Well, after the atrocity that was last week’s episode, it would have been really hard for this one to not be an improvement. Hit the jump to find out my thoughts.
“De-Void” opens with Scott and Kira racing to Derek’s loft. Meanwhile, the sheriff, Chris, Allison, and Derek are already there. But nothing they do seems capable of stopping the nogitsune. It rips through a pair of handcuffs, proves that tasers have almost no effect on him, and throws Derek against a wall with ease. Even when Chris points a gun at him, the nogitsune acts like it’s a joke. But he didn’t trick all four of them into the loft to fight him; he did it for protection. Sure enough, it grows dark outside, the Oni show up, and a fight ensues.
Unfortunately, by the time Scott and Kira arrive, it’s too late. Stiles has disappeared, and the Oni are nowhere in sight either.
Meanwhile, Kira’s mom is in the basement of the mental hospital, looking at Reese’s body, which is still down there for some reason, and the shards of the wall where the 己 kanji was engraved. The nogitsune appears and steals the last tail from her, which he uses to cut apart Stiles’s stomach. Even worse than watching a teenager be forced to brutalize his own body like that is seeing hundreds of flies come flying out of his horrible gaping wound.
Later on the next day, Lydia and Aiden are driving around town, but Aiden is convinced that they’re lost, since Lydia just made a fourth right turn. Lydia says the GPS is new, but when Aiden points out that it isn’t even on, Lydia, who had been hearing directions coming out of her stereo, freaks out and pulls the car over. The two of them find an unconscious and wounded Stiles laying in the middle of a parking lot, and they take him back to Scott’s place.
Deaton uses kanima poison to paralyze the nogitsune when Stiles wakes up, while Mama McCall tends to his wound. Once fully conscious, the nogitsune starts to mock the characters, but he still lets Aiden know that his brother Ethan, who is at the school, might be in danger.
This seems to be part of the nogitsune’s plans, as the flies that came from Stiles’s stomach have already made their way throughout all of Beacon Hills. And it looks like their purpose is to infect our characters and influence their minds. One crawls into Isaac’s IV, and another into a cut on Derek’s shoulder from the Oni attack. They even get both twins. While under the influence of the flies, Isaac makes a full recovery, goes to Allison’s place and steals all her weaponry. He then heads to the school, where he plans to ambush and kill both twins. While this is going on, Derek confronts Chris, and after a brief struggle, he manages to subdue the hunter and cover him with gasoline, with the intention of burning him alive as soon as Allison is around to witness the event.
Allison, meanwhile, has joined up with Kira to stop Isaac. But things are not so simple. Since both the twins are also infected, they want to kill each other just as much as Isaac wants to kill them, and they end up having a three-way battle in the school locker room.
Back at Scott’s house, everyone knows that the kanima poison isn’t going to last forever, and they need a plan. Scott wants to call Derek, but Lydia of all people suggests asking Peter for help instead. Peter, who doesn’t do anything for free, only agrees to it if Lydia tells him Malia’s name. Surprisingly, Peter’s plan, for Scott to use his alpha powers to submerge both himself and Lydia inside the nogitsune’s head to find the real Stiles, actually works.
Thankfully, the two of them manage to get through all the mental tricks the nogitsune throws at them and find the real Stiles, who, upon seeing his friends, breaks free of the nogitsune’s hold—which has the added benefit of killing the flies, thus saving Derek, Chris, the twins, Isaac, and both Allison and Kira—and back in the real world, Stiles starts coughing up the bandages that Reese had been wrapped in. It was all rather disgusting.
But it looks like the trouble is not over. There’s a large pile of bandages on the floor, and in a Grudge-esque style, it looks like the nogitsune’s original body, Reese’s, rises up out of the pile. Scott and Peter tackle the figure to the couch, but when they unwrap its head, it turns out to be Stiles. After that shocking revelation, they realize that the nogitsune, which is still in Stiles’s original body, is gone, and so is Lydia.
For the most part, I was fairly happy with this episode. Then again, as I said, after last week, anything would be an improvement.
I truly loved seeing Kira and Allison team up to fight a bunch of werewolves and manage to hold their own, and I really liked Lydia’s and Scott’s journey through Stiles’s mind. When they both first appear in his thoughts, they’re strapped down to beds, and neither one of them can break free of the restraints until Lydia asks Scott if he actually needs her to remind him that he’s a werewolf. Additionally, when they both manage to find Stiles, he’s at the end of a room, sitting on the nemeton with the nogitsune, playing go. But no matter how much Scott and Lydia attempt to run over to them, the room just gets longer and longer and they make no progress. Lydia tells Scott that Stiles is a part of his pack, and even though Stiles is human, he should respond to his alpha’s call. Scott only manages to reach out to Stiles by howling. By actively acknowledging that Scott considers Stiles a part of his pack, the show only enforced their relationship and closeness together.
We also learn this episode there may actually be a legitimate reason why Agent McCall abandoned Scott and Mama McCall in the first place, something that might cause Scott to resent his mother if he ever finds out. Agent McCall additionally does something nice and ensures that the sheriff can keep his job. Papa Stilinski then tells Agent McCall that he should just tell Scott the truth.
I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen for a while, since I didn’t think that Teen Wolf would introduce Agent McCall without giving him a reason to have returned to Beacon Hills in the first place. Although, I highly doubt that, whatever the true reason behind his departure is, Scott would be mad at his mother. Scott just doesn’t seem like a character to hold grudges like that, especially since he’s willing to give people like the twins a second chance. However, intrigued though I am, I’m still wondering when Agent McCall is going to confront Scott and Kira again about breaking into his office and destroying evidence. That seems like a really convenient thing for him to forget.
My biggest complaint this episode, however, would be Peter. While it was probably a good thing that Scott agreed to ask Peter for help, since Peter actually had a decent plan that worked—a plan that no one else would have probably thought of—I don’t know why Lydia thought to call him in the first place. And though Peter did do a nice thing by helping them out, and even seemed concerned when going into the nogitsune’s head had negative physical consequences for both Lydia and Scott—their noses started to bleed—his concern and emotional encouragement, was probably for more selfish reasons. He still needed Lydia to tell him Malia’s name.
Peter has in the past shown that he’s capable of displaying more redeeming qualities. He did seem loving and protective of Cora, after all. But this is still the same asshole who ripped apart his other niece for revenge, who still mind-raped Lydia, who still tormented the other characters. At the end of the day, I probably wouldn’t mind a Peter-redemption arc had some of the female villains been allowed one as well, but he doesn’t really have much of a role within the narrative anymore. There is no reason for Malia to be his daughter other than for the story to have an excuse to keep him around. On top of that, I don’t really need a Peter-redemption arc, when we have a twins-redemption arc.
And while we’re on the topic of Malia, who was nowhere to be seen this episode, she’s apparently been speaking with our main characters some more, as they mention things she’s told them. So where the hell is she? This is two episodes in a row that she has played a role in the narrative but not appeared.
So yeah, this episode has been an improvement from the last, but it still had a lot of problems. Mostly, I could do with a little more Malia and a lot less Peter. Until next week.
Lady Geek Girl and Friends 