#Phoe Rewatching Teen Wolf

[takaraphoenix]

Oh, that Peter-Stiles dynamic is just so fascinating. Right off the bat. I remembered that it fascinated me, but I didn't remember that they are fascinating right from the start.

The tension in their first meeting at the hospital. How Peter, who has hurt or killed everyone he encountered so far, just... circles his prey until Derek gets there to defend Stiles.

The way Peter just. Tore into Lydia without a thought. But didn't harm Stiles at all.

The way Peter only bit Scott out of opportunity but wants Stiles in his pack - because Stiles is "the clever one" - and actually offers Stiles the bite. Doesn't force it onto him, fully giving Stiles the choice and then leaving without doing... any harm at all... when Stiles says no.

Obsessed with how obsessed Peter is with Stiles.

[takaraphoenix]

Oh, the Steter is so gonna carry me through 3A, isn't it? Me and @kimmycup finally started 3A on our shared watch and just 03x02 Chaos Rising gave me so much life.

The fact that Peter and Stiles were left alone in the loft and though Peter acted exasperated at Stiles' rambling, he was so clearly listening closely to what Stiles was saying, because he actually filtered out the important bits, picked up the things Stiles stumbled over and immediately launched into action.

On the 'we dismiss Stiles when his instincts tell him something is up, even though Stiles' instincts have literally not once been wrong' show, we really get to see Peter following those instincts and help Stiles figure out what exactly is going on.

And when they figure it out and call Scott? There was no need for them to pose like that, so close their arms are literally touching? I am obsessed with the circling shot of them facing each other and making the phone call. Also obsessed with the way they practically finished each other's sentences when explaining it all to Scott.

Damn, this ship really has shot up to my number one spot in this fandom. They're so good they make me feel feral.

[takaraphoenix]

I just generally love 02x08 Raving so damn much though.

Not just because of the Spark Stiles moment that's stored in it.

It's also because that episode was, and still is, what unlocked Pack Mom Stiles for me.

Stiles alone with Erica and Isaac, who so far have been snarky and cocky and pushing around. But left alone with Stiles in this episode, they both defer to him. He takes the lead, they take the backseat. They follow his orders and commands. They agree to what he tells them to do.

And it clicks all the better considering last episode, Scott officially, verbally agreed to join Derek's pack. Kind of meaning that Stiles also joined the pack.

So, the moment Stiles joins the pack, the betas start following him and his orders.

And it goes even beyond that. This is the episode that first really features Stiles bringing his dad food, healthy food. Watching out for him. Showing his love with food. Which is one of my favorite things to see reflected in fandom by Stiles taking care of the pack by making them eat good/healthy/at all.

This is the episode that really kickstarted Pack Mom Stiles.

[takaraphoenix]

Just rewatched 02x08 Raving and it is truly so unhinged of the writers to set up magic!Stiles and not pull through with it.

I mean, they really did set that up, that's not something delusional fans fully made up themselves, they had the damn druid be extra cryptic and make it sound like only Stiles could do this and use such weirdly phrased advise that really makes your alarm bells ring and then they have Stiles run out of mountain ash with a significant way to go and give himself a pep talk about belief and imagination and he confidently strides along while producing mountain ash out of thin air.

He had no mountain ash anymore. It's not even that he still had some left but not enough and he believed that it would last and the container just never ran out - that would somehow still feel different.

No, the writers chose to have him fully run out of mountain ash and magically produce it in his hands, not even in the bag that had carried the original mountain ash. He just magically makes mountain ash appear.

And when he has to break the circle to let Derek in to save Scott it is a near magical gust of wind that breaks the circle, like again Stiles willed it to break.

None of this is random. None of this is just easily explained with something rooted in the plot. The only explanation the writers leave you with is magic.

And then they never bring it up again and never let Stiles perform magic again and how do you do that. How do you introduce something so tantalizing in such an obvious manner and then just forget that you set that up and never pull through with it.

[takaraphoenix]

Our Teen Wolf watch finally reached season 3B and I genuinely just feel like a cat rolling around in a patch of sun, pawing at the air, purring happily.

I mean, I wildly love seasons 1 and 2, had a great time rewatching them, bouncing in my seat at the opportunity of getting to introduce my best friend to all these characters that I love.

Dip in enjoyment for 3A, but there's honestly more good in that half-season than I remembered and watching it with @kimmycup made it all the more enjoyable.

But 3B is just. Everything. I love this feeling of rewatching something I genuinely love so damn much. And it's made even better by getting to share it with my best friend! We are just rolling around in the Stiles pain together, mesmerized by Dylan's incredible acting 💜

[takaraphoenix]

Deucalion should have killed Gerard Argent.

I'm sorry, but you're telling me that for fuck-knows what reason Deucalion knew that Scott, who had been nothing but a beta so far, had the potential for being a True Alpha? I'm buying that Deaton, who is one of the closest people to Scott, would sense it. But Deucalion didn't even live in Beacon Hills, he didn't know Scott.

How in the world did he know about Scott's True Alpha potential? But didn't know Gerard Argent was in town?

The man who had taken his sight from him, who had destroyed his life, was just... in town... and Deucalion wasn't aware?

Chris, Allison and even Scott knew where the man was hiding and clearly he hadn't hid very far from town.

There's just no way a vengeful and powerful man like Deucalion would not have known Gerard was in town and would not have made the trip to end the man's miserable existence.

It is absolutely ridiculous that they kept Gerard alive and kept him close to town when introducing a villain whose entire origin story is "Gerard fucked him over and fucked him up", just to then not have said villain kill Gerard in revenge. That's bullshit. Where's the pay-off?

[takaraphoenix]

So @kimmycup and I wrapped up season 3A last night! And I have thoughts!

Stiles

Stiles, obviously, highlight of the season. As always. No but seriously, Dylan's acting kills me and the fact that he is pretty when he cries also kills me (so often, the act of crying just makes me cringe on screen but when he's crying I'm like "YES. MORE").

The way we spent over three episodes on Stiles' suffering about his dad being missing and wanting to bring him back? Allison and Scott also have their parents abducted but somehow Stiles is the one with whom it is presented as a trauma and who gets to suffer about it.

The fact that Stiles is at the center of the Hales actually makes me feel feral and unhinged though. He's the one to offer Derek comfort after Boyd dies, he's the one who asks about where Derek went when he disappears afterward (though I will admit I did like the Scott-Derek dynamic in this season too, the build up of trust there and Scott's guilt when they thought Derek was dead). Stiles working with Peter about the vault, interrogating Peter about Derek's past, saving Cora with Peter (but also, again, I did like the Peter-Scott team-up in the hospital that was a real surprise and actually fun). And obviously Cora. Oh, they were so setting her up as his love-interest. Nearly all of Cora's scenes were either with Derek, Peter or Stiles. Despite Boyd and Isaac being around too, despite Scott being set up to become head of the wolves, it's somehow Stiles who is at the center of the actual Hales, who interacts with them the most and I am living for it.

Also the Noah-Stiles this season! With his dad's abduction, the fact that Stiles died to save his dad (credit to Scott and Allison for dying for their parents too), that he finally told his dad the truth and that painful little "Mom would have believed me" that absolutely killed me. His constant fear of also losing his dad, even before the abduction, when he thought he'd lose Noah for telling him the truth.

Stiles is my absolute favorite fictional character, of all time, truly.

Peter

Coming in hot second place after Stiles, Peter really was the highlight of the season for me. I have come to deeply love this bastard man. His lil "I've always been the Alpha" I deadass went "made me feel very attracted to him and straight. That was unreasonably sexy of him.

But even before he did that? This whole season, spent kind of helping and kind of doing good, but never too much, just enough to keep being useful. Always manipulating with his silver tongue, the unreliable narrator of Derek's past trauma was a fucking masterpiece to me.

I still want to kiss him on the mouth for killing the most annoying Teen Wolf villain though. There are villains who are evil and villains I hate - in the "this is an effectively written villain! I hate them for their villainy!" sense - but Jennifer Blake was just annoying. She kept babbling on and not in a silver-tongued way but in the same awkward teacher trying to make a point way that she did in the classroom.

Death

Let's leap into that before I lose my train of thought, because Jennifer's death felt good. Even more so in contrast with Deucalion's not-death.

It truly, genuinely fucks with me that Scott and Derek let him go. He is why Boyd and Erica are DEAD. Two of your pack mates. Two innocent teenagers. They're dead because of him, but... Deucalion just... gets to walk free. Not even prison, not even human-standard punishment, not have his Alpha spark somehow removed, nothing. No, he gets rewarded by having his sight restored and is just sent on his merry way.

The same goes for Gerard. The man tortured teenagers for fun and killed countless innocent werewolves. But he just... gets to live. When only Chris was hiding him, I could somewhat excuse it with him being unable to kill his own father. But then both Allison and Scott learn where he is and it just pisses me off so much.

These people kill innocent and get no punishment at all. I'm not even necessarily saying "murder is the only way" (it is, to me, in these instances), but there is just nothing, they get to live on, free, not even imprisoned.

Makes me so damn mad and you just know if Deucalion and Peter hadn't torn out Jennifer's throat, they would have let her life and be on her merry way too.

Cora (& Derek)

I admit I fully did not remember shit about her. She was only in half a season and, clearly, I managed to block out most of it. But I really loved her! She... Yeah, they totally tried to replace her with Malia, because she has the same very direct nature and anger issues. Which only makes me sadder on account of those two never meeting or interacting.

I enjoyed her character and actually would have REALLY loved Stora? These two had good chemistry and I think the build up was definitely worth exploring what a relationship between them could have been like.

Her existence still drives me up the wall though because they really don't explain it. At all. How did she survive? How did she get all the way to South America? Hell, how did she even hear about a Hale Alpha again like what is there some kind of supernatural newspaper announcing these things?

And then she's gone again. And it feels... stupid. I think it would feel less stupid if Derek wouldn't return in season 4 either. Let me be clear, I love Derek and, as a viewer, am glad that I didn't lose him for good here by having him be written out. But internally, within the story, it would have felt much more rewarding to both of them if after all the trauma in Beacon Hills and the rocky relationship these two had, Derek had just fucked off from that hell-town to live with his sister somewhere safe.

But also, while I'm on Derek already. This boy really can not catch a break. He needs to stop falling for women, period. Paige's death was deeply traumatic, Kate groomed him and killed his family, and now Jennifer. At this point, the pack should get battle ready when he shows interest in someone...

Others

In a delightful twist did I actually grow attached to Ethan/Danny this time around and will be using more of those from hereon out.

I think one of the funniest bits of the season was Melissa meeting Peter in the hospital and saying "You're supposed to be dead" because I'm sorry he has been resurrected SIX MONTHS AGO and nobody told her that he is alive again? Really, Scott? Really?

[takaraphoenix]

Having finished season 2 of my Teen Wolf rewatch and I gotta say, THE dumbest thing of the first two seasons really does remain the fact that the Argents pretend to be a matriarchy.

Our sons are soldiers and our women are leaders.

Yeah, sure, totally. Yep. That's why Chris makes all of the decisions until Gerard comes by and becomes the sole leader whom everybody follows. And that's also why we only ever see Victoria in the kitchen making cookies for the hunters instead of in the room where it happens, giving the fucking orders, as a leader would. And that's totally also why Allison knew jackshit until she started dating a werewolf and got dragged into this thing.

She was seventeen by then and they were still reluctant to teach her about anything, at all. Seventeen. That's still so unhinged to me like I'm sorry you can vote in certain elections and you can learn how to drive and you can legally drink (in my country anyway), but you are definitely not old enough to learn about the supernatural shit that your family has been dealing with for centuries.

If your women were leaders, you would have taught her how to lead. You would have taught her earlier about... literally anything, so she could be prepared and so she would be a good leader.

Chris was the Argent in charge, until Gerard was. Kate was never the leader even though as the oldest born Argent woman, she should have been.

Heck, I still contest that Victoria should have been the Argent! She was the unhinged uncaring bitch of the family, she fit so much better with Gerard and Kate than Chris did. It also would make... so much more sense... if the husband took the wife's name in a culture that claims to be a matriarchy...?

It's just. It's just such bullshit. And they didn't have to. They didn't have to claim that they are a matriarchy, they didn't have to pretend that the women in their world hold the power and are the leaders, they didn't have to do that, so why do it, just to never not once at any point follow through with that claim. That's so wild.

[takaraphoenix]

It is just genuinely baffling to me that they wrote Jackson off for season 3.

And I am aware that he was written off because it was Colton's choice to leave, and he had every right to, but in-universe wise, for the journey and story of Jackson Whittemore, writing him off was just dumb and unsatisfying and even a recast would have been better.

I mean, they set Jackson's change up in the fourth episode. Of season 1. He gets the claws in the neck and slowly starts changing and we know something isn't going right.

All of season 2 was about him and his corrupted form, that was literally the main overarching plotline.

Jackson's change and journey into becoming a werewolf literally took nearly the entire first two seasons.

And in the season 2 finale, he finally gets what he always wanted. And in, like, the most epic romance moment for him and Lydia.

And then he's just gone in season 3.

All of that. All of that was supposed to be a set-up, we should have gotten to see him freed of the kanima curse be a real werewolf, we should have gotten to see what his and Scott's rivalry would have been like now that they both were werewolves, and truly after that epic moment of love between him and Lydia we should have gotten to see them properly rekindle.

Instead, the character just "moves to London".

Which is on multiple accounts frustrating, like... the Whittemores know that Jackson has issues about his adoption so their logic is that surely it would be healthy for him to move all the way across the pond, far away from where the graves of his birth parents are? Instead of focusing on healing, together, as a family, and confronting the tragedy and Jackson's feelings about it, they just up and move him away from there. It's stupid.

Again, adore Colton, think he was absolutely perfect in the role and I wish he'd been payed what he was worth and hadn't left the show, but damn did I want to see Jackson's story continue.

[takaraphoenix]

I'm currently rewatching Teen Wolf with my best friend, right.

And, for me, Teen Wolf is very unique in that I remember exactly what happens, when and with whom. I'm generally more of the type who remembers the overall and remembers what happened, but it all... blurs together into one story. There are only two shows where I can distinctively say "yeah, that's the plot/villain of season x", or where I can rank you the seasons without having to look up what happens in which season, and those shows are Teen Wolf and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Today, in preparation for further watching with the bestie, I realized there's a season 5B.

I know the storylines and villains of s1, s2, s3A, s3B, s4, s6A, s6B and, until today, I was... falsely... under the impression s5 was one story, namely the s5A storyline.

And I can't really decide if being forgettable is better or worse than remembering and hating.

Because I loathe s6B and s3A, a whole lot. Truly so much. But I know what happens in them. Well, bit fussier on s6B than anything else but that's also because I only watched season 6 one time so far.

When I first got into Teen Wolf, I watched the first two seasons 3 times. In a row. And then continued on watching the show in real time as it released regularly.

Until season 5. I quit the show after season 5, the first time around. And I thought that I did that due to That Fucking Scene in 5A, I fully thought 5A was the thing that made me quit, but there's a whole half season that I also watched and after which I actually quit and I... forgot about it.

I picked the show back up in 2018, rewatched all of it and then watched season 6 for the very first time. So technically, I've seen season 5 two times already. And now, remembering that there are a 5A and a 5B I do recall hazy vague bits about it, but... really not much?

I don't know what this post is. Probably a manifestation of dread building up in me about whether not remembering means that 5B was actually worse than the ones I do remember and hate, and that's why my brain erased it? But then I find it utterly impossible to make worse television than s6B or s3A, so... ya know.

[takaraphoenix]

Quick pitch for the dedicated GIF makers of this fandom:

Pride themed set of the scene when Stiles first becomes first line but coach can't read his own handwriting and calls him Bilinski. But the "Bilinski" is bi flag colored.

Stiles is so bisexual you can't even spell his name without "bi" 💖💜💙

[takaraphoenix]

Teen Wolf Rewatch 2024 (1)

Have a little update on this! So, my bestie @kimmycup and I are watching Teen Wolf together, rewatch for me and first time watching for her.

Today, we covered season 1 episodes 1 through 6.

I love this show. I love this show so much. Holy shit do I love this show.

Just, seeing the first six episodes again absolutely reminds me how I ended up watching this show for the first time and immediately after I finished the first two seasons starting a rewatch, and after that, another rewatch. It's addictive. It's so good.

There is just... nothing to complain about so far? I adore the characters, I immediately imprinted on Stiles the moment he hung upside-down scaring the shit out of Scott, the parent teacher conference served to show the depth of pain and facade on Lydia and Jackson so early on, Scott is such an adorable clueless puppy, all of the pain and trauma of Derek's makes his actions so damn understandable, like yeah it's frustrating for Scott, but, shit, fam, Derek just lost his sister, after he had already lost all of his family and he was a born wolf so of course he doesn't really know how to teach a bitten wolf, Allison is so adorable and I am still madly and deeply in love with both Scallison and Jydia, those ships get me.

I remember watching the first two seasons back during the hiatus before season 3 started and latching onto that show hard, and I love how rewatching them just reignites that spark, still giving me that same feeling of unbridled joy.

And rewatching things you love is just so much fun because you have the knowledge of what will happen and see the little foreshadowing, or have a different context for why a character acts a certain way.

And as can be seen by the fact that we just binged six whole episodes - our episode-per-session average clocks in at about 4 usually - I absolutely dragged my beloved Cupcake into this show for good.

The best news is she did also imprint on Stiles. As one should, when watching the show. It is impossible not to love Stiles, honestly.

And it is another delight to see her get attached to him, and also to discover Sterek. See the little seedlings of the ship already and the potential. It has already been pointed out to me, repeatedly, that those two are a great match, and I wholeheartedly agree, naturally.

It's so fun to see Stiles and Derek's beginnings, especially as I have been dragged into writing Sterek fics again. Though I love their dynamic, it is still so different to see all the moments unfold all over again, it's so much fun.

Oh, I love this show. I just. I just really love this show.

(That tune is gonna change during 3A, and is gonna... fizzle out starting with season 4, which is a shame and a pain and a frustration, but I have so much raw, unadulterated love for the first two seasons and for 3B that I am beyond excited about this rewatch.)

[takaraphoenix]

I'M GONNA START A TEEN WOLF REWATCH TOMORROW AND I AM SO HYPED FOR IT!! AND I GET TO DRAG MY BESTIE INTO THIS HELL!! 💜💜💜

So our list of shows to watch had already included Teen Wolf because in a display of very good taste, she has already been curious to meet Stiles. But there are... many things on our watch-list, and we are technically in the middle of watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we just started season 4 and started season 1 of Angel the Series parallel. So there's like 160+ episodes left total.

Noticing that I have gone fully into hyperfixation on Teen Wolf though, my wonderful delightful and amazing best friend suggested that we pause BtVS/AtS and do TW right now <3

(This has been an announcement, that there might be an influx of TW posts due to the rewatch, and it has also been a post of APPRECIATION for how amazing @kimmycup is)

[takaraphoenix]

Going through my "Phoe Rewatching Teen Wolf" tag from 2018 and stumbled across this and it has me really damn excited because I've been rotating "Stiles pack-moming Liam" in my head for the past week but kept going back to "I really don't remember what their canon dynamic was enough to tell if this is a good idea or fully OoC" - so, hey, for the first time I am actually looking forward to rewatching season 5!!

Aaanyway.

I still love and cherish Stiles Stilinski and he one hundred percent is one of the best characters to ever grace the screen.

I think literally the only thing about season 5A that I thoroughly enjoy is how he is still pack-mom. His relationship with Liam is glorious. He teaches the kid more than the actual alpha does.

He moms Liam so hard. I love it.

[takaraphoenix]

“So the plan is... to get Stiles to come up with a plan?”

 - Teen Wolf, literally a summary of the entire show, by Peter Hale

[takaraphoenix]

Dylan O'Brien being pinned against a wall by his on-screen boyfriend is my aesthetics.