'Teen Wolf' Review: "Radio Silence"
Sabrina Petrafesa ’18 / Emertainment Monthly Executive Publisher
This episode of Teen Wolf created more questions, broke some fangirl hearts, and brought back a couple of characters we haven’t seen for a while.
The episode opens on Stiles (Dylan O’Brien) in a strange train station. Through him, we get the lay of the land, but the real question is how he is the only one who noticed everything around him is so strange. The Ghost Riders come in to drop off new people and then everyone forgets what happened. Maybe it’s his long history with the supernatural, but that wouldn’t explain why Peter Hale (Ian Bohen) didn’t know what was going on when Stiles discovered him in the train station.
Regardless, now we know where Stiles has been and O’Brien’s presence has been severely missed the past three episodes. Stiles, with the help of Peter, runs around the train station trying to find a way out. The two meet a fellow lost soul who dies in the process. Stiles and Peter finally figure out they can communicate through the radio, which leads to one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the episode. When Lydia (Holland Roden) and Scott (Tyler Posey) make contact with Stiles though the radio, Lydia remembers the last thing Stiles said to her, “Remember that I love you.”
With Peter in prison, the rules of the universe and exactly what the Wild Hunt is, come into question. Since Peter is Malia’s father, wouldn’t him being taken out of existence also erase Malia (Shelley Hennig)? Clearly, these people get taken out of existence but there aren’t any real repercussions to that. It seems more like people are being taken and the memories of them are just plucked right out of people’s brains.
There has never been a better time to be a Stydia shipper than now. The bond between Stiles and Lydia is clear throughout the series but especially in this season. Lydia is the only one who cares to keep looking for Stiles. When she notices the Jeep in this episode, she rushes to save it. The people she’s been seeing have been people Stiles interacted with in the train station. When Lydia went back to the Stilinski home and broke down in front of the wall, it makes it clear that these two are connected. That shot of her and Stiles back to back showed that and it seemed to imply that they can get to the train station through the Stiles’s house. Maybe Claudia really is a Ghost Rider in disguise so she can protect that specific entry way into the train station.
“Radio Silence” came back to basics by sticking with Scott, Stiles, Lydia and Malia. We’ve suffered through the learning curve of these characters, going through it with the newbies is tiresome. This episode felt like we finally got what we wanted from this season. Now with Stiles ominous warning to look into Canaan and to not bother looking for him, hopefully, we’ll get more episodes like this where everyone is trying to figure out the big mystery of the season.