At New York Comic-Con, we spoke with the creator and cast of Teen Wolf to discuss their characters’ role in the upcoming season 5B.
First up was Dylan Sprayberry, who plays Scott’s Beta Liam. When we last saw him, he had attacked his own Alpha and lost his girlfriend — or so he thought. By the end of the episode, we learned Hayden was back, though she was now following Theo.
But that doesn’t mean Scott didn’t betray Liam’s trust. Is the Beta still angry? “As soon as Liam realized that Hayden was gone in the finale, he knew that what he had just done was completely wrong,” Sprayberry explains. “It’s funny to talk about because it’s just so out of the ordinary. It’s like trying to kill your best friend because he’s a werewolf and he won’t save your girlfriend who’s dying because she’s a chimera who was poisoned. They’re all heightened situations, but immediately after he snapped out of that frenzy, he realized that what he had done was completely wrong. Scott’s his Alpha, and Scott helped him grow a lot, and I don’t think he has any anger against Scott. He realized that what he should’ve done was been there for her. In the moment, when that happened, he realized, ‘Why am I doing this? I should’ve been there for her to make sure she went off peacefully.’ But instead he took the wrong route.”
Sprayberry’s main challenge as an actor is to be sure his character is continually growing. Speaking of Liam’s fight with Scott, he says, “That was a breaking point. Since that happened, now he’s come back from it, he’s slowly trying to rebuild himself again. But just like real people grow, they also go up and down. That’s just how life goes, so there’s always a chance he could go [back] to that place because it’s a part of him, not just something he can get rid of.”
Luckily, there will be some great interactions with Liam, especially with his best friend Mason. “We’re really trying to build [Liam and Mason’s relationship] on the show,” Sprayberry says. “As an actor and a fan of the show, I view Mason’s character as a motherly type. He really takes care of Liam, he really is there for him all the time. I think we’re trying to build up on that and show the care they have for each other and that they’re always going to be there for each other, which is exactly how Scott and Stiles [are]. And I’m not saying there won’t be problems in the future, because everyone has problems, but I think right now we’re really focusing on making them stronger and stronger as a pair.”
Liam will certainly need the friends since Theo is still in the game. Cody Christian explains that he’ll need his newly created pack of chimeras, which includes Hayden, to meet his ultimate goal: “He’s going to be a good leader because he needs them to get what he wants. Theo is after something, and that something is becoming a real werewolf. Jeff had said that yesterday on the panel, and I think he’s going to use what’s accessible to him to get there, but he has to make these people believe that he’s on their side and he’s looking out for them and he’s the leader of their pack. And that’s going back to that manipulation and deception that we’ve seen in Theo beforehand. [Don’t] put it past Theo to manipulate these people, almost like pawns in his little game, just using them to get where he wants to be.”
Aside from dropping the bomb that Tyler Posey will direct an episode of Teen Wolf, Executive Producer Jeff Davis also told us how much we’ll be seeing Lydia this season, since she’ll be in Eichen House: “Quite a bit. There’s a lot for her to do there. Even though she’s kind of comatose and catatonic, we see her quite a bit. 5B actually starts with Lydia in the water, the image you see in the trailer, trying to figure out the mystery of what happened between Theo and his sister and why his sister died.”
“In 5A she learned to fight with her hands. In 5B, we see her being taught by — I won’t tell you who — to use her voice as a weapon,” Davis continues. “That’s what she learns in Eichen House. And we eventually come back to present time in [episode 15]. That takes us back to [episode 1].”
At the moment it seems as though Valack may be the one helping Lydia with her powers, but it’ll be interesting if it ends up being someone completely different.
As Davis said at the panel, this season will be lighter than Teen Wolf has been recently. “We’re bringing the comedy back to Stiles, but Dylan Sprayberry and Khylin Rhambo are hilarious together,” Davis says. “I love those two together. They’re the best of friends. We’ve been writing a lot of comedy for [Mason], who is becoming very important to the season, actually. It’s a joy to have actors who can do so well in drama and comedy. But we’ve got to have Stiles be funny again. It’s time for him to be funny again. Dylan just turned into such a dramatic actor that we just wanted to write him these dramatic moments.”
But don’t expect it to be all rainbows right from the beginning. We see that shot of Sheriff Stilinski in the hospital bed, and we know it won’t be easy to get Scott and Stiles back on the same page. As Tyler Posey explains, “[The sheriff is] absolutely like a dad to Scott. Scott is obviously worried.” The Sheriff continues to get worse, and then Scott “sees Stiles break through, and he’s like, ‘What’s going on?’ and he gets tackled. But Stiles is going through a lot, so Scott lets him take out his aggression because Scott can take a punch. He doesn’t care. He’s like, ‘It’s okay, man. Beat me up. Take it out on me.'”
“All Scott wants to do is get the pack back together,” Posey continues, “but in order to do that we have to get Stilinski better. So first we have to get Stilinski better, then regroup Stiles, and then get Liam.”
“A couple season ago, [Scott] was really confident,” Posey says. “He knew what to do. This season, he’s going to be confident again, but in a completely different way than [before]. It’s a completely different confidence. He’s older, he’s grown a lot. He’s just experienced a lot.”
And as one final word of warning before Posey left us, he says we still need to worry about the Dread Doctors. “Once they take off their masks, that’s when they’re the scariest,” he explains. “Wait for that shit. It’s fucking scary.”