Teen Wolf is off to a roaring start with the Season 5 premiere “Creatures of the Night.” It’s senior year for Scott, Stiles, Malia, Lydia, and Kira, and as well as feeling the normal existential angst that comes during the last year of high school, these teens have supernatural angst to deal with. We are thrown right into the thick of it, Teen Wolf style, with senior rites of passage, exasperated parents, the return of a childhood friend, and teenage make-out sessions, along with an epic fight, an introduction to new baddies, and a preview of dark things to come. Despite the loss of Tyler Hoechlin as a series regular, Season 5 of Teen Wolf is off to a strong start with “Creatures of the Night.”

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Were you wondering how these teens and their comrades-in-arms have been spending their hot summer nights? Well you’re going to find out, mostly.

• We’re not sure what Scott did, but whatever he did, it was pretty mediocre. We know this because he described his summer between junior and senior year as being “pretty much in the middle.” Sounds lame.
• Stiles remains anxious and worried, mostly about his future with bestie Scott. We also suspect he spent a lot of time getting to know Malia even better.
• Malia tried to catch up on 8 years of school lost to wandering the woods as a coyote. Well, she succeeded and passed her big test, resulting in her promotion to 12^th grade along with her pals. We never doubted it because if we learned anything from Wile E. Coyote, and we’re pretty sure we learnt a lot, it’s that Coyotes tend to be super geniuses, though somewhat frustrated ones.
• Kira was in New York City, where all the smart, young kitsune summer. We always knew she was too good for Beacon Hills.
• Though the misleading cold open led us to believe that Lydia spent her summer enduring boiling hot showers and needle therapy, it turns out at the start of her senior year, the Eichen House interlude is something she still has to look forward to.
• Liam spent his summer running wild and being punished by his betters.
• Liam isn’t the only one who is feeling punished as Sheriff Stilinski has been put Deputy Parish on cop desk duty for the last six months.
• Sheriff Stilinski and Melissa McCall spent their summer doing what all responsible muggle parents do – working their butts off.
• While Derek… apparently he spent his summer looking for other jobs.

Asylum of the Damned

Does everyone in Beacon Hills eventually end up in Eichen House at some point? In a world where a hospital can lose it’s accreditation for having dirty silverware it’s not clear how this medieval madhouse has remained open. What’s evident is that they only hire psychopathic, sadistic staff members. Despite the need to suspend our disbelief, we kinda love the old school horror of Eichen House. The stress from the last four seasons of Teen Wolf seems to have left Lydia catatonic, at least until her banshee/ninja skills kick in. She takes out half the staff with her supernatural wails and disarms the rest with her new kickass fighting skills. After fighting her way outside she finds herself face to face with her dead werewolf boyfriend Aiden.

Aiden: “Sorry Lydia, but your treatment’s not done. Not yet.”
Lydia: “Please I have to tell them. They’re all going to die. My friends–they’re all going to die.”

If this is all a bad dream, we think it’s time for Lydia to wake up.

The Roommate

Stiles is focused on trying to find a place in the Bay Area that he and his bestie Scott can live next year, along with their supernatural girlfriends, despite all going to different colleges. Scott is more focused on surviving senior year. Pondering Dr. Deaton’s comment about regression to the mean in Season 4, Scott wonders when the other shoe is going to drop.

Scott: “Life can’t ever be all bad or all good, you know, things have to come back to the middle. We’ve been pretty much in the middle for awhile. Which means at some point the scale has to tip one way or the other. Things are going to get really good again– “
Stiles: “Or really bad.”

We suspect the pack will find life both extremely good and extremely bad at different points during their senior year (aka Season 5), but probably mostly bad. At the end of this scene we find out what the boys are really doing hanging out in the woods– punishing the most recently turned pack member Liam, who lost control during the last full moon, by chaining him to a tree. Who says high school seniors like to bully the sophomores? It’s just about providing valuable life lessons.

Cabin in the Woods

Deputy Parrish is sick and tired of being treated like a sophomore by senior Sheriff Stilinksi. After complaining about paperwork duty, the Sheriff sends Deputy Parrish to an abandoned house to investigate a noise complaint. Something is locked away behind a concrete wall and the deputy foolishly frees it. The creature that emerges from behind the wall is a werewolf with glowstick claws covered in black goo. We suspect this werewolf had a much more exciting summer than Scott did. Naturally, the glowstick werewolf wants to know where alpha werewolf Scott McCall can be found.

Scott and Stiles try to ditch Liam for a “senior thing,” but the jeep breaks down. Despite Stiles’s duct taping efforts, it takes an erratic lightning storm to restart the jeep. This storm seems to be affecting all of Beacon Hills causing power outages, traffic jams, and effecting cell coverage. They pick up Malia, who makes out with Stiles right in front of her dad. He reminds them that he owns a gun.

Back at the McCall household Scott’s mom comes home from the hospital to tell Scott she has to go back to the hospital for a double shift. These poor muggle parents. As she stands around the house yelling to an absent Scott, a gooey figure stands in the dark. He has turned his glowsticks off so she doesn’t see him, but her shouting and a note on the fridge tells weregoo all he needs to know about Scott’s location. We also learn from the note that supernatural teens are given a wide berth by their parents in terms of what time they are expected home at night. When you’re busy fighting evil, a midnight curfew just may not be realistic.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Kira is in a traffic jam with her parents. After standing on the car to see just what the trouble is, she spots a cute boy and they smile at each other. Back in the car, her mother questions if this senior scribe thing involves vandalism while her dad plays dumb.

Rather than take Liam home, Stiles, Scott and Malia drop him at the hospital, where his dad is working. Liam wants to go with the seniors, possibly because he is concerned about his claw digging reaction to the full moon, but Scott reassures him that he’s learning and he’s strong. When Scott learns there’s been an accident on the highway he realizes that Kira will be stuck on the road and leaves the hospital to find her. He stops off at home, where something seems to be causing weird electrical and magnetic disturbances.

Back in the traffic jam, Kira’s mom shares a tale of Ghostriders hunting souls on nights like this. Being a 900 year-old nine-tailed kitsune, Kira’s mom probably knows all kinds of stories she could pass down. Yet when Kira hears Scott’s motorcycle in the distance, all she cares about is seeing her boyfriend and she jumps out of the car and runs to Scott. It appears that Scott has nothing to worry about with Kira going to New York, after all. They kiss and we can only hope that Kira’s parents aren’t watching.

At the Sheriff’s station some dude threatens to kill Sheriff Stilinski. We feel like we’re missing something here. Meanwhile the injured Deputy Parrish is having hallucinations about Lydia, which we find kinda of creepy since she’s in high school. Luckily Sheriff Stilinski arrives to interrupt before the deputy’s imagination goes too far. At the hospital Parrish gets glowey eyes and begins to heal himself as Stilinski and Melissa McCall warily watch. When he regains consciousness, Parrish tells them that weregoo is after Scott and might be able to steal his power, even though Scott’s a true alpha. Eavesdropping right outside the door, Liam hears that Scott’s in danger and runs to warn the pack.

Full Moon High

Stiles and Malia have arrived at the school, but see no signs of their friends, which makes Stiles anxious. Stiles tells Malia, “I asked my dad the other day about his high school friends. Guess how many he still talks to? None. Not a single one.” Stiles is worried that though Scott is his best friend now, maybe he won’t be for life. That concerns us too, as we hope their bromance will never die. Stiles and Malia kiss some more, but are interrupted when Liam arrives to tell them Scott’s in trouble.

Scott and Kira have made it to the school but are too busy getting reacquainted to meet their friends. They are distracted from their rainy kiss when weregoo arrives. When weregoo knocks down Scott, Kira takes off her belt and it turns into her sword. Cool! She can’t fight him off either. Before weregood uses his glowstick claws on Scott, a new werewolf shows up and joins the fight, but he is also defeated. Weregoo sticks his glowstick claws into Scott’s chest. For a moment all appears lost and we begin to worry the upcoming Season 5 will be about Scott trying to get his alpha powers back. But true alpha Scott regains the upper hand and tosses aside the glowstick claws, defeating weregoo and sending him scurrying away.

We find out that there werewolf who jumped in to help Scott is Theo, a friend who moved away from Becaon Hills in 4^th grade. He was the same boy that was making eyes at Kira in the traffic jam. Theo has heard tales of Scott being a true alpha and wants to join his pack.

Scott, Stiles, Kira, and Malia make it to senior scribe, where they find Lydia waiting for them. We learn the truth about senior scribe – a ritual in which books are removed and all the seniors write their initials on the library shelves. Stiles, and much of the audience, has a moment of notstalgia seeing Derek Hale’s initials included amongst seniors past. Malia makes the point to writes her initial MT, not MH, showing her acceptance of the father that raised her and a rejection of Peter Hale. Scott adds the departed Allison Argent’s initials to the shelves. Stiles says, “She would’ve been with us,” and Lydia points out that Allison is still with them, in spirit we assume.

Weregoo has returned to those who gave him the powers he used to try to kill Scott. Why anyone would return to this spooky lab filled with creature experimentation after having failed in a mission is a mystery. Three terrifying half-machine, half-something else approach, telling weregoo there will be no second chances and kill him. This is our first introduction to this season’s new villains–the Dread Doctors.

Madhouse

We flashforward to Lydia’s detention at Eichen House. Instead of talking to Aiden, Lydia is actually being questioned by some other man we’ve never seen before. He asks about this incident with weregoo that occurred at the start of senior year and asks what happened to all of her friends. We see glimpses of a past/future that doesn’t bode well for the pack. When Lydia tells him she doesn’t remember he tells her there’s other ways to get to the details and he takes out a big skull drill. And you thought the dentist’s drill was scary… What’s up with these Eichen House doctors? Is trepanation a standard medical practice there? Let’s hope Lydia’s mom refused to sign any consent forms.

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“Creatures of the Night” has a lot of things going on, yet the Teen Wolf writers managed to convey a coherent and engaging storyline. Though we lose fan favorite Derek, we gain the mysterious Theo. We’re not sure how well that trade-off will work, but wait and see. Sure, we poke fun of weregoo’s glowstick claws, but must admit he was frightening enough to make us think that something was making scary noises outside our darkened window. Lydia’s flashforward and the Dread Doctors have given us a glimpse of what we can expect for the season and it looks like a lot. We’re glad we only have to wait 22 hours until the second episode of Teen Wolf’s Season 5, “Parasomnia,” airs. If you aren’t already hooked on Teen Wolf check out 10 reasons why you should be watching. “Creatures of the Night” gets Teen Wolf off to an exciting start and we’re looking forward the rest of Season 5.