This episode of Teen Wolf is full of desperate attempts to find where the sacrifices are being held as it builds to this story’s dramatic conclusion.

Rude Awakening

Picking up shortly after the end of last week’s episode, Stiles retreats back from the hospital roof to find Derek, who is still unconscious in the elevator.  They always say we hurt the ones we love, so sure enough Stiles starts smacking Derek across the face because he needs to wake up ASAP.  Ms. Blake is gone, taking Mrs. McCall with her, Scott has left with Mr. Smith (Deucalion), and they need to figure out what to do, now.

Family First

Derek isn’t as motivated as the rest of the cast of characters towards this major end goal, but I do think it was a little unfair of Isaac to yell at Derek like he did.  It’s not like Derek knew he was falling for the big bad of the season, so cut him some slack when it comes to that.  Not only that, but his sister is still dying, so it’s understandable that he cannot pull his mind out of its preoccupied state to help the rest of the pack to rescue the missing parents and stop Ms. Blake and the Alphas while his family is being destroyed yet again.  With that said, Isaac isn’t in the wrong for expecting more out of the leader of his pack, either.

Peter isn’t much help either, and as he watches Derek pull the pain from his sister and into himself he plays the adviser once more by divulging another bit of knowledge that he just happens to know.  The gist of what he says is that the spark within an Alpha makes them special, and that same spark may be what is necessary to bring Cora back, but this comes with great risk to Derek.  As he turns his back on Derek, Peter looks way too pleased when Derek says that he will do whatever it takes to save his sister, no matter what it means for himself, and I’m sure if Peter had an evil villain mustache he would still be twirling it.  He does have a point by saying that this could be part of Ms. Blake’s plan because a weaker Derek may turn to her for help to take down the Alphas, but I still think Peter is hiding his own plan as well.

To end this storyline for this episode, Derek pulls the pain from his sister (do they actually take the sickness with them as well when this happens, or just pain?  I’m assuming the former for this to make the most sense in concern to Derek being able to save his sister, but wouldn’t Scott and Isaac have saved the dying dog last season if they took the sickness into their bodies?  Maybe only Alphas can take it to that extreme.), his eyes revert back to his blue Beta eyes, and we will have to wait until next week to see if he actually survives this.

The Final Guardian

With Derek out of commission, Stiles turns to the Argents to help come up with a plan, as well as warn Mr. Argent that there’s a good chance that he will be the third guardian taken.  Argent doesn’t seem that worried about what Stiles and Allison have to say, instead saying that his gun is the thing he has that will keep him safe as he goes after Ms. Blake.  Isaac shows up to help with this plan, so Stiles goes off to find Lydia and see if her dead body detection skills can be of any use.

No matter how much I yell at Allison and Isaac to stay away from each other, they are unwilling to listen and go with Mr. Argent to the bank vault that has stored so much trouble so far this year.  Argent figures that because this was the site of a failed sacrifice attempt, there is a good chance that Ms. Blake will come back to this location once more.  And sure enough, he was right, and this was all in his plan.  He just didn’t fill in everyone else about the rest of what he planned on doing.

In order to keep his daughter and Isaac safe, he incapacitates Isaac and cuffs Allison to the wall so that he can do what he believes needs to be done, which is to go all Katniss and volunteer to be sacrificed (granted we can assume that he was going to be taken anyway based on his last name being spray painted on the hospital’s elevator doors, assuming that Ms. Blake was able to find paint and write it out in the short amount of time she would have had).

With her father gone, Allison only has Isaac’s comforting arms to help her, and I was left to scowl at them once more.

The Banshee’s Message

Hey look, it’s Lydia!  As far as we knew she had disappeared the night she was almost killed by Ms. Blake because she was missing from last week’s episode, but she must have just been icing her bruised neck and hiding under her bed sheets.  The strangulation marks are still there, but she has to emerge at some point, and Stiles needs her help.

She doesn’t really know what she can do since she doesn’t exactly control, or even understand, the powers she has, and all of this uncertainty and helplessness finally gets the better of Stiles when Allison lets them know that her father has been taken and Ms. Blake now has all of the sacrifices she needs.  With the thought of his father’s imminent death running through his mind, Stiles breaks down into a full-blown panic attack (and I thought my anxiety attacks were bad) in the middle of the school hallway.  Lydia drags him into the locker room to help him calm down, and in all the panic she ends up kissing him.  You would think this would actually be the worst thing to do considering how excited I assumed Stiles would be when this day finally came, but it actually helped because it made him hold his breath.  Lydia says that she read holding your breath helps stop panic attacks and that’s why she did what she did, buy we know there was more to that kiss based on her expression as she pulled away.  All I know is I need to remember to use science to my benefit like this…

With Stiles calmed down, they go to the counselor to see if she can help at all.  Unfortunately she isn’t in her office, but they still manage to get the information they need by going through her files; or more specifically, by going through the file on Lydia.  The counselor has kept one of Lydia’s drawings of the trees, and as Stiles recognizes it we finally learn why she has been obsessively doodling this throughout the season.  In actuality, it isn’t a tree so much as the remains of a tree.  More specifically, when flipped upside down it is actually the root system of a tree, and it clicks for Stiles that the parents are being kept in the root cellar.  Now they just have to figure out where that is.

Meanwhile, Under The Nemeton

Speaking of the root cellar, this is where Mr. Argent comes to after Ms. Blake took him from the bank vault.  Stilinski and Mrs. McCall are still here, thank goodness, which Mr. Argent was probably hoping for considering all of the knives he tried bringing in stashed on his person.  Ms. Blake isn’t an idiot though, so to his disappointment the other two prisoners let him know that she took all of the weapons off of him, which means they are going to have far more time than he originally expected tied up together in the root cellar.

Stilinski has finally come to terms with the truth about his town thanks to the help of Mrs. McCall, seeing what he was never truly willing to see until now.  Argent calls him out on this selective memory, and Stilinski goes into this story about a girl in a car crash who told him to go to his wife, but he didn’t right away, choosing to stay with the girl instead as they worked on freeing her from the car.  When he finally got to his wife, Stiles is out in the hallway of the hospital crying over his dead mother.  Yes, this is supernatural, but the way Argent was talking almost made it seem like this small instance of supernatural accounts for him not seeing the werewolves.  Not quite, but I guess I get the point of the story, even if it did seem pretty random.  And I’m not a complete monster; it was sad to finally hear what happened to Stiles’ mother.

With a last ditch attempt at rescuing Stilinski and Mrs. McCall, Argent breaks out a sonic emitter in the hopes that it will draw the werewolves to their location.

The Alpha Pack

For now, Scott’s time with the Alpha pack is short lived as we only see him with them for a little while.  He is there as they chase down the counselor, who is apparently guilty by association for being an emissary like Ms. Blake, but he steps in to protect her from death.  At least he says he will protect her.  In actuality as far as we know he left her slowly bleeding out from the wound in her chest from Mr. Smith’s cane once she told him to find the Nemeton.

Next thing we know he is going back to help his friends, so who knows exactly where he stands when it comes to the Alphas.  If this is as far as they go together though, the whole join-our-pack storyline was quite the let down, so it’s probably safe to assume that Mr. Smith is not done with Scott yet.  For starters, they’ll probably still have to work together to stop Ms. Blake.

The Return Of The Ice Bath

When everyone else is at a loss for how to find the magic tree, Deaton comes up with a plan that could possibly work.  But it comes with its own dangers, of course.  Long story short, the three children of the potential sacrifices must “sacrifice” themselves first, and this will somehow give power to the Nemeton through the items they each hold that contain great significance to their parents.  With this power, the Nemeton will become a beacon to the supernatural creatures in the area.  Good new for Scott, Allison, and Stiles as they will be able to find the tree, but it also means that who knows what creatures we’re going to be seeing in episodes to come.

This is assuming the plan works, of course.  First they actually have to carry it out.  Basically what they have to do is allow themselves to die for a few seconds before being brought back.  Simple enough, right?  The three will be held down in their own ice bath, with someone there to keep them tethered to this word.  I understand the strength of the bond between Stiles and Lydia simply because of the feelings he has always had for her, and Scott looks at the vet as a father figure, but even if Allison and Isaac are crushing on each other I wouldn’t think their bond would be strong enough in this situation.  But he’s the one left over for her, so you use what you have.  This reasoning is probably why Allison is the only one of the three we don’t see in the preview for next week’s episode, but there is no way she is going to die so it’s pretty safe to assume that Isaac is able to pull her back.  We just don’t know in what state, especially considering that Deaton says that doing this will leave them marked for the rest of their lives, with a darkness around their hearts.  This could mean emotional struggles in episodes to come as these characters deal with this, but fingers crossed that this similarity will help push Scott and Allison back together.

Final Thoughts

The ending of the episode is definitely frustrating as we are left with a black screen as Scott, Stiles, and Allison are pushed under the water in this penultimate episode, so if anyone is capable of making it next Monday all ready, I would greatly appreciate it.

Random Side Note Worth Mentioning – Scott’s dad is back!

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