‘Teen Wolf’ Winter Finale Recap: Reunited at Last
Warning: This recap of the “Riders on the Storm” episode of Teen Wolf contains spoilers.
Whether pleasurable or completely nightmarish, the best dream is a remembered dream. How many tens of thousands of our dreams have vanished from our minds upon waking? The tragedy is almost unbearable. Sure, sure, dreams aren’t “real,” but I guarantee you they’re more interesting than anything I’ll do today. Which is why entertainment that fully embraces the qualities of a dream is so important. From David Lynch’s oeuvre of intentional dreamscapes to the Wachowskis’ less intentional dream imagery, it’s important for us to experience stories and situations elevated from the constraints of physics, logic, and time. Teen Wolf figured out early on that it could somehow be even more thrilling and heartfelt if it couched these things in stories meant to wash over us rather than be picked apart. Teen Wolf has always ever been a dream.
“Riders on the Storm” ended the first half of Teen Wolf‘s final season, yet it felt almost wholly like an endpoint. Bringing every character together in a final battle that wrapped up nearly every storyline and declining to leave us with a cliffhanger, this episode may as well have been the series finale. The characters even began departing for college in the final scene! Yet we know there’s more to come, and the fact that the true conclusion promises to be completely unexpected just proves my point: This is one dream that can’t be predicted, and one dream that may hopefully feel endless. Let’s talk about this episode!
We began in a parallel dimension, where a certain missing hero suddenly found himself face to very-familiar-face, with his father! Stiles and Sheriff Stilinski’s reunion made everybody cry, admit it.
And when his dad valiantly held off the Ghost Riders while commanding Stiles to escape, Stiles found a mysteriously glowing tunnel made of memories and love!
Even though he had no way of knowing for sure whether or not this tunnel would turn him into a mound of burnt flesh, Stiles followed his heart. And that led him directly into…
A semi-brokedown Jeep! This was mildly amusing, because although Lydia, Malia, and Scott saw Stiles’s silhouette down in the sewer, it was a banshee prank. Yes, he was back, but in the same place that he disappeared from! Still, it didn’t take long for the kids to figure out what had happened:
Meanwhile, something terrifying was happening: Train tracks had begun showing up on all of Teen Wolf‘s soundstages, including inside the hospital lobby! That was an unusual place for train tracks to appear, and would probably lead to some property damage when that train arrived. But Nazi Werewolf seemed pretty stoked about it…
But before he could, like, bite everybody in German, guess who jumped out and attacked him with a bat? Stiles!
He found Scott and they hugged so hard. Stiles even hugged Liam, that’s how happy he was to be reunited with his friends. Unfortunately, Parrish was still brainwashed by Mr. Douglas’s good looks, and he attacked everybody by exploding, basically.
Ever the quick thinker, Stiles busted out the nearest tank of liquid nitrogen and went TO TOWN on Parrish’s behind!
The situation was literally chill.
After Parrish had cooled down a bit, he regained his friendliness and told the boys what was up: Mr. Douglas wanted to bring the Ghost Rider train to Beacon Hills so that it would, uh, create an army, or, like, collapse all the dimensions? I truly don’t know, and you have to trust me on this, it didn’t matter. The main thing to know was, the train was a-comin’! And if they couldn’t “divert” it, then, uh, something bad would happen. Don’t worry about it.
I enjoyed the idea that Liam was so anxious to get back to the Ghost Riders dimension that he straight-up stole one of their horses! Despite not knowing how to ride it, or how exactly this would get him back to that dimension. (Do they ride lightning still? Unclear.) Fortunately for Liam, he had help from one of the most trustworthy characters in Teen Wolf history.
That’s right, Theo, whom I trust, tussled with a Ghost Rider so that Liam could flip off a balcony onto a horse. That’s a good deed right there, in case you’re keeping track. Way to go, Theo.
Within minutes, Liam arrived in one of the train stations, which, as we were informed, contains untold numbers of rooms, which made it hard for anybody to find anyone else, unless you are Liam, in which case you immediately found your girlfriend and made out with her. Aw, buncha cuties.
But what was weird was that train stations started appearing in the “real” world also, like for example in the high school library. Malia and Lydia encountered a room of comatose strangers, only one of whom looked familiar: Peter Hale! Lydia suggested that Malia wake him up using “emotions” and their nonexistent father-daughter bond. And do you want to know something? It worked!
Peter Hale woke up just in time to run around and jump-kick tons of Ghost Riders so that his daughter could escape! That’s our SECOND villain of the series getting all heroic in this episode. So good.
Things weren’t going great for Corey, who, it turned out, was the only person who could exist in both dimensions, which I suppose is why the Ghost Riders turned him into an intercom. (I don’t know.) But this was upsetting to Mason, and they needed to figure out how to save Corey from this uncute fate PRONTO.
Meanwhile, Scott and Stiles were both sent into the parallel dimension by Mr. Douglas’s Ghost Rider gun, but then they ran into a doorway with a light tunnel and were then back in the real world again. (I think?) But then they were attacked by Ghost Riders, and Stiles was very nearly shot in the face by one of them!
Except at the last second, Lydia ran in and screamed at everybody!
Then Teen Wolf got all romantic in an iconic way when she ran to him, saying, “I never said it back!” and he responded, “You didn’t have to!” and then they made out. If Tumblr still existed (does it exist still?) then this will be a series of .GIFs that will be immortal, I’m guessing. A very cute and emotional scene. These two!
Not to be outdone, the parents went and got romantic also! Mrs. McCall and Mr. Argent faced off against some Ghost Riders, and when Argent had one of those cowboy quick-draw standoffs with one (and won!), Mrs. McCall awarded him by mouth-attacking him. It was sexy as H and a fun way for the parents to get in on the action, if you catch my drift. I guess a McCall might just end up with an Argent after all.
Oh, but we had some old business in the form of the creature that had been pretending to be Stiles’s deceased mother! As it turns out, she was just some wrinkle-faced lady Ghost Rider (but with eyes and a mouth) and she REALLY wanted to strangle Stiles. So, just when we thought she was merely a poignant metaphor conjured through the power of loss and grief, it turned out she was a run-of-the-mill ghoul who couldn’t be killed with normal bullets.
But she COULD be killed with normal bullets if a banshee screamed at the same time. Which, again, OK? I got no further questions.
Scott was having a bad time out where the railroad tracks diverged. He REALLY wanted to make sure that train didn’t come here, but he was thwarted by Mr. Douglas and a hundred of his creepiest friends who had shown up to BRAWL.
Fortunately, Scott had a were-coyote, a formerly CGI Alpha, and a trustworthy friend to help him out! And brawl they did! It was like a royal rumble, in my opinion.
At some point, Malia snatched a whip away from a Ghost Rider and tossed it to Scott, who was able to use it throw the diversion switch. And just in time for that train to pass them right by!
See ya never, train!
Mr. Douglas was not happy about this. And this coincided with Mason, in the parallel dimension, freeing Corey from his intercom body piercings, which somehow freed all the captives of Beacon Hills AND made the Ghost Riders totally over it. They walked away to head home, so Mr. Douglas screamed at them in German to come back, and they DID come back…
They turned him into a Ghost Rider! But a Nazi Ghost Rider, according to his swastika armband. That felt about right.
And thus the Ghost Rider saga came to a conclusion. All their victims were free, Beacon Hills was a populated city again, and the teens had nothing left to do but graduate from high school.
We were then treated a to a series of poignant scenes… First Stiles couldn’t believe the year was already over. It seemed like he’d spent most of it in some kind of purgatory of some kind? But I liked when he gifted his trusty baseball bat to Mason, in a passing of the torch, basically. Also Stiles reiterated how important Scott had been to his life.
Plus, we learned that Lydia was headed to MIT (as a junior!), Scott had been admitted to UC Davis (somehow) and Stiles was heading to a “pre-FBI” program in Washington, D.C. All of these things felt right and correct.
The last moments saw Scott and Stiles cruising in Roscoe, possibly in the direction of a corpse that had just been found in the woods. Full circle!
If I didn’t know any better, “Riders on the Storm” contained enough callbacks and closure to function as the actual series finale. But we know there are 10 more episodes left (airing this summer), so something tells me there’s at least one more tussle with supernatural creatures on the horizon. (Also, hopefully, visits from some familiar departed characters.) But this episode was full of action and dream-like thrills and felt completely whole and entertaining. I liked this (half) season a lot, as it was inventive, audacious, confusing, and ultimately so emotional. But my favorite thing about it was, though it felt in many ways like a goodbye, we know it isn’t goodbye. There’s more to come, and there will always in some way be more to come. Whether it’s a romantic fantasy or a total nightmare, dreams have a way of never ending. Thank goodness for Teen Wolf.
What did YOU think of “Riders on the Storm”?
Teen Wolf‘s final season returns this summer on MTV.
