Teen Wolf S5E1 - "Creatures of the Night" Review

After four (more like five) seasons of Teen Wolf, it's essential that new things be shown to us as far as plot and characters go. This premiere started off with a bang as we see Lydia being held at Eichen House and exhibiting a kick-ass evolved set of powers. As it turns out, this whole sequence is a flash-forward, as we are left waiting in suspense to see just how she came to be committed as well as learn the fate of the rest of our beloved pack.

The Parrish 'special snowflake' plot never did a whole lot to pique our interest and it still doesn't. Whether it's simply taking too long to offer up further developments on his character and abilities, or perhaps he just pales in comparison to the array of more-interesting characters around him, we have yet to be convinced on the matter. Hopefully this will be the season to finally justify why attention has been taken to him that could have been spent elsewhere. Though we'll admit it's been rather funny to watch Sheriff Stilinski hollering at him to answer the phones.

The introduction of this new threat with the glowing talons, seriously those things would have been well-used at a blacklight club party, was exciting to watch. The fact that he was able to brutalise Scott so much before Scott eventually turned things around really had us going there! Despite the fact that it's a season premiere, we were almost wondering if Scott would truly lose his Alpha abilities and then spend the remainder of the season trying to get them back.

This insidious new Big Bad had plenty of mystery to get us pumped up for the season. From the black goop, hooded figures, and all those damn crows, plus they may or may not have some control over lightning... we don't really want to go Googling every supernatural mythology to try to sniff out what exactly Beacon Hills is dealing with, but we can't wait to find out!

With the sacrifices this group has made fighting against the forces of evil, it was nice of the Teen Wolf writers to give a couple nods to the group's fallen comrades. From the Max Carver cameo, as Lydia's hallucination of Aiden, and Scott adding Allison's initials to the library shelf (a Beacon Hills High senior tradition apparently), we nearly got teary-eyed as the show has convincingly established emotionality in this universe it has spent the last four years building.

As far as new faces is concerned, the most notable one is that of Theo, a new werewolf looking for Scott, a true Alpha whom he claims to want to join the pack of. Theo is apparently a friend of Scott and Stiles' from the fourth grade but we reckon there'll be some mysteries around him to unfold as the season progresses. One other thing we'd like to give a shot-out to is Kira's belt that turns into a katana. Where do I get one of those??? But it was sweet to see that Scott and Kira's relationship is as strong as ever. Tyler Posey and Arden Cho's chemistry is entirely endearing to watch.

Teen Wolf airs on Mondays on MTV at 10PM.