'Teen Wolf' Review: "Heartless"
Sabrina Petrafesa ‘18 / Emertainment Monthly Executive Publisher
After the lackluster episodes Teen Wolf presented this season, “Heartless” provided answers to most lingering questions, pulled together the seemingly disjointed plot lines, and delivered quite a few performances that make one remember why they watch Teen Wolf in the first place.
Holland Roden has been giving A plus performances this season, and did not disappoint in “Heartless.” Throughout the episode, we see her character Lydia Martin attempting to convince Sheriff Stilinski (Linden Ashby) that his wife Claudia (Joey Honsa) is a manifestation of his own making, meant to fill the void left behind by his son, Stiles, and convince him Stiles was real. We find out this episode that what was behind the wallpaper was, in fact, his son’s bedroom. Sheriff Stilinski refuses to see what Martin is clearly starting to remember while standing in Stiles’s room. As they speak, a chair with Stiles’s lacrosse jersey and helmet appears. Martin grabs it while Sheriff Stilinski is clearly confused by the girl’s actions. In a stunning moment—for Teen Wolf—Martin forces him to see what isn’t there by throwing the jersey in his face, making him see what he is so willfully ignoring.
While Martin is trying to get the Sheriff to see reason, Liam Dunbar (Dylan Sprayberry), Hayden Romero (Victoria Moroles), Scott McCall (Tyler Posey) and Theo Raeken (Cody Christian) attempt to catch a Ghost Rider with a foolhardy plan. Because this is Teen Wolf, the plan goes off without a hitch, and they manage to talk to it through local hellhound Deputy Jordan Parish (Ryan Kelley). Dunbar attempts to take control of the situation, but so obviously can’t. The Ghost Rider senses the alpha is McCall, who makes sure the Ghost Rider knows that he will not stop fighting until he gets everyone the Riders have taken, not just their friends.
Malia Tate (Shelley Hennig), understandably, breaks off from the pack to avoid killing Raeken. She enlists Melissa McCall’s (Melissa Ponzio) help to heal Peter Hale (Ian Bohen), so they can scope out the area from which Hale came out of the Ghost Rider’s supernatural train station. These moments between Hale and Tate lead to the episode’s only comical ones. Teen Wolf has always been a show that simultaneously takes itself too seriously and not seriously at all. Tate and Hale’s scenes fall into a less serious category, helping to break up the intense scenes in the rest of the episode.
The plot line including Mr. Douglass (Pete Ploszek) finally comes together with the rest of the series in this episode. Evidently, Mr. Douglass has been killing and eating people’s pineal glands in their brains to be able to see Ghost Riders. After the pack leaves the Ghost Rider in his cage to hopefully fend off any incoming Ghost Riders, Douglass shows up and forces Raeken to let him in the cage—not to free the Ghost Rider, but to eat it’s pineal gland and take its whip. Clearly, Douglass wants to become a Ghost Rider. The episode ends with him using the whip on Corey (Michael Johnston), and making him disappear in a cloud of green smoke.
This episode reminded viewers how, at its core, Teen Wolf manages to tell a simple story with fantastic characters. Hopefully, this episode means the rest of the season will pick up, and Teen Wolf will end with its characters and fans in mind.