'Teen Wolf' 3.08 "Visionary" Review

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Did you ever hear the one about the two unreliable narrators that served as a story frame for Teen Wolf’s first ever flashback episode ‘Visionary’? Well, much like Deucalion or Scott when asked the same question about the scorpion and the frog (or turtle) in the show itself prepare because I’m about to break it all down for you. By the end of this, admittedly much-needed, hour of exposition exploits we as an audience as well as the characters on the show finally have answers to some of the show's big questions. This includes Deucalion/Alpha pack backstory, the nature of Derek’s first tragic love story, and how much of an instigator Peter Hale and Gerard Argent have always been. Mainly though this was a great way to show some background info in order to illuminate some ideas and characters that were immediately thrust into focus early on this year without much known about them. It actually could have been better to have this episode air a little earlier on in the first half of the season, but there are always growing pains when a show has a much longer season to deal with balancing its story in.

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The buzz around this episode was that fans would get the chance to learn a little bit more about Derek Hale’s tortured teenage past. Everything’s tortured with that guy, but we get to see that losing people he cares for started right about then when he was just a fifteen year old pre-teen wolf at Beacon Hills High. It wasn’t a shock to find out that there was a girl, some heartbreak, and a very bad decision made that’s left Derek the guarded hostile individual we first met in season one. It also set up the precedent for guys that are way too old to be lurking around high schools within the Hale family. Uncle Peter just happened to be around young Derek’s daily life much like when Derek himself first lurked around Scott and his friends in the same halls. 

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I’m glad that the episode didn’t spend an unreasonable amount of time focusing on the lost love tale of Derek and Paige because their flirty make-out scenes felt as out of place as you might expect when we were getting very useful information at other points in the episode that were more relevant to the events of this season. It might partly be because it looked like they actually hired real teenagers to play their age and in a time when we’re far more used to seeing twenty and even thirty-somethings playing high school students well, seeing the real thing was somewhat jarring. It was also pretty amusing for those of us out there that watch Teen Wolf now who saw actual young teen Tyler Hoechlin in the gangster drama Road to Perdition where he played Tom Hanks’ son. Let’s just say that someone's probably grateful toward the casting director for this show because real teen Tyler H. looked far more puberty-awkward than young Derek did last night.

I hope that if we get another love interest flashback from Derek Hale’s life during the show that it’s a chance to finally see what it was like when he first met Kate Argent. Kate was a fully developed character and we could say more about her than one-line sentences like oh she was musically talented (Paige) or oh she teaches English (Jennifer Blake). I guess it proved the precedent for Derek falling for mildly interesting brunettes at least. Everyone has a type.

One strength of the episode was how it succeeded in showing the viewer different ways to see characters they may initially have written off. I’ll admit that Cora Hale wasn’t doing much to impress me early on, but now that we’ve gotten a chance to see her in action more--by that I mean dialog and interacting with our faves not just another slow-mo action scene with intrusive guitar-heavy score-- I’m coming around to her. She basically is exactly what Stiles said tonight, a female Derek, but it’s still more interesting than being around solely to serve as a love interest so I'll take it for now. The shifting opinion on Cora Hale was personal for me but seeing Deucalion led to a more complex character backstory.

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It turns out that he was a cardigan-clad peacemaking Alpha wolf that wished to make a truce with the hunters following a violent incident on both sides. It may have worked considering the hunter's code should allow for it, however Gerard Argent couldn't care less about the code. It’s clear that his genocidal crazy ass should have been dealt with for far longer now and the fact that he’s still alive is only going to prove to be a problem in the future as well. He was the one that not only attempted to blind Deucalion but he trapped a large faction of his pack as well as some fellow hunters in order to slaughter them and keep hunter/wolf hostilities raging. Even though he gave Scott a nifty mythology history lesson during their time together, he also spent much of his story time lying his ass off. Something that new and improved season three Scott noticed. I hope he gets the chance to make good on the threat he made to Gerard about killing him if he’s luring them into something worse. It was one of the finest moments of the episode to see Scott call Gerard out that way when we at home could see that Grandpa Argent was shaping the narrative to fit his needs.

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Seeing that someone like Deucalion wasn’t always a crazed megalomaniac wasn't a huge shock, nor was seeing that Gerard has always been a murderous bastard. No, the true joy in this episode was over on Peter Hale’s side of things. In his version of events he was a harmless bystander that was always there for young Derek as more than an uncle. He was his best friend. When Scott busted Gerard for being such a good liar it was because his heart-rate didnt fluctuate once since he’s so good at it; I would propose that if someone was listening to Peter’s heart during his story that it wouldn’t have raced once either. But in his case it would be because he genuinely believes in his own lies--Peter is the hero of his own story and he’s certainly not the nasty voice in Derek’s ear convincing him to set up Paige’s bite when he knew she probably wouldn’t survive it. Thankfully, Stiles didnt fall for his story fully either, and I believe that this was meant to be the episode that dramatically began pointing the finger beyond speculation that Peter Hale really needs to be looked at this season as a threat once more.

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Another important piece of this episode was that it finally united the wolves and the druids in a big way. One of my favorite things about this show is its obsession with actual mythological tales. And not just the greatest hits from Greek and Roman myths, but from all over the spectrum. At San Diego Comic Con this past week Jeff Davis made mention of bringing in a Japanese shapeshifter soon, but last night we had the privilege of seeing our first true skinwalker in the form of Derek’s own mother Talia. We only spent a few scenes with her but I hope there’s more to see from her if only because we’ve never seen someone go full wolf before and she counted the mysterious Dr. Deaton as a trusted adviser. There’s clearly a load of story to be told there as well so let’s hope we get the chance to see it soon.

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"Visionary" was a great chance to sit back and finally get long-needed answers for this season and beyond. It featured some fine work from both Michal Hogan and Ian Bohan in their storyteller roles and gave other supporting characters a real chance to shine such as Alpha gone too soon Ennis. We're getting closer to to the mid-season finale and I can't wait to hopefully get the same amount of answers we were given tonight over with Lydia's mysterious nature next week. This could also go down as the most clothed episode of Teen Wolf in history and when you have a series mythology coming together this solidly, you don't even miss it.