Teen Wolf Series Finale: Who Lived, Who Died, and How Did it All End?

Jeff Davis answers nearly all of our pressing finale questions after the conclusion of the MTV series

By Lauren Piester Sep 25, 2017 1:11 AMTags
Watch: Tyler Posey & Colton Haynes Reenact Iconic "Teen Wolf" Scene

Regardless of how much we don't want to believe it, Teen Wolf is officially over.

The gang conquered the inugitae (which is a word we still don't know how to spell). Gerard (Michael Hogan) got what was coming to him (in a hopefully deadly fight with his daughter, Kate (Jill Wagner)). Monroe (Sibongile Mlambo) was sent packing, and everyone managed to survive without too much damage (at least any lasting damage that they couldn't heal from).

It was both an ending and a new beginning, as the best series finales usually are, and it was beautiful. We got creator Jeff Davis on the phone to answer some of our questions (and also to kind of just listen to us as we talked at him about our finale thoughts and feelings), but we've also got to talk about all of the incredible moments that finale gave us, so here we go:

Teen Wolf Then and Now

The Return of Stiles and Derek

Stiles (Dylan O'Brien) and Derek's (Tyler Hoechlin) return wasn't new news since that has been in previews since before the season started, but that didn't make it any less delightful. It turns out that after Stiles discovered that Derek was on the FBI most wanted list, he weaseled his way onto the op that was supposed to take him out and managed to save him, though there were some arguments over who really saved who (the truth: Derek had to carry Stiles out after his toe got shot). They showed up in Beacon Hills just in time to help with the cliffhanger fight from last week's episode, but there was no time to save Deucalion (Gideon Emery). RIP Deucalion.

There was, however, time for a glorious reunion when Stiles and Lydia (Holland Roden) rescued Jackson (Colton Haynes) from where Monroe was keeping him. (Though he didn't really need a ton of help thanks to the fact that he still has his kanima tale.) While Stiles felt threatened for a moment, Jackson quickly informed them that he was with Ethan (Charlie Carver), Ethan was in danger, and they needed to find Ethan. There was a lot of repeating of "You and Ethan?" on Stiles' part, but Lydia's reaction was, "Oh my god, I thought you'd never figure it out."

Then, towards the end of the hour, Stiles got to save the day by basically bombing the inugitae with mountain ash and destroying it. It was very good.


"There were three things that were important in the finale [for Stiles]," Davis told us. "One was that he have a funny scene with Derek, one was that he have a really awkward reunion with Lydia and Jackson...and the last one was that he had a really heroic moment, which was bursting in with the mountain ash. So I'm glad we got all those moments in, but one thing I really wanted to make sure that we didn't do was overshadow Scott's story. 6A was really a story about Stiles and about the memory of Stiles and about the character Stiles, and with the finale, with 6B, we sat down, me and the writers, and I said, we're not going to have Dylan O'Brien for this season, so let's return our focus to the teen wolf, Scott McCall. And really make sure that we give him his ending."

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The Torture of Scott McCall

And Scott McCall (Tyler Posey) truly did get one hell of an ending. The inugitae forced him to face a few of his former foes, tormenting him about Allison (Crystal Reed) and even turning into Nogitsune Stiles for a few brilliant moments, but Scott overcame it all. 

"I actually didn't realize that was going to happen until a little later in the season when I was brainstorming how this thing could end," Davis says of that moment. "But we sort of did try to do it organically, which was this thing, this creature, the inugitae(?) gets in your head, and it knows your fears, and those were all the things Scott's experienced, so it was a good way to bring things back and make things feel full circle and tip our hat, give a nod to the past season villains."

Scott was also shot with a wolfsbane bullet, which he had to burn out of his chest, and then he had to horrifically claw out his own eyes in order to keep the inugitae from turning him into stone.

"You gotta make it an epic fight," Davis explained in a way that was a little too casual for the fact that he made his main character claw his eyes out. "You gotta make your main character bleed before he can win, so you have to have a moment of all hope is lost. It's all in the storytelling."

While Scott struggled to heal at first, some encouragement from Stiles and some lip-related encouragement from Malia (Shelley Hennig) brought his eyes back, and their fight was over. Nearly every single character had a moment of complete badassery, including the coach (Orny Adams), who showed up at just the right time to save Jackson and Ethan from a would-be assassin.


Davis says he's particularly fond of Stilinski's (Linden Ashby) fight scene in the hallway of Eichen, as he took back his role of Sheriff, but one of his favorite moments of the finale was a little shoutout to season two.

"I was very happy to be able to have Gerard say ‘mountain ash' again," he says, referring to the déjà vu-inducing moment when Gerard realized what was going on and shout-whispered his most famous line from the second season. "I was very specific about it. I told the director, this time, he has to whisper it. It was fun."

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The End

In the end, Teen Wolf didn't really end. The show "ended" by basically saying, "the fight goes on." A flash forward showed Scott and Argent (JR Bourne) teaming up some time in the near future to track down other young teen werewolves who are being hunted down by Monroe's followers, and welcoming them into Scott's pack with help from all of his friends.

"That was a real conscious decision," Davis says. "It's a battle between what kind of series finale do you want to do—the one where you kill half the cast and you say this is it, it's over, it's done, there's no more to be said, or the one where you say the adventure continues? And I always felt like the latter was more in the style of the show."

As for why no one (other than hopefully Gerard and a few other hunters) met their ends tonight, Davis says, "I didn't want to see all my favorite characters die."

"There's a real urge to blow things up on a final episode," he says. "Remember the Little House on the Prairie episode where they did actually blow up all the sets, because they had to get rid of them? I had this idea of this last scene where Scott has gathered once again with his friends to go off and face another adventure, and when I look at it, it sort of hurts me that Allison isn't there with them, although she is in spirit. So I think it was more in the vein of our show to not kill off so many characters."

That flashforward partly came from Posey, who pitched the opening scene of the finale.


"He had this whole idea of Scott and Argent off in the future as a team, and I said to him, you know what, I'm going to use your opening," Davis tells us. "He even said, he pitched it as it starts with me in a hotel room, and I wake up, and Argent's at the door, and we go off to do this thing together. And I said, I'm doing it, and he was really excited. And I think it actually fit quite perfectly."

But the actual end of the show is something Davis has had in his head for several years now.

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"The idea of Scott finding this other young werewolf in the future and saying those same words to him, you're not a monster, you're a werewolf like me, and using that as sort of a bookend, I'd had that a while ago. I think I pitched that at the end of season four to the writers as the possible end of the show," he says. "I think I was pretty happy with the way it ends, because that new character, the character of alex played by Ben Wasdworth, sort of represents the audience. Scott is saying to us, if you're different, if you're an outsider, if you're like us, you can be one of us so long as you fight."

Davis says the biggest challenge of the finale was "trying to keep it under 60 pages of script."

"The hard thing is really trying to give each character their moment. Some get sacrificed in place of others, you know. My one regret of the finale is not being able to give Deaton a storyline. But with the actors' availability, scheduling conflicts with the Walking Dead, and also the time limit of the show, it wasn't possible. So you take these sacrifices and you try to make the best finale possible."


In fact, most questions about why something didn't happen in the finale can be answered with two words: scheduling conflicts. This particularly applies to Dylan O'Brien, who was dealing with recovering from being injured on the set of a Maze Runner installment and also starting to film American Assassin, all while also trying to find time to come back for the final season of Teen Wolf.

"Everything has to do with scheduling, to be honest. Dylan was shooting [American Assassin], it was getting him back in time," he says, though he did joke that there was a "five-minute Stydia sex scene that we just didn't have time for… I'm sure they'll rip me apart online."

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Looking Back

While there are discussions (and just discussions, according to Davis) of a reboot at MTV, for now, this is it, and Davis is proud of the show he gave us and what he was able to give to the people who helped make the show.

"I'm most proud of the fact that the show has meant so much to so many people, not just the fans, but the people who have worked on it," he says. "I've helped people become directors, I've helped them become writers, that's a great responsibility to be given. To be able to help other people get where they want to go in their careers, that's a really nice gift. And the fact that it's meant so much to both crew, cast, and fans, that makes me proud. And the fact that people loved working on it. They loved coming back every day."

Davis is also happy he was able to "write and show the kind of friendships that I wish I'd had as a teenager, and to write a story where friends will do anything for each other and risk their lives for each other."

"I think there aren't that many stories like that these days," he says. "It's always been a show about two best friends who went out to search for a body in the woods."


Teen Wolf Series Finale

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Teen Wolf aired on MTV.