I didn’t honestly expect to be happy with this episode seeing as the majority of the hour is presented as flashbacks to a younger time for some of Teen Wolf’s adult characters, but in the end the story won me over.

Once Upon A Time…

…There was a better version of High School Musical in which the young basketball stud falls for a girl who can add the background music to a show’s scenes with her beautifully manipulated cello.  Soon they fell in love, making out in an abandoned distillery that had recently been used to string up a dead werewolf.  But that is a story for another time.  The boy had a secret, and to protect the girl from it he took counsel from a trusted advisor who whispered questionable advice into his young nephew’s ear.  With the decision made, the boy would have the girl he loved turned into a werewolf, and they could be together forever without secrets between them and without putting her in danger.  Except something went wrong the night a visiting Alpha (who hoped to get in good with the boy’s mother by doing him a favor) bit the girl.  Her body rejected the bite, and she soon died in a moment of relief at the hands of the boy who just wanted to keep her safe from who he was, and who she already knew him to be.

Poor Derek.  His plan was all for naught because she knew his secret and loved him anyway.  But hey, by killing an innocent and being affected so deeply by this lose, he did get a really pretty and deep pair of blue irises.  So silver lining.

History: As Told By Peter

History is always told by the victors; or in this case someone who is free to orate his tale without anyone to interrupt with dissenting facts.  I want to like Peter because he just has this way of saying things that gets me to laugh, but you just can’t trust the guy.  Especially because he is always painting himself the victim in order to spin his villainous actions in his favor.  He did this by telling Derek that he didn’t know what he was doing the night he killed Derek’s sister, and now he is doing it again by watering down the significance he played in convincing Derek to turn Paige into a wolf.  It’s obvious why he would do it to cover up the true intentions of murder, but why lie about this?  It’s not like he can be blamed for her death because he couldn’t have known the bite wouldn’t take.  Yet he even goes as far as to say that Derek would probably blame him, placing doubt in anyone’s mind if Derek were to ever tell his side of things.

Thank goodness that Stiles tells Cora that Peter’s story doesn’t feel right, but honestly I don’t really know what can come of him hearing a different story from someone else unless it is drastically different from what we saw.  Was Peter secretly poisoning Paige’s milk cartons at lunch with wolfsbane because boys rule and girls drool?  Other than that, I’ve got nothing.

History: As Told By Grandpa Argent

While Peter is telling his story, Grandpa Argent is leading story time across town with Allison and Scott. This tale was of the battle between the Argents and the werewolf packs around Beacon Falls, and what happened to Mr. Smith’s (Deucalion’s) eyes as a subplot.  This one was clearly full of discrepancies between what Gpa Argent was saying versus the true memory that we played witness to.  Long story short, after the hunters kill a member of Ennis’s pack for killing a hunter, anger is running pretty high.  Mr. Smith is still of the mind that there can be peace between the two because nothing good can come of this back and forth, so he plans a meeting with Gpa Argent.  Unfortunately Gpa Argent doesn’t believe a werewolf was capable of being something other than a killer, so instead of even listening to Mr. Smith’s argument for peace he steams everyone at the meeting and does what he does best by killing everyone.  He even kills his own men with a spiked club so that it would look like the wolves killed them, bringing a new fervor to his fellow hunters. He just doesn’t tell Scott and Allison that this is how the event actually took place.

My Eyes, My Eyes!

To ice the massacre cake, Grandpa Argent stabs Mr. Smith in the eyes with some firework producing arrows, turning him into the blind wolf that we know today.  Rude.  But what is even ruder is not even a minute after Deaton (who is an advisor to Mrs. Hale) tells him that he will never see again, a member of his pack takes the opportunity to seek the power of the alpha by attacking Mr. Smith.  Yet somehow through his heightened wolf senses he is able to see again, though not permanently, and he kills his attacker to protect himself, thus beginning his hunger for power absorption.  I just wonder how he convinced Ennis and Nasty Toes to do the same, and when the twins came into the picture.

Also, I still have no clue what a Demon Wolf is.

Deep Rooted Origin Stories

Even though it doesn’t quite fit in with our lovers’ tragedy or acts of war, we do get another story with possible factual misinformation from Gpa Argent about the origin of the werewolf.  According to Greek mythology Lycaon served Zeus human flesh because he did not have a healthy amount of respect for the alpha god on Mount Olympus.  As punishment for this heinous deed, Zeus turned Lycaon into a wolf.

Gpa Argent then veers off from the myth that I know by adding that instead of remaining a wolf, Lycaon sought out the Druids for their knowledge of shapeshifting.  Boy to be a fly on that wall as a wolf tries to convince someone that he is also a man.  Somehow his plight was translated, he was turned back, and the druids became known as emissaries to the werewolves.

Speaking of emissaries, Gpa Argent also tries to taint Scott’s opinion of Deaton by saying that the third body that was found soon after Deaton was saved could mean that Deaton knew all along that he was going to be saved, so he had the real victim already lined up to keep the ball rolling.  It’s an interesting theory, but I just can’t trust someone who is constantly leaking a black fluid from his facial orifices.  With that said, I am curious about where the druid symbol and sacrificial blood that Gpa and Papa Argent found in the flashbacks came from.  But just because Deaton is the only emissary we are shown at that time doesn’t mean he was the one to do the sacrificing.  It also could have been a chicken to fry up for everyone at the gathering.  So there’s that.

Final Thoughts

Though it was not the episode that I originally hoped for seeing as a large part of it did not contain all of my favorite characters, it is still a bright spot in this season of Teen Wolf as we learn more about Derek and what shaped him into the man he is today.

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