Teen Wolf season 6, episode 2, “Superposition,” just finished airing, and the Ghost Riders have claimed another victim.
I have to say, we know a little bit about the Ghost Riders, but there’s still so much to learn, including how one becomes a Ghost Rider. The Riders on Teen Wolf look a bit like mummies, and I can’t help but wonder if they’re not amongst the living. If not, what does that mean for Stiles and everyone who has been taken?
The episode kicks off with a feeling like this is just any other week on Teen Wolf. Scott and Liam are practicing lacrosse on the field. Scott can’t help but nag at his beta, and Liam can’t help but try to prove himself to his Alpha. But when Scott mentions that Liam’s backshots suck and Liam shows him how wrong he is, we are forcibly reminded that Stiles has been forgotten.
“Must’ve been thinking of someone else,” Scott says. It doesn’t matter how many times we’re reminded Stiles is missing, it still hurts just as much as the first time.
We get a cute scene between Mason and Corey in the physics lab where they accidentally make a superstrong version of magnetic goo that begins to wildly attract everything metal around them. The properties of the goo could be enhanced by the storm the Riders kick up as they surround the school, but any thought of danger is quickly forgotten once Coach Finkstock barrels into the room.
Orny Adams is back, ladies and gents! And not a moment too soon. Coach has always been a background character on this show, but he brings so much humor (and a surprising amount of heart) that I can’t help but be elated he’s back for the final season. He offers terrible life advice that confuses and maybe even horrifies the boys, but in the end he means well. Go gays!
As the Riders blast through the doors of the school, we see the clock click forward, then back, and then stop all together. Are they draining the life from the batteries or are they literally stopping time? More interestingly, Corey’s powers of invisibility allow him to see the Ghost Riders in their dimension. They seem to sense him, but don’t necessarily know he’s there, which is a great power to have these days.
I had a lot of issues with Corey’s character in season 5 because he seemed like a useless addition to the pack. He’d show up at the end of the fight and hope no one noticed he hadn’t been there the whole time. (Except Liam definitely did notice, and totally calls him out on it — much to my elation.) Now, though, Corey feels important — vital, even — and I’m so ready to see what he does in season 6 to earn his rightful place in the pack.
He and Mason end up seeing a student being taken by the Ghost Riders. Liam comes running to the rescue because he’s so in tune with his best friend, and Scott is close on his beta’s heels. But the couple is already forgetting what happened in the library, though they definitely know something is up.
Just like in episode 1, Scott is determined to stay on track with his schoolwork. Coach doesn’t really get his desire to pass tests and graduate from Beacon Hills, but he’s agreed to look for someone else as the lacrosse captain.
Liam is certainly up for the task, if only he could gather enough courage and confidence to follow through. He and Scott have a conversation about becoming captain that’s definitely actually about the possibility of Liam becoming Alpha one day. Did anyone else get a strong Derek/Scott flashback during this scene?
Meanwhile, Lydia is dealing with some pretty vivid visions. She sees a doctor sitting in her class, and when the woman screams, she hears a train. Could this be related to the fact that Stiles’ limbo looks like a train station? When Lydia follows her, she’s pulled back into the night Stiles disappears. Something is definitely wrong.
Throughout this episode, we see how the pack is getting along without Stiles. It’s an easy life, one they they’ve already acclimatized to. Life as they know it goes on. But something is just a little left of center. They don’t know what’s missing, but they know that something certainly is, if only they could place a finger on it.
I don’t want to say Malia is affected the most by Stiles’ disappearance, but considering he was her anchor, her reactions to his absence are the most obvious. Her new bedmate isn’t exactly into the idea of being the little spoon, she easily loses control of her powers in class, and there’s no way she could chain herself up without help from someone else.
For his part, Scott is experiencing some phantom limb syndrome without Stiles, and is there a more perfect way to describe their relationship? I think not. Deaton suggests Scott go take a nap and let his subconscious figure everything out.
We get a great flashback to season 1, episode 1 when Scott wakes up in the woods all by himself. He calls out Lydia and Malia and walks them through what’s wrong with his memories of that night. He remembers looking for a dead body, but how would he know it would be there in the first place? How did he get out in the woods when he had asthma and no car? Why would the sheriff be looking for him? Logically, those memories of that night don’t make sense.
Stiles is the linchpin of the group. Without him, their lives would’ve been so different. Without him, their lives don’t make sense. But it’s perhaps Lydia’s contribution that is the most endearing (and gasp-worthy!). “I think I loved him,” she says, and they look at the picture of the three of them at lunch from the day before. It’s not an obvious hole, but that area between Scott and Lydia where Stiles had been sitting seems oddly vacant.
Back at the school, Liam and Corey put forth the effort to work together for Mason’s sake, and we get a surprisingly beautiful scene between the two boys. They’re not best friends just yet, but they can both see the bigger picture, and it’s because of this that they find their first clue — the library card of the last kid the Ghost Riders took.
They spot it while invisible, and Mason arrives to explain what it all means (and stare glowingly at his best friend and boyfriend teaming up). To see something is to change its very existence (that science lesson from last episode was totally relevant!). Seeing the library card made it real, and following the clues back to the kid who was taken also brings him back from the depths of their memories.
But it doesn’t make their classmate suddenly appear in front of them and it certainly doesn’t alter reality. So, tell me, why does Sheriff Stilinski suddenly have a wife!? Just because Stiles has gone missing from his memory doesn’t mean the timeline changed. Could this be a construct of the Ghost Riders’ powers? We specifically see Mrs. Stilinski trying to get the sheriff to eat better, which has been something Stiles has done in the past. Maybe this is a way to get the Sheriff to avoid questioning those moments in his past that can’t be explained without Stiles.
The episode really comes to a head at the end when Deaton and the pack stick Lydia in a dark room and use automatic writing to squeeze any information they can out of their resident Banshee. She writes the word “mischief” over and over again, and the words repeated spell out “Stiles.”
“What the hell is a Stiles?” Lydia asks. I saw the line coming from 300 miles away, but I still cheered. What a great way to end the episode and what a wonderful way to start the pack back on the road to remembering their best friend.