"Teen Wolf" Review: “Letharia Vulpina”
Alysha Boynton ‘17 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
The episode also saw the return of Dr. Deaton (Seth Gilliam), who appeared in the opening scene and managed to obtain some nogitsune poison. What followed was a mash-up of scenes involving Kira (Arden Cho) using her electricity harnessing powers, Isaac (Daniel Sharman) getting electrocuted and, for some reason, not using his werewolf powers to heal, and Mama Yukimura (Tamlyn Tomita) sacrificing some of her kitsune fox tails to create more Oni demons.
Stiles/The Nogitsune (Dylan O’Brien) is still missing during all of this commotion at the start of the episode, until the twins (Max Carver and Charlie Carver) and Scott (Tyler Posey) happen to find him hiding in the school basement. The demon wearing Stiles’ body puts on a good show, insisting that he’s really Stiles, and he thinks he did something bad when the demon was controlling him, but it’s relatively easy to spot the differences between our beloved Stiles and the trickster spirit. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Scott chooses to believe the lie, and it isn’t until after Coach Finstock (Orny Adams) has been shot in the stomach by a booby trap, the Sheriff’s station falls victim to a shrapnel bomb, and Stiles twists a katana sword in Scott’s gut that he realizes his mistake.
The other subplots of the episode were Derek (Tyler Hoechlin) and Chris Argent (JR Bourne) getting framed for Silverfinger’s murder and ending up in the Sheriff’s station (when the bomb went off), and Lydia (Holland Roden) and Allison (Crystal Reed) paying a visit to Peter (Ian Bohen) to ask him some questions about Banshees.
Although Lydia remained strangely not murderous towards Peter and much of the dialogue in the scene was utterly cringe-worthy, Allison completely rocked the scene, standing up to Peter and even tasing him at one point, making it the second fantastic scene of the episode. Lydia used her Banshee powers to learn that Peter has a child that he can’t remember because Talia Hale (Alicia Coppola) took his memories of it, but trying to get Teen Wolf fans to care about a Peter storyline is about as likely as Danny (Keahu Kahuanui) actually getting a storyline of his own, which is, unfortunately, very slim.
Overall Episode Grade: B-