REVIEW - Teen Wolf - S03E08

The best way to describe this week's episode of Teen Wolf is underwhelming. It was entertaining enough as I was watching it but when the credits started rolling I found myself wondering what the point was. The performances were moving and the direction was solid but most of the story consisted of boring clichés that's sole purpose was to deliver exposition.

"Visionary" involves two of Teen Wolf's biggest bads reminiscing about an unknown period in the past (I say unknown because we have no idea when these events took place). There are two stories, one is about Derek's tragic first love and the other is the events that led up to big bad Alpha Deucalion's blinding. There are a couple very unsubtle hints to the season mystery but otherwise this episode was mostly filler.

I have to admit that I am not a fan of flashback episodes, they are generally lazy and very rarely add anything of substance to the actual story. And that's a pretty good description of this episode. My guess is they needed to give the lead actor's a bit of a break so they headed into the past for two of the most cliché origin stories ever.

Deucalion - who is this season's big bad - was just like Scott, idealistic and naive, until Gerard Argent betrayed and blinded him during a peace summit. Giving the villain and the hero similar beginnings is a staple of pretty much ever hero's journey. It's fairly predictable and doesn't really add much to Scott's character arc but it's not as bad as what they did to Derek.

Derek had a really interesting origin story. He's your classic anti-hero but his tragic back-story was essentially a rape narrative (whether you want to read it literally or metaphorically).  Presenting a classically masculine character as a rape survivor was one of the most interesting things Teen Wolf has ever done. With this week's episode they pushed that aside to tack on the most cliché white hero origin story ever.

A jock jerk falls for the quirky outsider, she sees through his arrogant exterior but it all ends tragically when she dies in a way that is either directly or indirectly the jerk jocks fault. He then carries her death with him as the basis for his heroic manpain. If that sounds familiar that's because it is. That is the origin of pretty much every white male hero ever (occasionally it's his mother or his sister).

It doesn't matter whether this storyline has a greater significance, it's still awful and frankly I expected better from Teen Wolf, although I don't know why. I'm starting to hope that all the people that have died for Derek's manpain band together in the afterlife to kill Derek so that no more innocent women and POC are harmed in the name of mangst.

Anyway, next week it's back to the actual story and again they promise answers, yeah I'll believe that when I see it.

Review by Yvonne Popplewell

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