With the "Teen Wolf" winter finale on the way, we're gearing up for the show to wrap up the first half of its season, which is a pretty tall order. A portal to the Ghost Riders' alternate dimension is open now, but Stiles (Dylan O'Brien) is still on the other side -- with a whole lot of major characters. We've also got a Nazi Werewolf Ghost Rider to contend with, and quite a few burgeoning romances on the horizon.
Screener spoke with "Teen Wolf" showrunner Jeff Davis about what to expect from the winter finale, and how his team of writers handled creating a season without Dylan O'Brien.
"It was definitely a challenge when we knew we were only going to have [Dylan O'Brien] for a couple episodes," Davis says. "The network asked me -- because he had this movie coming out and he wasn't going to be available to us -- if we could do a season with just a few episodes. I was like, 'Just a few episodes? It's Stiles!'"
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We can honestly say we had pretty much the same reaction -- how could "Teen Wolf" be "Teen Wolf" if it didn't have Stiles' particular brand of snarky humor?
Eventually, Davis landed on a way to deal with O'Brien's absence while also telling a great story.
"I had this idea I stole from an old feature script that I wrote a long time ago, back when I was a struggling film writer, and it was a script called 'Memory Lost,' which is what the title of the first episode of the season is. And it was about people forgetting, and I thought, 'What if we use that as the season, and we use it as a season to honor Stiles' character? I had this thought of a scene where Scott (Tyler Posey) says, 'I think I had a best friend,' and Lydia (Holland Roden) says, 'I think I loved someone,' and Malia (Shelley Hennig) says, 'I think I had someone who made me more human.' And it just felt right."
On a narrative level, the "Teen Wolf" writers hit a jackpot.
It's no secret that Stiles is the beating heart of the show, bringing levity and hilarity and a special something to the mix as one of the only humans of the pack. Missing him felt like missing a limb, which put the audience in a great place to understand the narrative and the struggle the main characters felt as they sensed something was missing.
Another rather ingenious decision in "Teen Wolf's" final season was to bring Theo (Cody Christian) back not as a villain, but as a seriously bad guy struggling to find a way to be less terrible. We wouldn't call Theo's arc so far a redemption arc, but it's certainly positioning him nicely to head in that direction.
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"Part of it was that we just didn't want to let Cody Christian go yet because we just love him so much," Davis says, "So we think to ourselves, how much can you redeem a cold-blooded killer, and what happens to this character?"
When he first came back, Theo was pretty much the last person anyone wanted to see. Now that we've gotten a peek at his own personal (terrifying) hell, which entailed getting his heart ripped out of his chest by his dead sister over and over again, we had to feel for the guy just a little.
Fear is a pretty good motivator for change, and we're willing to bet Theo would change just about anything about himself if it meant avoiding going back to that nightmare. Even sacrifice himself on behalf of the pack. According to Davis though, we haven't seen the last of Theo yet.
Something else to look out for in Tuesday's (Jan. 31) winter finale is more of the bizarre father/daughter relationship between Peter (Ian Bohen) and Malia.
"You will definitely see more of that relationship," Davis says of Malia and Peter. "The two of them together are pretty funny. It's such a dysfunctional relationship, and it will always be, 'I can't believe you're my father' for Malia. In a lot of ways, Peter can't quite believe she's his daughter."
The weirdly wonderful dynamic between Malia and Peter has been a favorite this season, so we're relieved to hear that "Teen Wolf" isn't quite done with it yet.
"Teen Wolf" airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on MTV.