We open with a wounded Isaac, too weak to get up on his own. An attractive girl picks him up, tells him someone’s claws caused the wounds on his neck. “I can’t remember anything,” he tells her. “That’s also how they steal memories,” she responds. Um… what? Soon enough they’re racing down a green screen with these twins chasing after them, trying all as they can to scratch any bit of flesh.
Also, as it turns out, these twins can morph into one super shapeshifter — and new girl is not having any of that. She takes them out with what I believe is a shotgun… for now. New girl and Isaac lay wounded in an abandoned warehouse (of course).
Basically, welcome back, Teen Wolf. It has definitely been too long.
Meanwhile, Stiles has accompanied Scott to get a tattoo… that is for all intents and purposes… just, why? Right? Was I the only one asking this question? Stiles wastes no time in telling him, either. As soon as Scott’s werewolf magic heals the tattoo — and there are no quotes, because it was definitely a wound — he’s all, “Thank goodness, ’cause it was fugly.” Turns out, Scott has always wanted a tattoo. And he was getting one because he was proud of himself for not contacting Allison in the four months she has not been wanting to talk to him.
“I shall permanently mark my body for passing my kind of breakup.”
—Scott
But can we talk about how and when he got the tattoo permanently marked? While at Derek’s house, where Isaac could be internally bleeding or something, they all stop to burn Scott’s tattoo so it can’t be healed out of existence. Then, Stiles says the pain Scott and Allison’s not-really breakup has caused an emotion to be felt by Scott which feels like an “open wound…” while Isaac is there with an actual open wound. No time to heal the physically wounded; I know that feel, bro.
Basically, Scott is having a lot of feelings during this premiere. And there’s an alpha wolf pack after him. Plus, he’s learning new words. Life is just really tough, guys. And everything is just so ephemeral. This entire episode, Scott’s been telling everyone that he’s a change man; he’s ready to be a better son, a better student, and a better wolf. But my favorite thing is that the writers threw in literary readings, for good measure. It’s as if they all collectively read every recap and were like, “We seem to have a dimwit dumb not the brightest always absent and getting horrible grades problem” and then just piled on classic novels for him to read.
So, basically, I love that they made Scott start to read things, including the dictionary.
Allison and her father are concerned with not being concerned about anything in town. Allison realizes that there’s a wolfpack nearby, and her father more or less tells her that it’s not their problem anymore. But, um, actually, sir, if you live in that town: it is your problem. Why would you come back to a town where everyone you loved died because of what you just vowed to stop fighting against? It’s like a suicide anti-moving. For now, however, they’ve decided to just ignore everything they see that might be weird.
Which, for the record, include the following: (A) A deer running straight into Lydia’s car and (B) at least a dozen birds, also, crashing their way into a classroom. And no, Keri Russell wasn’t even in sight. How could anyone ignore those signs? And why did none of the students think about leaving the classroom while that flocking mess was happening? They’re really serious about ignoring.
Just as Lydia is ignoring that her feelings have been hurt that Jackson left for London. Sure. The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else, as they say, and Lydia is adopting that policy with some random guy in her bed on the first day of school and with maybe one or both of the new twins (who are crazy evil). Hey, it’s a much better step to recovery than getting Scott’s tattoo. Unfortunately for Stiles, she still doesn’t want to sleep with Stiles.
Scott gets a call from his mother, who is trying to adapt quickly to the whole her-son-being-a-werewolf thing, that Isaac is hurt in the hospital. But as soon as he tries to free him from there: some guy comes to kidnap him! then there’s a huge fight in the elevator! then Derek comes out of nowhere and claws the guy in the back! “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?” he asks. Scott stares as if Derek is even really alive, like he’s just seen a ghost. “School is ephemeral.”
At Derek’s house, Scott learns that there’s an all-Alpha pack coming for all of them. “How do you even defeat an all-Alpha pack?” he asks. “With all the help I can get,” Derek replies. “Man, this fight is so not going to be ephemeral!”
Meanwhile Isaac’s dying like, “Can I get some help here?”
It turns out that, yes, there’s an all-Alpha werewolf pack that’s in town just to kill Scott, for the most part. And New Girl was trying to warn Scott about it, but unfortunately for her, her time’s up before the credits roll. It was nice… knowing(?) you, New Girl.
They’ve fought the impossible before, but now the Teen Wolf pack is facing another seemingly not defeat-able villain: werewolves… you know, again! So, it’s going to be a good season. I can feel it. When does Allison get her bow again?
Other observations:
What did you think of the season three premiere?
ABC's detective hit Moonlighting was one of the best TV show's of all time —…
Previously Published on Fan Fest News... For six seasons on The 100, actress Marie Avgeropoulos…
Previously Published on Fan Fest News... It seems The 100 fans have gotten their own…
I was browsing Reddit after the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve (or what…
It's a little late, but I wanted to share a few shows I liked this…
Mark Hildreth is a jack of all trades, with an undeniable passion for entertaining. Viewers…
View Comments
Watch Teen Wolf Season 3 Episode 1 "Tattoo" - https://twelio.com/owos8d
DAMN Its GREAT to see this show back.
It seems they upped the ante on EVERYTHING - cinematography, fight choreography, etc.
Love the mysteries and questions this episode raised, love the intense atmosphere.
Damn its great to see this brilliant, brilliant, brilliant show back.
And for those people hating on Scott all over the internet right now - Scott has ALWAYS been an alpha - deal with it.
He might not have the red eyes or alpha powers yet, but he has always been the leader, the one that connects everyone together, the one looking after everyone’s safety and the one most fitting the position of a leader.
Derek might have the whole red eyes thingy but he never truly LED people. He tried to, but he did not have natural charisma, nor natural care for those people. It was always Scott.
And being an Alpha means far more than just having some nifty eye powers.
LOL there's Scott hate over this!? I will never understand anything, to be honest.
Yeah. There are certain annoyingly vocal parts of fandom who feel that Scott does not deserve to be called that because "he's too dumb and spineless to be that".
The same fandom parts then can go on for hours over how Jeff Davis hates Derek and how "under-appreciated" Derek's "wisdom and leadership" is.
Apparently some people never have gotten the memo that the whole point of Derek's character is that he is a screw-up in everything he wants to achieve, because while he has the power, he lacks skills.
Then again there were people hating on Lydia for Peter abusing her(as well as people wishing her to die just because she slept with someone casually in this premiere) and people who cheer for Matt's revenge angst, yet hate on Allison doing same thing(to a lesser degree), so idk with this fanbase sometimes.
Derek is at best misunderstood, at worst suffering from severe PTSD. He makes mistakes (as any good character should) but the thing is, he pays for them severely.
Scott, on the other hand.... I feel like the writers just threw together ALL the stereotypical Good Guy qualities with none of the "it factor" and expect the audience to swoon at the brilliance of him. The plot keeps handing Scott prizes just cause and doles out screentime for his boring storylines and dramatic zooms where his face shows not discernible emotion. We're being *told* how smart and wonderful and deserving he is, but we never experience it ourselves.
Scott McCall is a Gary Stu. To a tee. And now he's set to become God Mode Stu.
He isn't the least bit inspirational, his story does not pull at your heartstrings, his motivations are petty and he's dense (last finale's plan was the vet's). Only the author roots for the Mary Sue, as it is a self-insert, a power fantasy. I do not find his character compelling at all.
I am sorry, but the VERY notion that Scott actually GOT to show his flaws and weaknesses makes your argument fall apart completely.
We saw Scott insecure. We saw scott falter. We saw Scott loose his priorities. We saw Scott being an asshole. We saw jealousy, we saw he has slight superiority complex due to his powers and we saw him sometimes using people.
Just because his heart is in the right place and he has natural leadership capabilities, it does not make him perfect. Especially since huge part of the show shows just how imperfect he is.
And the very fact that we HAVE the flaws to balance out his positives, makes any try to call him a gary stu impossible to argument properly for.
His motivations are petty? Oh I am sorry, I did not know that wanting every person you know to survive the mess that is going on is now considered petty.
And dense? Sorry Not seeing that. There's no confirmation that the plan was vets and we have seen Scott outsmart people multiple times, including Derek and Peter. We have seen him plan several steps ahead, we have seen him take into account various factors the likes of Derek never would and we have seen him do that while still holding on to his values of life. Finale thing is RIGHT in line with what Scott has been doing. The only way scott lacks IQ is in conventional topics, simply because of all the stuff that is going on around him that he has to devote his attention to
. Everything in the show he has got he has earned and yet he still keeps being unable to protect people he cares about. I am sorry, but Scott right now is the most well developed male lead in the whole TW show.
I agree totally. I don't think Scott used to be a Gary Stu, but as time's gone on, and especially now in s3 he's a Stu. He has no real flaws.
The best he had was being bad in school, but you can see all the hysterical Scott fans saying he was always the smartest character, and now they have him being all intellectual anyway.
The few 'flaws' he has are so shallow it's ridiculous. Like when Mary Sue's have the flaw of being 'too nice', 'too humble or 'clumsy', Scott'f flaws are 'too nice' and 'too determined to do the right thing.'
Now that Boyd and Erica are dead, he is the most boring character on the show. Alison is more interesting than Scott, and I never thought I'd say (or type) that one day!
Isaac was already healing and Derek treated him with the wolfsbane BEFORE they did the tattoo.
Also Scott was never a dimwit. Ugh.
Agreed. Scott has been smartest person in the cast for quite a while now. He was only one with common sense in control over his emotions in S2.
Huh? Am I the only one who's heard about this? I'm not even immersed in the fandom much, but I mean… I just googled it and it's a thing. There's always been a running joke about Scott being dumb by fans, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe dimwitted is the wrong phrase, but definitely dumb in the scholarly sense. Of course, the show has always said he could never good grades because he's basically never in school but also has made jokes at his expense for not knowing certain phrases or even how to deal in fairly normal social situations. His reading a bajillion books honestly feels like a direct in-joke to all that.
Scott is as dumb as Buffy is, basically - the only reason he fails in something is because he literally had no time for it keeping everything together. He would like to crack a book or do homework, but there are weird people with glowy eyes threatening him in his room, dudes with red eyes sticking nails into his neck, lizard-things killing people and his gf pointing crossbows at him.
Trying to solve your math homework amongst all of that might come off as quite hard.
And yeah its both an in-joke and a hint at how supernaturally-empty the timeskip has been . And yeah its clearly a jab at fans too, since even through the S2 when Scott kept showing that he is not dumb and doing the sensible thing, people in the fandom were screaming at how dumb he is, to the point that they called the finale twist with Gerard a "bad writing" because OBVIOUSLY scott could never ever pull it off.
So Jeff Davis literally went "[i]okay I must have been too subtle with you, lot, here a scene of him reading a thousand different books, can fandom plz stop underestimating his intellect?[/i]"
Precisely what I was getting to. And also, perfect parallel about Buffy is perfect. I would have found it equally funny if Buffy was reading a lot of books out of nowhere.
My disdain was because you wrote your recap like you DID ascribe to that camp (seeing as you made no attempt to say you disagreed, though you've now thrown in a ton of struck out words for some reason). Comments like that don't correct the fandom perception, it validates it, and it means when he does things like, i don't know, saving everyone over and over, people can't even give him credit for it.
But mostly I was just rolling my eyes because of your Isaac comment. Obviously time had passed since they got there seeing as Stiles had time to get there from school. I doubt they ignored Isaac during that time and were just talking tattoos.
Yikes! Disdain? Jan, unfortunately, I think you took me/this recap way too seriously. Well, maybe you don't anymore, but initially. I don't think the show's admittance for Scott's tendency to be a bit, let's say, forgetful, invalidates his character. And I don't see why it's seen as a bad trait, either. It gives him dimensions, and plus it's fun to joke about.
As for the Isaac detail, yet again another joke. In fact, I wasn't the only one to make it. From BuddyTV's recap:
"Also, while Isaac spends all episode fighting for his life, Scott gets a tattoo. 'Thanks bro, I'll just be over here on this dirty table hemorrhaging to death so Scott can get his tribal breakup tattoo,' I'm sure an unconscious Isaac would say."
https://buddytv.com/articles/teen-wolf/teen-wolf-season-3-premiere-re-50264.aspx
Teen Wolf is thriller fun, especially when we can tease it for the slight details.
I miss Alison's hair, shes still completely gorgeous... I kusy moss her long black hair(superficial crap lol).Great premier though! I missed Stiles soooo much!
I know what you mean with the hair,I missed the dark long hair too y'know
Not sure where any of the Scott or Derek hate comes from. I prefer Derek (and Stiles) over Scott. But the show is about Scott and he has continued to improve since the beginning of Season 2. I like that he's a little dimwitted. I think it's endearing. He also seems to care about everyone which is doubly endearing. I don't totally buy the epic love between him and Allison but it was done well in this episode. I loved this episode. I love the dynamic between Derek and Scott. And I think that I like the idea of him having potential to be great. He's a high school student so the story can be about him meeting that potential and I'm cool with it.
This was a great episode. And I liked the new character that helped Isaac. Shame about what happened to her, especially given the screen time they gave her. She and Isaac had good chemistry I thought. And it would be nice to have a new person of color to add to the cast, as well as more gender diversity. As much as I like the guys on the show (which is to say a lot), they seriously outnumber the girls on the show. I thought she was a bit of an enigma that would have been good to figure more about. She looks a bit like Ms. Morrell (played by the awesome Bianca Lawson) so maybe she is related to her and Deaton and we'll get more details that way.
I loved this episode and I thought they did an EXCELLENT job introducing the big bad (s) this season. They were all very different and can't wait to see more (particularly from barefoot claw girl). Her spin kick was fierce. It was an effective first episode. No Danny which makes me sad. But I'm looking forward to Team Human bonding and showing that they are just as valuable as the werewolf portion of their cast.