Teen Wolf 6×08 Review: Blitzkrieg

Now that I’ve managed to get rid of this chest cold, I’m back and ready to catch up on Teen Wolf!  Let’s just sum up 6×07 “Heartless” quickly: writers trying to make Theo sympathetic, Melissa getting too much satisfaction while “curing” Peter’s burns, and Mr. Douglas really needs a better diet.  I wasn’t fond of last week’s episode as it felt it was just a continuation of the most annoying parts of 6×06 “Ghosted”.

This week, however, Teen Wolf did a 180 and gave us what has to be one of the best episodes this season so far in 6×08 “Blitzkrieg”.  It was also the ultimate culmination of the season premise of how important your memories are to you – and how important a single person can be.

Out of everything in this beautiful episode, my hat goes off to Linden Ashby and the Sheriff’s final scene with Claudia.  If I had an Oscar statue I would literally be mailing it to him right now.  Just watching his face as Sheriff first walked through all the pieces of the room, using the “unsolved mystery” red yarn to bring back all the relics of Stiles’ room.  Then his monologue, watching his heart break as he realized that Lydia was right and Claudia wasn’t real.  You can watch Claudia actually get fuzzy and fade out as he continues, reciting out loud the last day Claudia was herself and how Stiles talked her ear off, and how he knew when she closed her eyes that night, she was gone.

Just insert every single ugly sobbing gif from Tumblr here, because that was me at about this point.

However, there is actually more in this episode that I need to talk about.

First of all, we open this week’s episode of Teen Wolf in Nazi Germany where we finally get the backstory on Mr. Douglas. We also learn later from Theo that our Nazi Werewolf is really a Nazi Löwenmensch – The Lion-Man.  Mr. Douglas became involved with the Dread Doctors who put him in the big green bacta tank.  In there, he marinated for 70 years in the infection from the Ghost Rider’s whip, along with werewolf juice and who knows what else.  Now he goes around eating the pineal glands to be able to absorb powers – like the Ghost Rider powers he gained at the end of “Heartless”.

Oh, and that also gave Mr. Douglas the ability to order around our Deputy Hellhound like he was his personal puppy.  Which, can someone tell me just HOW Parrish ended up in the crazy chamber tank in one of Chris Argent’s many hidey-holes in Beacon Hills?  If I was him at the end of “Heartless”, I would have peaced-out of Beacon Hills and headed for Canada!

And side note – Chris Argent giving Mr. Douglas the “I will kill you with a spoon” glare while holding onto Melissa? Yeah, I will now go down with this ship.  Screw the fact that [SPOILER] is coming back on the B side of season 6 – or that, you know, their kids were Teen Wolf’s epic romance of the first three seasons.  Melissa/Argent forever!

Back to the plot? Ok, if I must.  So Corey was taken by Mr. Douglas at the end of “Heartless”, and by the end of “Blitzkrieg” Mason, Hayden, Melissa, Argent, and Peter join him.  I wish I could have seen Stiles’ face as they all start to roll in. I’m pretty sure the words “This is your plan? You plan sucks. This is why you need me – I’m the one who should be making the plans” were uttered by him along the way.

Oh – Peter Hale sacrificing himself to the Ghost Riders for his daughter? Some would say they would have never seen that coming, but just look back at Teen Wolf season 4 with Peter and Malia.  From the moment they ran into the Berserkers in Teen Wolf 4×02 “117”, any of his interactions with Malia have been slanted towards wanting to help her.  Yes, it’s Peter Hale.  Yes, he always wants something for himself in return.  But anytime it came to Malia, those wants were much lower and usually to both of their benefits.  You also see that Peter is protective of Derek and Cora in the earlier seasons; usually to his own benefit in the way of protection and manipulation while helping them.  He just finally made a choice to put his daughter ahead of himself since he knew it would send him back to a place he knows how to escape. But just for a moment – a split second – we see the tiny bit of good that is still somewhere inside of Peter Hale.

You know, just like how Luke Skywalker knew there was good inside of Darth Vader, right?

I wish I could say that Hayden and Liam’s scene was touching before she was taken but I’ve gotten to the point where Teen Wolf has shoved their relationship down our throats way more than Scott/Allison ever was that I just can’t deal with them anymore.  I can respect the sacrifice, but sweet Jesus will they just stop the constant soulful sex eyes at each other in every scene already?

Also Liam – really.  Really?!  You broke Kira’s sword. Now I really want her to come back and smack you down a few hundred times for both using it to bring Theo back and then breaking it.  And then she can reforge the thing and send Theo back to Hell.  Please.

And finally… the moment we have been waiting for since Coach made the sarcastic remark about how much Sheriff really loved his wife when looking at Stiles’ name file in season 1: we now know Stiles’ real name.

Mieczyslaw “Stiles” Stilinski.  The name Mieczyslaw is Polish, with the meaning a combination of “sword” and “glory”, it totally rolls of the tongue.  To tie back to Teen Wolf 6×02 “Superposition”, Sheriff recalls that Stiles used to pronounce it as “mischief” and Claudia loved it so much she called him that – and it’s the word that Lydia wrote over and over again in the shape of the name Stiles.  But it’s the way everything ties back to Stiles that makes the remnants of the pack realize that the only way they are going to find Stiles is for them to remember him – creating a new rift into the other dimension where they can then get into and save him.

Oh, and everyone else, since it seems the only people left in Beacon Hills are Liam, Malia, Lydia, Scott, and the Sheriff.  Oh, and maybe Theo since he pretty much went MIA in the chaos at the Sheriff’s station.

Can they do it?  Well, if they are going to, they have two episodes left to this half of the final season, so let’s get a move on with it already!

Hit me up on Twitter at @aliskyrichards and on @ThreeIfBySpace with your thoughts on “Blitzkrieg”, and then join me Tuesday as I live tweet the East Coast airing of Teen Wolf.  And as always, remember to subscribe to the site to keep up on all the latest Teen Wolf news as I hear about it.