Teen Wolf season 6 is coming to a close, so we sat down with the show’s creator, Jeff Davis, to see what we can expect going into this season.
Will Teen Wolf play it safe in its final days, or will it go all out, no holds barred? How much heartbreak should we expect, and will anyone be coming back for one last time? And which character is he most proud of?
These types of questions and more are answered below in our interview with Teen Wolf creator Jeff Davis.
Going into season 6, knowing it was the last one, what changed about your approach to the story?
We definitely were like, “Well, if this is the last 20 episodes, what are the things that we haven’t done that we want to go for?” A lot of that was relationships and a lot of that was things that you sort of save for later. Well, now it’s later. How are you going to do it? How are you going to kill that main character? How are you going to get those two people together? Are you going to finally let this one character do the terrible, horrible things they’ve never done? It was all those kinds of considerations, and we’re trying to go for as many as possible without really making it kind of obvious and gratuitous.
Relationships aside, and maybe focusing more on plot or story elements, was there one thing that you wanted to make sure you accomplished in this final season?
We always start with, “Well, can we just tell a good story? Can we come up with a cool mystery? Does it have heart? Does it have interesting thematic through-lines?” And for each section, our A and B storylines, which are connected, we challenge ourselves to come up with something that was meaningful to us and could be meaningful to the audience. The first one we wanted to do was all about memory and all about how people affect our lives and how they change you. How if you take one person away, is your life the same, or is something going to feel missing and is there a strange hole that is left? We tried to go for as many big themes as possible, and especially in 6B we definitely feel the pressure of telling a very large story to wrap things up.
How high are the stakes this season? I imagine it’s a balance between wanting to keep it interesting and wanting to keep it how it’s always been, but also wanting to see everybody end up in a happy place.
There’s so much pressure on series finales, and especially these days, where everything is so serialized and you start to feel like the whole series is judged on the finale. I remember watching Lost, and I was in the camp of feeling a little let down, but it didn’t effect how phenomenal the show was for me. One of the things we really wanted to concentrate on was just telling good, powerful character stories, showing people at their worst and finding them crawling their way back to their best.
Which character do you think has changed the most from their initial introduction? Which character are you most proud of to have seen their arc throughout the show?
It’s not because he’s the main character or because he’s very personal to my heart, having written the pilot, but I think Scott has changed the most. I think he’s gone from a naive kid who dealt with heartbreak and made stupid decisions and tried to do his best to become a leader and a real powerful character who tries to do the right thing and sometimes fails, but has learned so much. Seeing the difference in Tyler Posey, watching him grow up, reminds me of how much he’s changed as a character. Since we’re doing a first arc about memory, we started going back through the other seasons to look at moments, and I think his character probably has changed the most. He went from a little love-struck boy to a man, a leader, and a person who inspires other people.
What can you tell us about him directing an episode, and now Linden Ashby as well?
It’s great when you can give people chances. I’ve very thankful to MTV for allowing me to give opportunities. I’ve had a script supervisor, first AD, director of photography, all direct their first episodes of TV. My executive producer, Joe, directed his first episode of TV. And now to be able to give that chance to both Linden and Tyler is a real gift. Tyler has the support of the whole cast and crew behind him, and he just did a phenomenal job. He still has a day or two to shoot, I think. I’m up in Vancouver shooting the Let the Right One In pilot, and his first day, I was getting pictures and texts from proud crew members and producers showing me Tyler behind the monitor, telling me he was flying through setup and getting great footage. I watched the dailies, and I was like, “Oh my God, he’s a natural.” I have a huge sense of pride about it, and I couldn’t be happier for both Tyler and Linden. I can’t wait to see Linden’s dailies as well.
I think everybody is really going to respond to both of them behind the camera, but especially Tyler Posey given how far he has come with the show, so fans are definitely pumped for that.
My production designer, Tom, came up to me while we were on set — I hired him for Let the Right One In — and he showed me a picture of one of the sets, and he said, “Finally, a director using the angle this set was meant for,” and it was a shot from Tyler’s episode. He’s got a director’s eye.
In terms of books, movies, and even television, was there anything that particularly influenced the tone and style of season 6?
I feel like our style has definitely been set for a while, with kind of a comic book-ish style show, and horror and thrills are definitely within our look and feel. I know that we wanted to go a little bit — because we’re getting into the Ghost Riders — we wanted to have a little classic Western feel to it. We looked at a lot of different images of Western-style costumes and things like that. The Dark Tower series was an influence. I’m a huge Western fan myself, so The Magnificent Seven is one of my favorite movies. One of the fun things about Teen Wolf is we get to explore all these different genres. We wanted people riding around on horses, which is definitely different for Teen Wolf.
We’ve seen a lot of the Ghost Riders so far, but what else can you tell us about this Nazi werewolf that’s sort of been looming in the background since the end of season 5?
He is played by Pete Ploszek, who is a phenomenal guy who really dove into the role. When he comes out with a German accent, it’s a lot of fun. I think he has fun playing the bad guy. It’s great when you have an actor who surprises you because you start writing more for them. We still have yet to shoot scenes for episode 10 with him, and we put in a bunch of stuff [for him] to do. We’re really excited about Pete.
The role of Tamora Monroe, a new teacher at the school, was also just cast. What can you tell us about her?
I can tell you nothing about her [laughs]. What I can tell you is that Sibo [Mlambo] is great. [Tamora is] both an antagonist and a sympathetic character. Quite sympathetic, actually. I really like her because you very much understand where she’s coming from. That’s about all I can spoil about her.
What can you tease us in terms of possible cameos or returning characters in season 6?
I can tell you that I’ve reached out to more than one person, and I’m still hopeful that we’ll get one or two back in there. But I really can’t confirm anything. I wish I could. The issue is sometimes the schedule and sometimes it’s money, but we’ll see what happens.
As a final question, what can you tell us about your upcoming projects, both Let the Right One In, and MTV’s upcoming War of the Worlds, which I was really excited about when it was announced.
[For] Let the Right One In, I can say it’s not a reboot or a remake. It’s a very international story. It was inspired quite a bit by the book, to be honest, so it was only when I read the book where I thought, “Okay, I can see this as a TV series.” The book has a lot of layers to the characters that you don’t see in the movies, either the American one or the Swedish one. So I’m excited about it. We’re shooting the pilot right now with a pretty amazing cast, and two kids, Ben Wadsworth and Kristine Froseth, who are freaking amazing. And I’m really excited for people to see it, and hopefully we get picked up to series, and I can continue to tell these strange stories.
War of the Worlds is another project I’m really excited about because it keeps me at MTV, partially, who are very much my home and my great support. That’s with a writer named Andrew Cochran, who told me about doing this project, War of the Worlds, and doing a modernized update of it. He had a really interesting way into the story. I can tell you it’s not going to be a huge space epic like Independence Day, but more like an on the ground POV, a from-the-ground story about people fighting back against an alien invasion. It’s a very Michael Crichton kind of thriller, which is a new way into the story. So it’s not quite the war story of something like Battlestar or Falling Skies. And that’s all I can tell you about that!
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