60 Teen Wolfs in 60 Days: day 46, De-Void

[hth]

It must be fun for O'Brien to get to do some action scenes. Grabbing the current from the stun gun was an especially neat trick. This is one of those late-season episodes with a pretty high combat content, and usually those don't work terribly well for me. This one doesn't either, on its own, but I've enjoyed the season enough overall that I'm willing to cut it some slack.

 

Oh, honey, of course you were hoping Scott would be here. I mean, that went without saying. Oh, you mean so he could fight the-- Oh, okay. Sure, that, too.

 

Chess isn't Stiles' game, though. He told Jennifer he doesn't play it, but his dad does. I guess it's too much to expect Peter to know what he's talking about.

 

Holy crap, you mean they think Derek is such a terrible alpha that even Lydia prefers Peter's advice? I mean, I guess she knew that she had something to trade Peter for it, but she didn't know that Derek was possessed, and Derek has been helping out voluntarily so far, right?

 

Beacon Hill is not literally the Bermuda Triangle of disappearances. I'm pretty sure the Bermuda Triangle is literally the Bermuda Triangle of disappearances. I'm not generally a pedant about the “literally” thing, but something about McCall just makes him seem like one of those smug guys who always let it be known when you've gotten something wrong, so I feel like I should mock him on general principle.

 

So, the deal with Stiles' mind – what is it? Is he in some kind of control – or, not control, I guess, but are the things Scott and Lydia see influenced at all by how Stiles perceives them or what he thinks would paralyze them? I feel like that's the logical implication, particularly since they begin with what seems like it would be the most readily available imagine in Stiles' mind of binding; the Eichen House restraints wouldn't come from either of them, they'd surely come from Stiles. So okay. And then Scott has trouble breaking free, which also implies that Stiles maintains some controls on what happens inside his mind, because those restraints don't look nearly strong enough to hold Scott in a normal situation. But then Lydia insists that he should act as if he has all his ordinary powers, and once he applies himself, I guess, he does have his ordinary powers. Which seems to mean that their thoughts partially control what happens here, too.

 

I'm interested in this mainly because I'd like to know if Scott and Lydia are interacting with the Darkness/the void that makes up the nogitsune directly, much as Scott was at the beginning of the season, or if they're encountering the obstacles and weaknesses that Stiles thinks of when he thinks of them. Which would be more interesting to me, so let's assume it's true for a minute. It makes sense that he thinks what would paralyze Lydia is physical fear; Lydia is tiny and breakable and frequently menaced. He basically deploys Peter as a guard dog, knowing or assuming that Lydia is still pretty intimidated by the guy who tried to chew her throat out. Scott obviously would be harder to scare away, so Stiles would try to throw distractions in his path, like so. I like the idea that the nogitsune's amoral mind is parsing these people through Stiles' experience with them and settling on their weaknesses: this one can be manipulated by fear, that one by sentiment. It seems like a key skill for a trickster to have.

 

I have to say, Chris, that's a pretty fancy way to let Derek know he also sucks at kidnapping. Of all the nogitsune-fueled conflicts going on in the background of this episode, I think the only one I found myself even remotely invested in was the Derek/Chris thing. It probably doesn't hurt that I enjoy all things Chris, but I did find it really poignant that the pressure point the nogitsune found on Derek was his ambivalence about letting go of the old feud and accepting an Argent as a collaborator, which he may experience as a betrayal of his family. I was less interested in the rest of it, probably because the twins are pretty boring, and Isaac misses Erica and Boyd, which I can't relate to in any way. I liked Kira and Allison fighting as a team, though. Sad about not getting more of that.

 

The ending of the episode is just as delightfully Sciles-y as I remembered. So let me get this straight: unable to purge the influence of the nogitsune from his body, Stiles managed somehow to manifest an entirely new body for himself, which he then forced his previous body to expel, because somehow that was more doable than ignoring Scott calling for him. Noted!