Teen Wolf: “Weaponized” Review

Welcome back to another Moonday, everyone! This week, our characters must face off against another assassin, but they’ve yet to defeat their strongest foe thus far: the SATs. I guess it would be that time for them. Hit the jump to find out my thoughts.

Spoilers ahead.

The main plot of this week’s episode involves a “mad scientist” assassin who has changed a virus that originally only affected wolves into one that only kills werewolves and other supernatural creatures. We also learn that he is the one responsible for the death of Satomi’s pack last week.

In order to get to our main characters, he takes up a position as the test administer during the SATs and infects the entire school. Though the virus doesn’t kill humans, it does make them sick. Lydia’s mother, worried over a potential deadly infection, locks the school down and calls the CDC, who then comes to quarantine the whole building. Due to the effects of the virus, which takes away any supernatural creature’s control, Scott, Malia, and Kira hide themselves in the Hale vault so as not to endanger anyone else.

Meanwhile, Satomi shows up at Deaton’s place with one of her surviving wolves. Deaton, unable to treat him, suggests taking him to the hospital to see Mama McCall, but they arrive too late and he dies. However, an autopsy of his brain lets Deaton know exactly what killed him. It turns out that the only antidote to the virus is Reishi tea, and because drinking tea is a Japanese thing Satomi was already inoculated, which is why the virus didn’t affect her. Also conveniently, there’s a bottle of Reishi mushrooms already in the Hale vault.

Mama McCall has Agent McCall get himself into the school in order to tell Stiles about the mushrooms. Even though Agent McCall doesn’t really know what’s going on, he does it anyway, and it’s a good thing he did, because he finds Stiles right as the assassin is about to murder him. After shooting the assassin in the head, he tells Stiles about the mushrooms in the Hale vault. Stiles then runs off to tell Scott, Kira, and Malia.

Unfortunately, he’s locked outside the door, and though Scott can hear him, everyone’s too weak to open up the vault. Furthermore, unlike all the other infected humans, Stiles doesn’t look as though he’s getting better. Like Scott and the others, he seems to be getting weaker. Another side effect of the virus is that it makes our supernatural characters go blind—but screw that! Using his werewolf eyes, Scott pulls a Deucalion in order to see, even though it was established earlier in the episode that he had no control over his own powers.

Thankfully, he finds the mushrooms, smashes their container, and the day is saved by everyone breathing in their fumes. Just like that. I don’t think medicine works that way. Unfortunately, Malia finds Stiles’s copy of the deadpool, and she sees that her last name is Hale. The episode ends with her walking out on Stiles. Hopefully not forever.

On the whole, I really didn’t like this episode all that much. I enjoyed all the Malia and Stiles moments together, and I loved the scenes with Lydia. Lydia spent this episode struggling with her guilt over Meredith’s death and attempting to contact her so she could apologize for not helping her. I think it’s safe to say that without the support of her friends, Lydia would have been in Meredith’s position. Unfortunately, even though I liked the apology, it was still annoying that Meredith had to die before any of our main characters recognized her as a person. Before this, they just used her for information, and when Meredith wasn’t useful, they just left her in Eichen House. Furthermore, the episode is also focusing only on Lydia’s guilt over Meredith’s death, and not on any of the pain that led Meredith to suicide. Sadly, Meredith never ended up being a fully formed character.

The other thing I liked this episode is that Peter and Kate were not in it. Additionally, we learn that Scott is planning on returning the stolen money to Derek, but Stiles stops him, because that would also mean giving the money back to Peter. Stiles also takes this episode to remind Scott that Peter is still evil and that he is the only person who is not on the deadpool.

Outside those points, I wasn’t too happy with this episode. Besides Malia discovering that she’s a Hale and Satomi showing up again, “Weaponized” just seemed like a generic “random assassin” episode, and at seven episodes into the season now, we are no closer to discovering who the Benefactor is. On top of that, the whole Reishi mushroom cure just seemed too convenient. Because Reishi tea is traditionally used for medicinal purposes and is from Asia, Satomi just happened to be inoculated. And even though it’s super rare, there just happens to be a whole bunch of it in the Hale vault. Additionally, when Stiles tells Scott what the cure is, Kira, who saw the mushrooms before going blind, then tells Scott exactly where they are. I guess because Kira’s also Japanese, she has the genetic ability to recognize what this rare mushroom looks like.

Not only are Japanese people genetically predisposed to wielding katanas, they also all have encyclopedic knowledge of tea.

I’m also still confused as to where Satomi was during Season 3A, but I doubt that that question will ever be answered. However, hopefully the upcoming episodes will do a better job with both her and Kira’s characters, as all the racial stereotypes surrounding them are getting to be a little too much. And though I’m sad to see Malia walking out on Stiles, I am excited to see where this takes her character next. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to be a long time before I forgive the show for Meredith’s treatment.

Until next week, everyone.

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