August 24, 2015 8:06pm PT by Ryan Gajewski
‘Teen Wolf’ MTV
Jeff Davis reveals to THR who’s still alive on the MTV drama and how the episode’s climactic battle will change things.
[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Monday’s finale of MTV’s Teen Wolf.]
Teen Wolf‘s dark path continued in its harrowing season-five summer finale, as two of the show’s heroes came to blows.
The MTV drama’s episode saw Scott (Tyler Posey) duke it out with Liam (Dylan Sprayberry) over Hayden’s (Victoria Moroles) fate. By the end of the episode, Lydia’s (Holland Roden) life was on the brink and Sheriff Stilinski (Linden Ashby) was similarly struggling as Theo (Cody Christian) brought the chimeras, including Hayden, back to life to do battle against Scott’s pack.
Creator Jeff Davis spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about how Scott will respond to the violent fight, the new dangers facing the team in the “epic” second half of the season and why season six will likely signify a permanent change for the show.
The finale leaves Scott’s pack in disarray. How will we see them move on from this?
What’s next is partly a long road to recovery for Scott and Stiles’ (Dylan O’Brien) friendship — it’s not going to be easy. They’re not all going to come back together in episode 11. What we’re planing is a season of rebuilding. Our theme for season 5B is resurrection, so we’re going to be bringing the band back together, as they say, and it’s all going to be on Scott’s shoulders. He’s got to learn from his failures — it’s up to him to give them hope again, as Melissa (Melissa Ponzio) tells him. Scott and Stiles [will also try to] both rebuild their relationships — Stiles and Malia [Shelley Hennig] are essentially broken up, Scott and Kira [Arden Cho] have been torn apart — and we’ll see if they can get back together.
With Hayden joining Theo’s pack of resurrected chimeras, where does that leave things for her and Liam? And what’s the fallout from Liam’s battle with Scott?
[Hayden teaming with Theo] is going to cause plenty of conflict for Scott and the others, and for Liam especially. [Liam and Scott’s friendship will be] pretty broken — they’re going to have to come back together, since Liam is Scott’s only real beta in his pack. Liam has to do some soul-searching and figure out, can he simply blame the supermoon, or was there something inside him that drove him a little crazy as well? It’s going to be hard for him and he’s going to have to take on responsibility, while also carrying on a secret romance with Hayden.
What’s the significance of the image that the Dread Doctors reveal in the final scene?
That is a fresco uncovered, and it leads to both what the Dread Doctors have created — this creature — and what that creature will face. We call 5B a bit of clash of the titans, so Scott and Theo’s packs are going to get caught up in it. I can tell you that one of the creatures in that fresco, you’ve already seen — you already know. The very attentive viewer will pick out what’s actually in that picture.
What will be Lydia’s connection to the Dread Doctors in 5B?
She’s going to be very connected. Unfortunately, Theo has driven her out of her mind, which is what sends her to Eichen in 5B. Part of it will be how she learns to fight and find her voice while still in Eichen House. And she’s going to have an unexpected ally there. So we’re planning some good stuff for Holland next season. Her arc has quite a bit to do with the Dread Doctors and possibly thwarting their plans.
The first half of the season has been tough for Scott. How will he have changed in the second half?
It’s the classic hero’s journey — the midseason finale is the death and resurrection. Now that he’s basically resurrected, he’s going to carry a loss of innocence with him, and he’s got to do what his mother says, which is give them hope. You got to get them back. And so the first part of season 5B will be him trying to draw back his friends into a pack once again in order to both help Lydia get out of Eichen House and also stop what’s going to potentially kill all the people they love. So it’s a big epic season we’re building, which is the threat that’s dreamed up by Parrish (Ryan Kelley) when he sees hundreds upon hundreds of bodies. And what he’s seeing is the path of destruction and death that happens because of this sort of clash of titans.
How will Stilinski be doing in the new episodes, following his attack?
Surviving. [Laughs] Episode 11 [which is the premiere of the second half of season five] deals with whether he survives or not. We’ll see Scott and Stiles fighting for Stilinski’s life. The gashes delivered to him in episode 10 become a big problem in episode 11.
What is Kira’s (Arden Cho) status when season 5 returns?
She and Noshiko (Tamlyn Tomita) have gone off to figure out how to solve the problem of the fox spirit taking control. We just got a draft in of episode 13, which is all about Kira, and I think it’s going to be a really fun episode. Episode 12 cues the audience in to where she’s been and where she’s going with a bit of a cliffhanger, and then 13 is all about Kira. It’s pretty fun, what we’ve come up with, and pretty ambitious, and it delves into some of the tougher parts of her relationship with her own mother, too.
Part of the finale focused on Theo reaching out to Malia (Shelley Hennig). Will this continue to develop?
He’s offered help to her in dealing with the Desert Wolf, and she’s going to find out that he has more of an advantage than he actually told her, so she’s going to need him. So it’s going to be some tense alliances.
Will Parrish’s past get revealed, now that we’ve learned he’s a hellhound?
You’ll definitely find out about his past in 5B. A lot more questions are going to be answered about him in 5B, specifically what his role is and the reason he came to Beacon Hills and what he’s supposed to do there, and it all has to do with the myth of the creature that he actually is, the hellhound. He has to become conscious of what he’s been doing. He’s not necessarily a good guy, but he’s not a bad guy either. He has a function to perform. He is in a way a protector, but Cerberus, who guarded the gates of hell, is not a very nice two-headed dog.
Will the 5B premiere provide answers to most of the finale’s big questions?
Yes, but there will be a few mysteries that are carried over. It’s sort of a big chess game we’re playing here. You’ll learn gradually what everyone’s role is in this approaching cataclysmic battle that you’re going to see. When we initially planned this, I thought season five was going to be the last season of Teen Wolf, so we were planning on going out pretty big. We’re still planning on going out big — it’s just now we’re going to get another season. [Laughs]
Will we see the characters graduate in the second half of the season?
No. One of the things we don’t really do on Teen Wolf is those teenage tropes, like graduation or prom. We’ll see if we ever get to graduation, but they won’t have graduated by the end of 5B, partially because our timeline is also so condensed. [Laughs] A season of Teen Wolf takes three weeks in their actual lives because it’s a thriller, and there’s a compression of time that happens.
Do you have a plan for where the characters will be post-high school?
We’ve talked about it a little, but it’s hard to say. We’re breaking episode 14 right now, so we’re really just constantly in catch-up mode. [Laughs] That’s the way TV is though. Usually, when someone starts to bring up season six, another person says, “I don’t even want to think about that right now.” [Laughs]
The first half of the season offered plenty of gore. Will that stay the same in the second half?
We wanted 5A to be a body-horror season. We’re going to change that a little bit for 5B because the Doctors have essentially succeeded, but we’re still going to be scary. We’re treating season 5B like a big monster movie. We’ve got some more surprises in store for our creatures next season, and now that Theo has his dark chimera pack, he’s going to be causing a lot of trouble for Scott as well.
Do you think the show will probably wrap up after season six?
I have no idea. [Laughs] Who knows if [that] will be the last season or not. [But] beyond season six, I’d love for someone else to take over the show. If it still has life, if there’s still stories to tell, that would be great — [to] see maybe Dylan Sprayberry take over the role of the Teen Wolf and see Tyler Posey move into more of a Derek Hale (Tyler Hoechlin) role. That would be the Degrassi High version.
Email: Ryan.Gajewski@THR.com
Twitter: @_RyanGajewski
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