#teen wolf 5x18

[winnie-the-monster]

[princeescaluswords]

Scott's Burden of Faith in

The Maid of Gévaudan

A close-reading analysis of the library scene in Episode 5x18 in honor of @momentofmemory's birthday.

There is an argument to be made that the climax of Scott's story arc in Season 5 does not come in Apotheosis (5x20) but in this scene two episodes earlier, an episode mostly focused on a guest star and a story set two-and-a-half centuries before the present time. Yet it's very possible to see that the crisis in Scott's life manifests in all its complexity and is resolve this particular night.

It is a crisis of faith. Not religious faith, but a crisis of Scott's faith in what he has come to believe is the right way to act; in other words, his faith in his own identity: the True Alpha. One of the things I love about Teen Wolf is the idea that Scott doesn't start out the series with any other vision for himself aside from the idea that if he works hard he might make first line. No one else expects greatness out of him either: his mother, Stiles, and especially not his own father. Deaton has an intuition, but he doesn't press the issue. They're not doing this to be mean; he's a teenager after all. He has to forge his own vision.

By the time of La Bête's rampage at the lacrosse game, Scott has been the alpha for 41 episodes, and while he may have faced dire straits, suffered incredible losses, and even endured temptation, his choices have, for the most part, been good choices. Every character says so. But Season 5? Not so much. I would argue that for the first time, the tragedies befalling his pack are a result of his decisions. It's not that these are malicious decisions, they are just wrong. When before all the setbacks had always been because of the power of the enemy, this time Scott has been responsible for some of them.

Scott starts 5B in doubt. "Why would they come back?" he asks his mother in Status Asthmaticus (5x10). This isn't someone who's blaming anyone else -- even Theo -- for what has happened. He's questioning his own credentials, his own right to possess the identity of True Alpha. He's not even sure he can pass AP Biology, he's not even sure he deserves to heal like a werewolf can, let alone that he can defeat the Doctors and their creations.

It's not that he doubts the value of saving people or even the value of his pack. He doesn't waver about whether he should try; he wavers about whether he has the ability to do these things. When he staggers into the library, he's tired, he's bloody, and he's realized one more thing he definitely cannot do -- defeat the Beast in a physical match up. He leans against the table, and it's not hard to imagine him wondering why he ever thought he could stop any villain.

The plan to get the game cancelled failed. The plan to sabotage the television broadcast vans failed. Kira's fox spirit has gone completely off the rails. Liam has been reduced to a walking pile of hamburger. He doesn't know that he's won Hayden to his side, but he also doesn't know that Corinne has been threatening Malia. He's as lost as Marie-Jean was when she went into the woods looking for a wolf instead of a werewolf.

Melissa: You know what you're doing when you say should too often? You're should-ing all over yourself.

We don't know what he was planning to do but then he looks around and sees that he's not in the library alone. To the audience, other than Sydney, they're strangers, but he knows them. That's what Scott does -- he knows people. He's the only character to use Boyd's first name. He knows that Kyle is a senior; he knows that Josh is a junior; he remembers Kira's name. He might be in doubt about his own identity, but he knows who these people are. He knows something else.

Gerard: A monster whose only purpose was to kill. Not for sustenance, not for revenge, not for any rational impulse other than the drive to end life wherever it's found.

They are all going to die. They cannot escape the Beast. They cannot fight it. He can't fight it. All he's been able to do is survive. And he hesitates. He looks around. Because what the heck is he supposed to do?

Theo: We gotta protect him, right? Scott, come on. Scott? Scott, this is what you do.

Scott looks around the library. He has died here. He has felt his heart stop lying on those steps right behind him. He can't win, and even if by some twist of fate he survives, everyone here will have seen his face. The students in the library will see who he is and there will be consequences for that. (Hello, Nolan.) It's not fair, but things have never been fair.

Scott: So, somebody has to do something. Somebody has to save everyone. So somebody's got to be the bait!

The crisis has arrived. He doesn't have any allies with him right now. He doesn't have a plan. He doesn't have an advantage. He's hurt. He's inadequate (Professional mercenary Braeden will point this out in a few minutes). These students are terrified. They know it too. They can see the blood.

Melissa: So all you really need is to ask yourself, "What am I going to do?"

He has to reveal himself. He has to protect them. He has to give the hope. He has to lead them. He has to have faith that he can do these things, no matter how badly he's screwed up or how much it has cost him, or how much it will cost him in the future. It is what an alpha does. It is what a True Alpha does, and whether he wants to be or not, that is what he is.

"Go upstairs."

That's not a plan to beat the Beast; it's not guaranteed to save anyone. it's a statement of faith in his own ability. Win or lose, survive or die, it doesn't really matter what happens next. It doesn't matter that the Beast will be revealed as Mason and that his mistake with Corey will cause the pack to lose a chance to stop all this. It doesn't matter that this will set the stage for Monroe when Nolan talks to her over the summer. At this moment, Scott grabs onto the faith that it is, in the end, a good thing his eyes are red and that he has healed and that he is standing right there in this library.

He roars.

[kaitlinj16]

Teen Wolf (5.18, "Maid of Gèvaudan")

Marie-Jeanne & Henri Argent

🖤🖤🖤

[emisirrelevant]

Why did watching Season 5 of Teen Wolf suck so much for me lol. Idk how to explain it. Well- I mean I was basically just mad about Theo and all the other evil characters the whole time and it stressed me out whenever something would happen to Malia Hayden or Lydia and did I forget to mention the switching back and forth between the past and the present was really not it for me-

[aceofwhump]

Day 11: Animal Trap

Teen Wolf 3x14 | MacGyver 6x18 | Parks and Recreation 5x18 | Legends of Tomorrow 3x11 | What Still Remains | Teen Wolf 3x18 | Psych 7x03

@whumptober @whumptober-archive

[absolutequeertrash]

The Day The Next Big Queerbait Will Be Revived, Semi Confirmed, And Then Sent to Super Hell

i finally did it guys. it took me years, nay decades of research and all nighters but i finally did it. i ran the experiments. crunched the numbers. did the complex analyses on my findings and i’m finally here to share them.

on november 5th in the year of our castiel 2020, supernatural 5x18 despair aired on the cw for the first time. and around 2 years later, on january 26th of 2023, teen wolf: the movie released on paramount+ for the first time.

now i’m no scientist but this is looking like a pattern.

there were 812 days between 5x18 releasing and teen wolf the movie releasing. and if my math is correct, which it probably isn’t, that means the next big revived, semi confirmed, then killed queerbait is to be released on april 18th of 2025.

now i know what you’re thinking. az, what ship could this next big revived semi confirmed then killed queerbait possibly be?

well my dear innocent tumblr child, let me take you back to september 20th 2008 when this little known show called merlin aired for the first time.

THATS RIGHT BITCHES MARK YOUR FUCKING CALENDARS APRIL 18 2025 ARTHUR WILL COME BACK, CONFIRM MERTHUR, THEN (platonically) DIE IN MERLINS ARMS ONCE AGAIN BELIEVING EVERYTHING TO BE FULLY

✨UNREQUITED✨

[capricornsicle]

Teen Wolf 5x18 "Maid of Gevaudan" + Scott I just think he's neat.

[oncerdenis]

Welcome back, Crystal Reed.

[momentofmemory]

All We Could Do Was Hide

for @teenwolf-meta​ week, day four: minor character

As the longest running extra in the show, Sydney has had a lot of experience with the supernatural. When the Chemist attacks the school, she’s the first human to be affected (4x07). When the Dread Doctors are wreaking havoc, she’s dropping out of a class because the stress is too much (5x06). When the Ghost Riders attack a lacrosse game, she’s in the stands (6x04). By the time rats invade her classroom, she’s exhausted: “Why does this keep happening at our school?” (6x11).

The most important supernatural event Sydney witnesses is, of course, Scott’s fight against the Beast in the library (5x18)—and it’s for that incident that Monroe is interested in her. But what Monroe has failed to anticipate is how much the other events have affected Sydney’s perspective, and not in the way Monroe wants to imagine.

In Broken Glass, Monroe gathers a large group of townspeople in the basement of Argent Arms for a demonstration of the dangers of the supernatural. After torturing Ethan, Monroe calls Sydney forward and asks her about the library. Monroe guides the conversation by asking “what did you do” (6x19, emphasis added) not “what happened.” This prevents Sydney from giving any alternative perspective on the events, as she can only say, “Nothing. All we could do was hide.” This response plays exactly into Monroe’s hand, as she says that’s what she herself did, too. Hiding was all they could do, because they had no power. But, as Monroe reminds them by stabbing into Ethan—not anymore. Monroe “got tired of hiding,” and wants Sydney, and everyone else, to be tired of it, too.

But Monroe doesn’t actually know Sydney. She knows she was in the library, but has to ask for her name. There’s no personal relationship here, just like Monroe has no personal relationship with supernatural creatures: she knows supernatural events, but she doesn’t know supernatural people.

Sydney does.

While Sydney’s first introduction saw her contracting a supernatural disease, her first contact with Scott was him gently reassuring her about her test anxiety (4x07). When Sydney was forced to drop out of AP Bio because of how stressful it was, Lydia immediately ran after her and offered to help with her hair (5x06). The relationship was reciprocal, too. When Scott received his positive grade in AP bio, Sydney looks really pleased for him (5x03), and they in particular might have had a good relationship, as after she takes a photo of the pack (6x01), Scott has a personal copy—something he only could have gotten from her (6x02). Sydney was also friends with Mason and Lori, as she almost always sat with them at lacrosse games (4x11, 5x17, 6x04).

The most important event for Sydney, of course, was also at a lacrosse game—the Beast’s attack on the school (5x17, 5x18). Sydney is the primary outsider POV: she’s the one that Scott speaks to, the one that holds the most screen time, and the first one to follow Scott’s advice to “go upstairs.” Even during the fight, we get several reaction shots from her, as she winces and gasps at the violence she’s witnessing below. Unlike Nolan, who interpreted the scene as two monsters fighting each other, Sydney is clearly empathizing with and rooting for Scott—because she didn’t know what was going on, but she did know Scott.

Sydney’s stance on the supernatural is clear in 6b. In Pressure Test, Lori has just been killed and the entire pack, sans Mason, is hiding—just like Sydney had to do in the library. And just as Scott told her to “go upstairs” when she was scared, Sydney tells Mason he’s not doing his math problem—and then Mason sees directions from Corey (6x15). Sydney not only saw the message from Corey, which was dangerous, but brought Mason’s attention to it. Then, when Mason leaves, Corey draws a smiling face of thanks for Sydney—and Sydney smiles back.

Monroe has misunderstood what the library, and the supernatural as a whole, meant to Sydney, because she never actually spoke to her. When she hears Sydney say “all we could do was hide,” she interprets that as Sydney being powerless. And Sydney was! But Sydney was also protected by it.

And she returns the favor.

After using Sydney’s testimony the way she wants, Monroe tells Sydney and Nolan to take care of Ethan—the implication being that they should kill him (6x19). But this doesn’t happen! The next time we see Nolan, he’s at the hospital, and the next time we see Ethan, he’s still in the same corridor we last saw him in (6x20). Sydney, however, is never seen again, because Sydney has taken to heart her own words: “all we could do was hide” (6x19). To Monroe, that was a sign of powerlessness, but here, Sydney uses it as a kind of power to itself. She can’t fight Monroe, and she can’t stop the Anuk-ite—but she can hide herself, and Ethan. It’s not much, just like going upstairs wasn’t much, but it’s enough to allow someone else—someone like Scott—the time to fight the monster off.

[princeescaluswords]

Random question, Prince but do you think Victoria or Gerard had military backgrounds? Maybe serving themselves or had parents that served?

I want to preface this answer with a caveat: this might be the most speculative meta I've ever written. While I'm going to try to draw as much evidence as I can from canon, I don't think it would be out-of-the question for people to disregard it on its surface merits.

So, here goes. I don't think that the Argents would join the military and they would strongly discourage their children from joining the military. I'm sure that during the time of the draft there might have been some Argents serving, but it would be under duress. If you accept the same head canon that I do, that Victoria was also from a hunting family, she would not be either. I think the reasons would be historical, practical, and philosophical.

Historical: Of all the characters in the Teen Wolf series, Marie-Jeanne Argent née Valet had the most emotionally true (if not entirely rational) reaction to the discovery that her beloved relative turned out to be one of the most prolific serial killers in that world let alone a terrifying demonic werewolf. As we see in The Maid of Gévaudan (5x18), she reacted with outright condemnation, hunting him down over three years and destroying all trace of him with a damnatio memoriae, which in reality meant destroying her own past, too. We can assume that the Argent Code was written by her, including the part where any hunter who was Bit by a werewolf had to kill themselves. This is extreme behavior (even if valid) and it is echoed in the revulsion non-corrupted Argents like Chris and Allison had when discovering Kate's and Gerard's crimes. It was certainly less permissive than the Hale family's tendency to react to deaths caused by their family which ranged from outright condoning ("But still beautiful, just like the rest of you") to dismissive (after all, how many people did kooky Uncle Petey kill, including the guy he shoved alive into a burning barrel, and still have the keys to the family home?).

Considering that Sebastian became a demon wolf while he was serving in the French king's war with England across an entire ocean in their respective colonies, I don't think it's a stretch for Marie-Jeanne in establishing her code to steer her descendants away from military service. It might even have been a requirement.

Practical: While both the military and hunters use weapons, military service wouldn't seem to bear much resemblance to hunter training. It appears to me to be much closer to espionage or criminal work. Hunting werewolves requires training in specific weapons (bows, tasers, and poisons), technology (hypersonic emitters), and techniques (torture, infiltration, intimidation, and cleaning up evidence). In addition, the soldiers of the Argent family exhibit a level of discernment when it comes to tactics and targets that the military simply would not tolerate. Chris points as much out to Kate in Code Breaker (1x12):

Chris: No one asked you to murder innocent people. There were children in that house, ones who were human. Look what you're doing now. You're holding a gun on a 16-year-old boy with no proof he spilled human blood. 

Later on in Relics (6x04), Chris explains that he should have intervened when he saw how Gerard was training Kate. That implies to me that while Argent soldiers are supposed to follow the lead of the matriarch, they're also expected to do more than just follow orders. While civilization demands we hold individual military soldiers to answer for their conduct, I can tell you from personal experience that military training does not have a goal to instill a sense of individual agency.

Philosophical: In my encounters with real-life military people, it is my experience that they see themselves and the military as a whole as an immanent part of society itself. They enable civilization to exist; they uphold society's laws and mores as one of its pillars. I am sure that many people on this site would disagree with that assessment, but I'm talking about the perception within military culture itself. The military focus on being a vital part of their country, and when they err it is when they come to believe that they are the most important part and thus have a greater right to say how a country and a civilization will behave.

One of the things I've noticed about the Argents and the other hunting family feature, the Calaveras, is that they don't consider themselves part of the greater society. They see themselves as protecting it from monsters that the average person cannot comprehend, and while they certainly do infiltrate law enforcement and emergency services, they don't seek permanent authority over the mundane social institutions. This is one of the significant departures that marked Monroe as different from previous organized hunters, and one that made her more dangerous. Victoria, Araya, Chris and Allison (and when they weren't being selfishly corrupt, even Gerard and Kate) saw themselves as operating outside of it all as a necessity. They work with criminals like the yakuza; they hire mercenaries; and they understand that they will never be fully accepted.

Chris: We're gonna be pariahs in this town. Victoria: We can handle it.

Monroe, on the other hand, organized hunters to protect society, but she wanted to change society as well. She accused the werewolves not only of being monsters by virtue of their natures and by their acts, but by the power that privileged them ("No one should have this power"), and she accused people like Sheriff Stilinski of abetting that unfair advantage. (I will never forgive Teen Wolf for giving up on exploring that difference half-way through 6B.) Since Gerard was only interested in using Monroe, he didn't train to see herself the way he and his family saw themselves: protectors working from the outside.

All these things lead me to believe that the Argents wouldn't have military training, not even corrupt ones like Gerard or Victoria.

[kaitlinj16]

"Release it, Marie-Jeanne. Please. Release me." -Marcel

Teen Wolf

5.18, "Maid of Gèvaudan"

🖤🖤🖤

[purplepints]

So it seems most people are saying the 6x20 Scalia kiss scene is parallel to the Stydia kiss in 3x11. I'm over here like 'wait kiss = healing, wasn't that a Layden thing from 5x18?' because Stiles tells Hayden pain will trigger the healing (bonus points to Hayden for her "Wtf are you serious" look) but seems like she remembers her pain experience with Liam. She kisses Liam, healing engaged! Cut to Stiles watching and literally saying "OK, next time I'll kiss him". We are told that werewolves can stop the healing process if they are conscious and we are told pain triggers healing. I think a lot of us are with Hayden on this, just unsure why (for example) a terribly injured Kira would have to slice herself up even more. The human body will register more recent pain as a priority and put older or chronic pain on the back burner to ensure attention is paid to whatever injuries you are compounding. After a bit they'll settle more into rank by seriousness and by the type of pain you personally register as worse. I suppose the notion that causing more/different pain will kick-start healing that has not engaged is feasible if the injured party is going in and out of consciousness or specifically blocking the ability, as the addition of a sharp new pain could be enough to overwhelm concentration. If they're conscious, pointing out the injury and drawing attention to what is causing pain should work, too (Especially if you are aware that you have a supernatural ability to heal and recover from damage!). I'd venture that being in danger or recognizing people you care about in the same situation would trigger the same adrenaline and cause a surge in healing, but I'm not a healingologist so ymmv. The other work around we've seen was when Scott wasn't healing in 3x05 due to his guilt over what looked like Derek's death. Lydia suggests Allison stitch the wounds as a way of counteracting the psychosomatic (somatoformic!) block. Lydia didn't trigger any healing in 3x11, so to me the only parallel of the 6x20 kiss would be Hayden/Liam in 5x18.

[princess-aziza]

So I’m re-watching Teen Wolf and

I can’t

Do horror movies just not exist in this universe?

Because if they did

you think someone would have figured out

that going to the high school at night 

is a terrible idea

[eusuntgratie]

Oof I’m so tired but so much laundry so one more let’s do this

5.18 Maid of Gevaudan

ooooh i think i know a thing about this episode 👀

wow that’s a rough french accent

YES GIRL YESSSSSSSSSSSS i love it

no pressure

stiles baby i love you also ARMS

damn she fine. that hair. the hooded cloak? 🔥

can we get a dialect coach up in here?

oh heyyy, scott. that was badass. 👀 

DAMN SHE FINE

that’s definitely not what a wolf print looks like but okay

I THINK SHE MIGHT

goddamn braeden has balls of steel OOF fuck me up, ma’am 🥵

like her hair though like it’s glorious why didn’t they let her be this hot before? we weren’t ready.

DAMN lydia cutting him DEEP daaaaaaaaaamn

OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK ARE YOU SERIOUS NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I WAS NOT PREPARED I NEED TO SLEEP WHYYYYYYYYY

[jiaersfeels]

my baby is back!!! she's so pretty and i love her