The Stilinski family is a mysterious one, but on this week’s Teen Wolf, we got a piece of information fans have been after for years — Sheriff Stilinski’s first name!
Teen Wolf season 6, episode 3, “Sundowning,” brought us a lot of background information on Sheriff Stilinski. The good sheriff has mainly acted as a supporting character for his son, who has always been a major part of the series. This week’s episode, however, put him front and center.
We learned that Sheriff Stilinski’s father, Elias, used to be an army engineer and lives a few towns over in a nursing home. Even this bit of information, as casual and unimportant as it may be on the surface, is an exciting revelation. Stiles has a living grandfather! Why have they never talked about him before?
The answer to that question came to us fairly quickly. After Elias regained his faculties, we saw exactly the kind of person he was — mean, angry, and unapologetically cruel. We later learned he was also physically abusive to both his wife and his son, which explains why the sheriff didn’t want Scott talking to him, despite Elias being the next clue to figuring out what the hell a Stiles is.
This is certainly exciting, if also a bit sad, but the real revelation of the night came when Elias called out to his son, revealing that Sheriff Stilinski’s real first name is Noah.
Noah Stilinski. I don't keep secrets very well and that one was a tough one to keep. So many people asked… so, yup. Noah.
— Linden Ashby (@lindenashby) November 30, 2016
This is a question fans have been asking for years. We never knew the sheriff’s first name and we still don’t know his son’s real first name, either. It’s trivial information compared to everything else we learned, especially because the sheriff’s first name isn’t going to bring Stiles back, but considering fans have been speculating for so long, it’s still nice to finally have that piece of the puzzle!
Fans have also been anticipating learning the sheriff’s first name for a while because they’ve been curious as to whether the show will give a nod to the fandom in the reveal. The majority of fan fiction has collectively named Sheriff Stilinski John, and some were wondering if the show would adopt this name, too.
Alas, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I’ve seen some vocalizing their disappointment that the sheriff’s first name isn’t John because it would’ve been a nice way to acknowledge the fandom. On the other hand, I imagine if the show did use the name John, other fans would blame them for taking ideas from fandom — and that can get messy rather quickly.
It’ll be interesting to see if writers will continue to use John because it is so widely accepted in fan fiction, or if the majority of fans will begin using Noah in order to line up with the canon of the show.