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"Teen Wolf" 4.05 Recap: Let The Games Begin

Lacrosse season begins. More people die. And something is amiss with Derek Hale.

Previously on Teen WolfScott accidentally nibbled on his freshman rival, Liam, and then kind of sort of kidnapped him, much to Stiles’ dismay. Meanwhile, Lydia uncovered a dead pool, which is a list of all the supernatural critters in Beacon Hills and the prices they all have on their heads.

We kick things off with a scene straight out of every classic (and not so classic) horror film since the dawn of time: a blonde girl running for her life from a crazed killer. Only in this case, the blonde girl happens to be a werewolf and the crazed killer is Violet. She is the worst sort of Mean Girl. Not only does she make your life miserable because you are different, instead of a burn book, she totally decapitates you. Not very fetch at all.

Our lone werewolf could probably carve Violet into kibble, but she’s a vegan or a pacifist or something. Instead, she runs for her life, hitching a ride with too-pretty-to-be-real Garrett. I suppose asking what a freshman is doing with a driver’s license is kind of pointless since he and his girlfriend are monster hunters, but still…. Anyway, he stabs the werewolf to death, but he does it with a smile.

The next day, Stiles explains to his dad what is going on in Beacon Hills with all of the murders of all the people. As he does so, we see him putting together this season’s Wall of Weird. Sheriff Stilinski listens to it all with his usual look of exasperation, mixed with a hint of, “Should I really be involving my high school son in these gruesome murder cases?” But he has a city of 30, 000 to protect and serve.

“And decreasing,” Stiles points out which earns him zero points from dad.

Scott, meanwhile, furrows his brow and looks very serious and seems like he wants to point out that he held the string and the pins while Stiles figured everything out so technically, he helped. But he mostly just lets Stiles take care of being smart so he can focus on all those alpha skills he has yet to exhibit.

Liam’s best bud, Mason, gives him the sucky news that the first team he will be facing off with will be Devenford, the school that Liam got kicked out of. Liam doesn’t take that news at all well, but what really makes him sullen is when he goes back to his locker and sees that someone has grabbed his stick. And who would be so crass as to grope his equipment without permission?

Why, Derek Hale, of course!

Liam instantly goes feral, which Derek clearly finds hilarious. He inducts Liam into the Beacon Hills time-honored tradition of being slammed into the lockers and then lets him fume impotently for a minute or two. Derek seems to delight in Scott’s dilemma, but then he adds that he thinks Scott is doing a great job which there is no evidence of.

Kira get cornered by her father who is unhappy about the secrets she has been keeping and the plots she has been plotting. Kira, who should never ever play poker, fesses up to the dead pool and the assassins and says she didn’t want to worry them. Why she didn’t think her kitsune mom needed a heads up about assassins targeting Supernatural Americans is a mystery.

Her father, it turns out, just wanted to talk to her about her joining the lacrosse team without discussing it with them first. Pretty sure she needed their signed permission, but okay sure. Kira bolts in a rather futile effort to escape discussing both topics.

It’s Lydia’s job to find the other keywords to decode the rest of the list, but her banshee senses are on the fritz. It would be easy if Scott had been the one to choose the keywords. The first was “Allison” so the second would be “Allisonrox” and the third would be “Allisonrulz.” But alas, the mystery is not so easily solved. My guess was “Scott” and “Stiles” since all three were involved in that weird mind meld last season that left doors open in their minds that the writers of TW have utterly forgotten about.

Stiles figures out that the knife used to kill the young werewolf woman was part of a lacrosse stick which is a pretty massive leap of reasoning, especially when one rewatches the scene in the car and sees that the dagger wasn’t attached to a lacrosse stick. If it was, there was no way one could wield it in the confines of a car.

But sure. Stiles figures it out. Because lacrosse sticks have an octagonal shape and so did the impressions on the wound and nothing else in the universe has an octagonal shape. We’ll just focus on Stiles’ adorable face and forget about it.

The jerks jocks of Devenford Prep arrive at school. One must wonder if this team will be the new arch-rival to the Beacon Hills team. And if that is the case, will Brett sing Teenage Dream while gazing longingly at Stiles? We’ll have to wait and see.

Liam tries to make nice with Brett, which is futile since Brett has decided that Liam must suffer for wrecking their coach’s car. That seems like a weird reason for a rivalry. I think a nasty break-up between the two would be much better. At least it would be something new. I’m just saying….

Liam is about to wolf out and either rip out Brett’s throat or maybe hump his leg. We’ll never know since Scott drags him off to the shower room. I still have no idea what the point of the shower room is if the people in those showers are fully dressed, but I guess I just need to get over it.

Stiles makes delightfully snarky commentary about what a truly fantastic pick Scott made for his first time out biting someone. It turns out Liam has actually been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs, so he’s a very special snowflake indeed.

Scott wants him to sit out of the game, but the very idea breaks Liam’s heart. He’s practiced so very hard and he wants to prove he can be a good boy and also he wants to totally smash Brett’s face into the dirt but he doesn’t admit that last part. With Scott there as his muscular, tattooed, comforting security blanket, he’s just sure he can keep himself from going rabid and killing everyone.

Violet and Garrett are plotting. It involves some super rare/expensive type of wolfsbane. At this point, how many dozens of types of wolfsbane have we encountered? Doesn’t it seem that maybe we can branch out into some other type of herb?

Violet wants to go after Scott, because that’s apparently worth a lot of money. But Garrett explains to her that somehow, against all odds, Scott has beaten everything he’s come up against. They have no idea how that is possible, because they don’t know that Scott’s real super power is being friends with Stiles. However, it’s enough for Garrett to know that Scott’s a bit out of their league and they’re better off picking off betas.

Scott suspects (thanks to Liam) that Garrett is the killer. But he just can’t believe anyone with a face that perfect could be a psycho killer so he wants proof, even though that proof might come in the form of a gushing stab wound to Liam’s perfect chest.

Stiles calls his dad to insist he get down to the lacrosse game on account of the impending attempted murder. Sheriff Stilinski wants to get down there, but before he can, his office gets visited by more crazy—this time in the form of Meredith. She apparently got Lydia’s “call.” The sheriff doesn’t really understand that, but he’s given up understanding what happens in his jurisdiction.

He calls in Lydia, which Deputy Handsome finds curious. He asks his boss if it’s because Lydia’s psychic (or something…). Stilinski doesn’t even know how to answer that, but he certainly isn’t going to be made to answer to an underling about why he’s bringing in a high school girl to talk to an escaped mental patient.

At first, Lydia is patient with Meredith. That lasts for about five seconds before she gets up in Meredith’s face about the incomplete number she gave. Well, in Lydia’s defense, seeing Meredith had to be unsettling. For all she knows, that how she will wind up.

It’s with Malia’s help that Lydia figures out what the crazy speak actually meant. It was the second keyword, Aiden. Ah ha! Both Allison and Aiden were killed by Onis under the control of the evil Stiles. So that means…. I have no idea what that means. I’m still as confused as before. Dammit.

Brand new best buddies Derek and Chris Argent go down to the Hale vault to investigate the shenanigans that went on there. Chris is not elated at the idea that Crazy Kate is alive, but he is determined to give her a time out. Derek asks him not to, though, because he needs her to explain what she did to him because as a result, he’s losing his powers.

Lacrosse happens. I thought I didn’t understand sports before, but lacrosse is so baffling to me that I can’t even quite understand how it became a competitive event. So, uh, Kira scores, which causes Coach Finstock to bench her, which maybe was the right call but seemed wildly out of character for him. Liam gets an owie that Scott fixes for him, but the pup also gets ejected from the game.

And Brett gets hauled off the field for some unspecified injury. Naturally, Scott doesn’t even suspect that it might have something to do with the murdering going on. His brain is totally overloaded with Kira being the only one to score, with Liam getting benched and with Garrett’s smoldering looks.

Fortunately, Lydia comes through with the 411 on the dead pool and that fact that Brett’s name is on it. Scott arrives just in time to save him, or rather, he arrives just in time to fall into Violet’s trap. Or, well, he arrives just in time for Violet to spring her trap only for it to totally blow up in her face. I have to say, it’s nice for Scott to demonstrate some actual alpha badassness for once.

Darth Abuela pays Chris a visit. She finally remembered that they’re all werewolf hunters and so maybe they don’t need to outsource the hunting of Kate. She also wants Chris to remember their code, though I have no idea why she cares. He goes along with it, probably because he doesn’t want her pull out a cattle prod or something.

And that’s where we leave it. Sound off in the comments.

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