'Teen Wolf' Season 4 Recap To Prepare For Big Bads

If you've been with Teen Wolf from the beginning (the 21st century MTV beginning, not the 1985 Michael J. Fox movie beginning) then you know that being a fan means preparing to face just as many twists and turns as an actual teen wolf and/or teen-wolf-adjacent human/kitsune/banshee/were-coyote/etc. would. Beloved characters are ripped away in the most tragic ways possible, complicated narratives and backstories weave together to create intricate plotlines, new supernatural creatures are introduced all the time, and more, making a Teen Wolf Season 4 recap absolutely necessary before embarking on a whole new journey through Beacon Hills.

In fact, probably no season of Teen Wolf has been quite as overwhelming as Season 4, but what it lacked in focus, it made up for in producing major excitement for Season 5. Because while last season had its own ongoing mysteries that it worked on solving during the season — two, actually, in the form of both The Benefactor and the ultimate evil duo, Kate and Peter — it dropped even more clues and left many supernatural doors opened that we can hopefully look forward to getting some answers to in Season 5. There's Malia being Peter's daughter, her mother's mysterious identity as "The Desert Wolf," Scott creating his very own Beta in the form of little Liam, and Parrish out there setting himself on fire, just to name a few. In preparation for what is guaranteed to be a mysterious and wolf-y Season 5, let's get our facts straight on what went down in Season 4.

De-Aged Derek

In fan fiction come to life, the fourth season began with the whole pack (now including Scott's semi-girlfriend and kitsune, Kira, and Stiles' probably-girlfriend and were-coyote, Malia) heading to Mexico to find Derek, who they assumed was taken by the Calaveras hunters. But when they discovered him in the tombs of "La Iglesia," they found a de-aged, teenage Derek Hale. And it wasn't the Calaveras who sent him back to tenth grade...

Kate is Back... And Blue

It was Kate Argent, back for the first time since Peter ripped out her throat, presumably killing her in Season 2. Instead, her near-death contact with Peter transformed her into a were-jaguar and after escaping the Calaveras, she somehow mastered the process of making berserkers, the bone-clad soldiers who accompany her for the rest of the season. In de-aging Derek, she hoped to bring him back to a point in his life when he still trusted her so that he could use his family's traditions, hidden in the Hale family vault (beneath the high school, of course) to help her master her shift.

Don't Forget About Uncle Peter

But Peter invited himself to the vault party and informed Kate that the tokens the Hales used to master the shift were just a symbol. Even though Kate and Peter battled in the vault, somewhere in between someone breaking in and stealing $117 million in cash and Peter being really obvious about his intentions to kill Scott and steal his Alpha powers, the two teamed up. Oh yeah, back to that break in...

The Benefactor

Kate and Peter certainly weren't out there doing any good, but the real Big Bad of Season 4 was finally revealed to be The Benefactor: a mysterious entity using the Hales' stolen money to hire assassins to kill supernatural creatures in Beacon Hills. Let's see, there was the terrifying Mute with a hatchet and no mouth, the bumbling Wonder Twins, aka 16-year-old sociopaths Garret and Violet, and a whole bunch of other randoms who were killing seemingly random supernaturals all over town under the Benefactor's orders.

The Dead Pool

When The Mute was taken out, the pack discovered the list he was working with. It was a dead pool — a list of all the supernaturals in Beacon Hills, including all of the pack (except for human Stiles), each with a price on their head. The dead pool was split into three coded lists and Lydia was only able to crack one cipher key on her own: "Allison." She went to the only other banshee she knows, Meredith, who was in Eichen House and helped her decode the next list with "Aiden." But when Lydia returned for help with the third list, Meredith told her the Benefactor had forbidden her to help anymore. And I'm just going to cut to the chase here...

Meredith

It's Meredith. The Benefactor was, for many reasons that are explained though none of them that are particularly convincing, revealed to be Meredith. She was running the whole operation out of Eichen House with the help of one of the guards. Apparently, when Peter was hospitalized after the Hale fire, Meredith was also hospitalized because of experiments Lydia's banshee grandmother did on her, and for a year she listened in on his thoughts, which were full of incoherent ramblings that eventually formed the plan for the dead pool. And Meredith just... decided to carry that out. Lydia shut down the computers that were generating the dead pool list, the assassins were called off, and that was that.

La Iglesia

Kidding! When Scott thought he had a safe moment without someone trying to kill his True Alpha ass for $20 million, he took Kira on date to Derek's apartment, but while they were getting steamy, Kate busted in with her berserkers and took them back to La Iglesia in Mexico. There, her plan was finally revealed: To turn Scott into a berserker so that Peter would have to kill him, and get the added bonus of jacking all his Alpha powers. But Scott isn't just any Alpha... when the rest of the pack got there and discovered that Scott has, indeed, been turned into a murderous berserker, little Beta Liam finally came in handy, using his special bond to trigger Scott's True Alpha powers. He busted right out of those bones, the Calaveras and Chris Argent arrived with reinforcements, and full-transformation-wolf-Derek took out Kate's berserkers. Kate, however, was shot with a wolfsbane bullet by her brother, but still manages to escape to the tunnels of La Iglesia.

Lingering Questions

That made it seem like everything was tidily tied up with a bloody bow. Not so much... there' still Peter, who was sent to what appears to be a supernatural wing of Eichen House. That's where we find a patient named Dr. Valack who has a third eye that previously in the season sent Dr. Deaton into a coma when he looked into it, and causes Peter to try to run for the hills when he takes a gander. There's also the question of the Desert Wolf, Malia's mom that Peter has been going on and on about, whose real identity is unknown. Deputy Parrish is definitely supernatural, but we still don't technically know what he is. And we still don't know if the McCall pack will ever be rid of Kate Argent!

I think I'll take a page from Stiles' book and invest in some bulletin boards, thumb tacks, and different-colored string for Teen Wolf Season 5.

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