up, Melissa sits at his bedside holding his hand. Chris and Melissa’s potential love is so beautiful, but so is the potential love triangle between Chris, Melissa and Papa Stilinski (Linden Ashby). Both guys are such great possible suitors for Melissa that it’s damn near impossible to choose a side. The only thing that helps is remembering history and what should’ve already been.

Chris actually does shoot Malia, though. But no worries! Malia rips the bullet right out of her own leg easy-peasy and hands it back to Argent. Malia reminds Chris of his sister, Kate, who he couldn’t save. So, in hopes of helping Malia he wants to teach her how to be human. “Animals lose control. You’re not just an animal Malia, you’re also a human. You stay that way by getting involved,” he tells her. He acquires her help in protecting/babysitting those the Ghost Riders saw at the house party in the previous episode. “I’m not the babysitting type. Coyotes eat their young,” she informs him. Thanks to Nathan (Ross Butler), the biggest idiot of them all, they fail miserably. Nathan lets the Ghost Riders into the Argents’ bunker they’re all hiding in so the Ghost Riders can and do erase all their souls. It’s a disaster. Chris and Malia can’t protect anyone. They lose everyone.

Meanwhile, Liam (Dylan Sprayberry) and Hayden (Victoria Moroles) are at the lacrosse game protecting Gwen (Alisha Boe) and others who refused to go in the bunker. The Ghost Riders still find them though, out in the open, and bring on a major storm. Although Liam puts up a fight, literally fist fighting a Ghost Rider, they’re no match. A Ghost Rider, on horseback, physically drags a lacrosse player across the wet field! They collect all these other souls of fans in the stands by shooting them and turning them into big green puffs of smoke that vanish in thin air. Hayden and Mason (Khylin Rhambo) call in Parrish (Ryan Kelley) as back up, thinking he will scare away the Ghost Riders like some kind of Ghost Rider wrangler, but Parrish has to stop trying to be a cop and embrace being a supernatural hell hound first. Devastatingly, Liam loses everyone. Everyone’s gone, literally. But at least out-of-the-loop Coach (Orny Adams) names Liam the new captain of the lacrosse team. Referring to the game, Coach says, “Next time he (Liam) will win, because he will find a way.” Coach, never change and never leave!

Best Lines:

• Melissa: Leave me out here alone with a stungun and a box of Band-Aids?
• Melissa: I’m sick of seeing people that I care about wheeled past the nurse’s station on a gurney.
• Chris: In my experience, when tracking homicidal supernaturals, it’s best to be quiet.
• Chris (to Melissa): You got anything for the pain? Malia: I can take it. Chris: It’s for me.
• Liam: They’re a supernatural force of nature coming to erase your soul! Nathan: It was a man, in a hat, with a gun. Mason: And he’s coming back to shoot you in the head.
• Nathan: You guys have a bunker? Who are you people? Liam: We’re the people who know things about things that most people don’t know about.
• Chris: People see what they wanna see.
• Lydia’s mom: If Claudia is not seeing ghosts, maybe it’s because she’s not a Banshee.
• Coach: That wasn’t lacrosse…. That was lacrap!
• Scott: He didn’t leave anything behind. Lydia: Just us.

Next Week: Stiles is back onscreen!!!!