So 'Teen Wolf' Has Wendigos Now

There's so much going on in Season 4 of Teen Wolf that I think my television might explode. In Monday night's third episode "Muted," Teen Wolf introduced a Wendigo, yet another supernatural creature, and he was just as scary as the Berserkers from last week and The Mute, who may also be this season's biggest villain, The Benefactor. At the beginning of the episode, a young kid named Sean has to hear his family get brutally axe-murdered by The Mute and only narrowly escapes death himself. Somehow, he is able to check into the hospital at Beacon Hills, but his problems really only begin there.

The poor kid is too messed up to talk to a psychologist about what happened to him and his family, but later when Mama McCall goes to check on him, she finds an empty bed and a Sheriff's deputy laying dead in a giant pool of his own blood. And who's that next to the deputy eating his intestines? Unfortunately, it's a very scary Sean.

That's right! The poor kid who was victimized by the baddie The Mute, was basically just a baddie in his own right as Mama McCall is horrified by the death scene in front of her and tries to comfort the kid. He states that he doesn't need help, he's just hungry, and = lunges forward at Scott's mom. Luckily Scott is already at the hospital looking for Sean and sees him in his full Wendigo state. After some unfortunate circumstances, Sean ends up getting killed anyway by The Mute, who found him at the hospital, leaving us with a million questions.

First let's backtrack and ask the biggest question of them all: What the heck is a Wendigo? Well, as Tyler Posey, the portrayer of Scott McCall, put it during the Teen Wolf after-show Wolf Watch, a Wendigo is "kind of like a zombie, they crave blood and human flesh...He's a supernatural cannibal." Posey's not wrong. In popular myth, the Wendigo is a demonic beast-like spirit that has characteristics of humans as well. And they are in fact cannibals. But if you feel like you may have heard this term before in another context, it's because you have. The Wendigo has been featured on both The CW's Supernatural and The WB's Charmed. And they are definitely just as messed up on those shows as the one from Teen Wolf.

So where did the Wendigo come from? My working theory is based on what Scott's vet said in Season 3. When Scott, Allison (RIP!), and Stiles searched for the Nemeton Tree last season, they awakened its powers and turned it back into a beacon for supernatural creatures. It's possible Sean and his family were all Wendigos, or that the Nemeton turned this power on inside of them. And The Mute came in with a hit list of supernatural names, a list that included Sean and his family.

If any part of this theory is true, that means there are more and more supernatural creatures coming to Teen Wolf this season and they should all be afraid of each other and The Mute's apparent supernatural hit list. That includes Scott and his Wolf Pack too.

Images: MTV, julieto-hara/Tumblr, supernaturalfreaks/Tumblr