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Teen Wolf season 4, episode 1, “The Dark Moon,” has just finished airing. What did our crew get up to during the season 4 premiere? Our recap explains it all!
The first episode of this new season starts off with Lydia and Stiles in Mexico, of all places. Their banter is cute on the surface, but there’s a tension underneath that lets us know the situation is not an ideal one.
Once they arrive at a mysterious guarded door, Lydia trying and failing to use her Spanish to get in, Stiles holds up a card with a skull on it that gains them instant entrance… to a rave.
The two teenagers try to look inconspicuous, but it doesn’t work out too well for them. One of the guards finds them and Lydia drops a bullet with a skull on it into a drink she was offered. They’re immediately taken to Araya, the leader of the Mexican hunters we met in season 3.
Lydia and Stiles drop $50,000 on the table in exchange for Derek, who they assume has been captured by the Calaveras. But Araya isn’t exactly in a negotiating mood. But then again, neither is Stiles.
We see that the club is full of his allies, including Malia, Kira, and Scott. Though they all try to blend in (Kira having a bit harder time at it), the hunters sniff them out and try to take them down. But the group has come prepared, and they won’t leave without a fight.
Teen Wolf Season 4 Episode 1 The Dark Moon Kira
Araya quizzes Lydia and Stiles about the dark moon. Lydia explains that it is when the celestial body is least visible in the sky and how it represents a time of reflection and grief. There’s a subtle reference to Allison’s death, which everyone is still struggling with two months later, and Araya asks why they would risk their lives again for someone like Derek.
“Because we don’t like to lose,” Stiles says.
While Scott, Kira, and Malia make it past the initial wave of hunters, Araya tells Severo to put out the wolfsbane gas, and the trio gets taken. It turns out that the Calaveras don’t have Derek. Araya wants to know more about how Lydia’s powers work and what kind of Alpha Scott is, but the banshee is unable to tell the huntress. They then make Kira torture Scott until he figures out that Kate is actually the one who took Derek.
Malia’s lack of control over her powers as a werecoyote, and her inability to understand human nature, quickly become a focus of the episode. It’s only when she kisses Stiles that she’s able to focus her abilities and help Stiles figure out what the Calaveras are doing to his friends.
After Scott makes the connection to Kate, Araya lets him and his friends go. She sends them off to hunt Kate down, but not before making a thinly veiled threat that when Scott creates a beta of his own, Araya will come after him. And that’s when the mercenary Braeden shows up to lead them to where Kate is rumored to be camping out.
As the gang heads out to find Kate, Scott catches Kira and Malia up on who exactly Kate is. That’s when we find out that Kate never died. Instead, she started healing and turning after Peter slashed her throat. The Calaveras switched out her body and gave her a chance to kill herself, as is the law among hunters who are bitten.
Only, Kate wasn’t about to take her own life. As the Jeep hits something and subsequently breaks down, Scott and Braeden move on while the others stay behind and try to fix it. Scott and Kira have a moment as they part ways, and it’s obvious that both still care about the other, but they’re also trying to figure out where they stand after Allison’s death.
Teen Wolf Season 4 Episode 1 The Dark Moon Braeden Scott
As Scott and Braeden arrive at La Iglesia, Braeden explains that the church was built over the top of an Aztec temple belonging to the Nagual — werejaguars. Meanwhile, it’s getting dark and the Jeep still isn’t fixed. Something is out in the desert with them, and Malia charges after it, though without any luck of bringing it down.
As Braeden and Scott fight off whatever is living in the labyrinth under the church, Stiles finally gets the Jeep running and the gang that was left behind makes a quick escape. Stiles is obviously upset over Malia chasing after the creature she saw, but only because he thought she was leaving. “I would never leave without you,” she says. As Scott uses his howl to scare off whatever was attacking them, they find where Derek was being kept and rescue him.
Except the Derek they find isn’t exactly the Derek they’re used to. As the group finally reconvenes, we see what has everyone so shocked: Derek has been reverted back to his younger self (as played by Ian Nelson). This was definitely a twist we didn’t see coming!
SOURCEMeh standard for a TW premiere.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF DEREK HALE | You probably weren’t expecting Derek to re-emerge from Kate’s tomb looking all bite-sized, were you? Well, fear not, because the former Alpha’s downsizing is only temporary. “Episode 2 is all about, ‘How do we get him back to normal?’” Davis explains. “The mystery of his backstory, what he was up to as a teenager, is always open for debate. And we like Ian Nelson so much, so we were trying to think of a way to bring him back and have some fun. [Laughs] I think people are going to be surprised by what happens in Episode 2.”
LOOK WHO’S BACK | Monday’s premiere also saw the return of Braeden, who’s “going to be a big fighter this year, someone who’s always on the moral fence,” Davis says. As for whether or not she’ll end up as a love interest for Derek — they were allegedly seen kissing in one of the trailers released by MTV, pictured right — Davis hints, “That could be possible.” (Which is a shame, because we all know how poorly Derek’s relationships end.)
