REVIEW - Teen Wolf - S03E01

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It’s back and it’s bigger and badder than ever. It’s been a long hiatus since Teen Wolf’s fantastic second season but it has finally come blasting back into our lives with an amazing season premiere.

The opening sequence, involving a mysterious girl and a motorcycle chase, represents everything that was right and wrong with this episode. It’s pretty clear they’re aiming for epic and while it doesn’t quite make it, they just don’t have the budget to pull off big CGI based stunts, it sets the tone for a season that is quite clearly going where Teen Wolf has never gone before.


Once it moved into more familiar territory, especially the turbulence of teenage romance, the episode really came into its own. Scott was more lovable than ever, which I didn’t think was possible, and it was nice to see Stiles back in his role as comic relief. Especially after the dramatic turn his character took towards the end on Season 2, although I doubt that the fun times will last much longer.

Without a doubt the star of the episode was Holland Roden as Lydia Martin. Lydia had a rough ride throughout the first two seasons and while she had some awesome moments she was often relegated to damsel in distress or romantic reward. It was nice to see a more confident Lydia, one that wasn’t defined by her interactions with the male leads. Roden stole every scene she was in and I can’t wait to see where they take her character this season.


The episode was a little hard to follow at times due to the amount of information they had to give us but over all I think it was a solid start to the season. There is clearly a lot going on, including a lot of new characters, but it was nice that despite a couple of moments the majority of the episode focused on Scott, Allison, Stiles, Lydia and Derek. It was especially great to see Scott and Derek working so well together.

Despite the tagline’s warning that “this might hurt” this episode was relatively pain free but the mysteries introduced were intriguing, and Deucalion seems like he will make a delicious villain. I wasn’t keen on the implication that Scott is the hero of a prophecy driven adventure (one werewolf to save them all) but as Teen Wolf has a tendency to take tired tropes to unexpected places I am going to give it the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

Although not without it’s problems, “Tattoo” was a great introduction to what looks like an exciting season but only time will tell if the many, many mysteries this episode set up are able to fulfill their potential.

Review by Yvonne Popplewell

More of Yvonne’s work can be found at her blog.

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