Teen Wolf is back, and this week we’re continuing all the mystery from the last episode. Scott, Stiles, and Allison are all still struggling with the consequences of dying in the first half of the season, Stiles’s father is about to lose his job, Malia is still a werecoyote, and we left Derek and Peter off being tortured by an unknown assailant.
Spoilers ahead.
So Teen Wolf is finally back and the first episode didn’t wait at all before jumping right into the middle of everything. Literally. The episode starts in the middle of a conflict. It opens with Isaac horrifically injured and being helped out by a previously unseen female character. The two are being chased by twin Alpha werewolves, and through some very dangerous maneuvers on a motorbike and some high voltage weaponry, the girl helps Isaac manages to take down both Alphas. The twins have a weird ability to merge into one super-powered werewolf, kind of like a chimera hybrid abomination. It was the strangest part of the episode—not including all the abnormal animal behavior, such as bad CGI deer running straight into Lydia’s car, crows suicide-bombing the school, and cats mutilating themselves to death.
And I thought this CGI was bad. The deer this episode is soooo much worse.
Oh, and did I mention that the girl helping Isaac escape the Alpha twins is badass. And PoC. I think she might be called Cora, who Wikipedia describes as: “a 17-year-old girl with ties to the Beacon Hills werewolves”. But I can’t find a picture of the actress for comparison. I hope she’s Cora, meaning that she’ll be sticking around for a while—but unfortunately, she seems to have had a very definitive death at the end of this episode, so maybe not.
Oh, yeah, spoiler alert.
I have noticed something when watching television or movies and reading books or comics: we humans seem never to know if we would rather believe in free will or fate. If I had to pick I would say that we are more inclined to approve of free will, but fate still seems to be a hard and fast concept that we cling to, and it shows up in much of our pop culture.
It seems to mean that any time the concept of fate is really introduced into a story the author tends to quickly subvert fate with free will. Take, for example, Harry Potter. In book five when Harry learns that a prophecy predicted he would be the only one that could defeat Voldemort he was upset, until Dumbledore pointed out that after everything Voldemort put him through Harry would want to kill him anyway, regardless of what any prophecy says. Furthermore, Dumbledore stresses that Voldemort had had to choose between Harry and Neville (as the boy to potentially kill him) and if Voldemort had ignored the prophecy, then Voldemort’s choice would have ensured that the prophecy would never have come to pass. And finally, in book seven, Harry has to freely choose to sacrifice himself or else Harry might not have survived his encounter with Voldemort. Despite the strong sense of fate, the books make it clear that the characters’ choices, their free will, are what’s important and not some higher cosmic power.
In the TV show Heroes, a painter has the power to see the future and his prophecy tends to be accurate. However, the prophecies also tend to change. Isaac, the prophetic painter, predicts something vague enough that can be interpreted in numerous ways. The tag line in season one of Heroes for a while was “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World.” Isaac constantly draws pictures of serial killer Sylar killing Claire, an immortal cheerleader. Isaac’s pictures show a blonde cheerleader with her head sawed off. However, another character, Peter, saves Claire. So doesn’t Isaac’s prediction hold true? Kind of. Sylar mistakes another blonde cheerleader for Claire, so it could be argued that Isaac’s prediction holds true. However, the characters also have often traveled into the future where they see horrible dystopian-like realities, that are later stopped and changed, no matter what Isaac has predicted. In Heroes, the characters act like your fate is inevitable, unless it’s really bad and they decide to change it. The writers couldn’t seem to decide whether to follow fate or free will.
There are many other examples of course (Supernatural, Oedipus, Brave, Thor, Beowulf, Star Wars, Saiyuki, Doctor Who, Into the Woods, Dark Souls), but this theme of fate versus free will is something that consistently comes up in our pop culture. I think it’s because on some level humanity likes fate. We like the idea that God or some other higher power has a plan in which we play a part, maybe even a starring role. However, we find the notion of being bound to a fate, especially one we may not like, distasteful. We like have autonomy, but we also like the idea of being destined for something great or important.
What do you think? Are our lives governed by some kind of fate, free will, or is it a bit of both?
Tune in next week and get some religion.
Lady Geek Girl and Friends 