Talking Teen Wolf: Pretty People Staring Intensely At Nothing

Those of you that frequent Pop Culture is Not Art might have noticed that I have become increasingly obsessed with a little MTV show called Teen Wolf. Yeah I know it’s a problem but because I can’t stop myself I figured I may as well just embrace it. Besides I get asked about Teen Wolf more than anything else so I figured you guys might a appreciate a column dedicated to the show. So that’s what this is, and this week it’s all about pretty people staring intensely at nothing.

WARNING: This is not spoiler free! It’s like the opposite of spoiler free… it’s spoilerific.

I hate promo shots. A lot. It doesn’t matter who is in charge because they always manage to look the same. They take these characters that we love and suck the life out them until all that’s left is a pretty shell (and the photoshop the crap out of that until it’s almost unrecognizable as well). It’s just incredibly frustrating because these are some of the only HD images we get of our favourite characters and the fact that they are just consistently awful is just cruel. These promo shots are supposed to reveal the tone of the series, but all they reveal is bland, expressionless faces and it sucks.

This week saw the release of the first promotional images from Teen Wolf season 3. While they are marginally better than the previous seasons they are nothing to get excited about. Everyone is looking very intense and serious, which just kind of makes me want to laugh because the only one that can really pull it off is Hoechlin and they have managed to airbrush the spark right out of him. Perhaps the most interesting thing to come out of EW’s release of the images was that the Alpha Twins Ethan and Aiden were featured along with the big five (Scott, Allison, Stiles, Derek and Lydia) indicating that their role is bigger than previously thought.

In fact Ethan and Aiden have been a feature of much of the official discussion surrounding Season 3… but before I start speculating about the mysterious Alpha Twins lets recap what was probably the biggest week of the Teen Wolf hiatus thus far.

Right so last week Sterek won the EOnline Fantasy Couples Tournament, which prompted an MTV Remote Control Blog article. This article upset the Sterek fans (but I already talked about that here). There are a lot of things wrong with the article but the most cited seemed to be the assumption that Sterek fans are all young straight women, which is probably what prompted the Sterek Campaign’s April Call To Love: Fandom for Sterek. You can read about the details here but the basic gist is you make a video of yourself expressing your love for either Sterek or Teen Wolf. Because I apparently have no dignity left I have prepared a video sample vid for you’re viewing pleasure:

Then ETOnline published: 5 “Teen Wolf” Season Three Teases!” which was basically just a rehashing of everything we already knew:

• It’s been four months since Season 2 – they are no longer mourning the loss of Jackson.
• Scott has a new resolve, he’s being a better son, a better friend, a better everything.
• Season 3 is darker than the first 2 Seasons – especially 206: “Motal California”, which is apparently and ode to The Shining.
• There will be a sex scene between Danny and Alpha Twin Ethan.
• We flash back to Derek’s past in 308 and 305 is also a bit wibly wobbly timey wimey in the style of Pulp Fiction.

Like I said, it’s all stuff we knew but that’s not the problem, the problem was that tease number 4 was titled: “Gay Payoff” and suggested that Danny’s storyline for Season 3 was there to appease the Sterek fanbase… which was really very not good. I talked about these issues further here but here’s what Jeff had to say on the matter:

“Having heard it again, I’m very confused as to what a ‘gay payoff’ is, unless I’m going out on a weekend and hoping for one.” (x)

Damn he’s a snarky bastard… I do love him so, it’s a shame he’s no longer with us in the world of social networking his twitter was a gem.

After that it was WonderCon, where there was a Teen Wolf panel featuring Tyler Posey, Dylan O’Brien and Jeff Davis. I could spend weeks talking about everything that came out of this event but I’m a lazy ass so I’ll just give you the highlights as well as a few handy links (so you can troll for information yourselves, that’s half the fun).

Basically WonderCon was fun: Posey thinks Dylan is Perfect, O’Brosey is adorable, Jeff Davis is still a gift, everyone’s talking about Sterek but there won’t be much Stiles and Derek interaction in the first half of the season, Stiles and Lydia are playing detective together, Scott’s father is important, Kali is a Bond villain and Derek’s life still sucks… as witnessed in the first clip of the season.

In the clip Derek and his new love interest (???) Cora are attacked by Ennis and Kali… it doesn’t end well.

Ouch. I’d feel bad but as much as I love Derek, I love seeing him get beaten up more. Don’t feel too bad though apparently Derek and Scott become allies (kind of) this season. That’s good, because Derek could use an ally and something tells me this whole Cora thing is not going to work out. The real issue here is why is Derek wearing a shirt? I mean Cora’s in a sports bra, if she felt the need to remove her shirt surely Derek did too, come on Teen Wolf you’re slipping. Where is my gratuitous man flesh? If there is one think I like more that bloody and beaten Derek, it’s shirtless bloody and beaten Derek.

If you want to read more about the panel or watch it in it’s entirety check out what the moderator himself Jim Halterman had to say over at AfterElton or read the recap on Hypable.

Which brings us back to the promo images, which were released on Monday but unfortunately they were not an April Fool’s joke. Along with the images EW.com also gave us some character themed tid bits courtesy of the gift himself Jeff Davis. If you want to read what Jeff had to say about Scott, Allison, Stiles and Lydia check it out here.

But let’s talk about Ethan and Aiden (Charlie and Mac Carver) because Jeff said something rather interesting about these supposed antagonists: “they become quite important by the end of the season”. So we know that the twins will be attempting to seduce humans Danny and Lydia and we know that at the very least Danny and Ethan will be getting down and dirty but could it be that there is more than just malicious intent behind their interactions.

While I highly doubt that Lydia will fall for Aiden’s charms (unless they drastically alter her character) it appears as though the same can’t be said for everyone’s favourite goalie. It makes sense since as far as we know (???) Danny is still out of the loop as far as werewolves are concerned. That’s makes him vulnerable, but there’s a chance that Alpha Twin Ethan might have bitten off more than he can chew… Danny’s pretty hard not to fall in love with. Could the Ethan be bitten by the love bug and as a result switch sides? That might be just the thing to give the Beacon Hill’s packs the advantage. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Whatever happens I have to say most of the spoilers revealed for reaffirmed over the weekend have me incredibly excited, especially the idea of Lydia and Stiles working together as a kind of detective team. Go team human. For those of you worried about the fact that the Scoobie Gang is not spending as much time together (especially Stiles and Derek) remember there are twice as many episodes this season and narratively it’s makes for a much better pay off if everyone drifts apart before coming together to beat the bad guys in the end. The eagles are coming!

For those of you that are still antsy for something real it seems as though we don’t have to wait much longer for a promo trailer… you should probably watch the MTV Movie Awards on April 14^th – just saying.

(Source)

In other news apparently Danny's in the school band and tragedy is about to strike. Also the Teen Wolf publicity department needs to stop distracting me with pictures of Dylan O'Brien. This is becoming a serious problem. 

Finally do you guys think that Posey getting Vine is the best or the worst thing to happen to the Teen Wolf fandom?

That’s all for the first Talking Teen Wolf… it should be a lot less intense from now on (one can hope) but you never know. Don’t forget to catch up with my Teen Wolf rewatch, I’m almost finished Season 1!