Welcome to the third and final article in my “Teen Wolf” series. If you can’t tell, I am absolutely obsessed with the show and am beyond excited to be rewatching it immediately after finishing my initial binge.
The characters in this series are so much more realistic than any other characters I have encountered in similar “supernatural high school” television series, so I wanted to share two of my favorite character arcs and just general character development that takes place throughout the six seasons.
Here are my thoughts:
- Stiles Stilinski
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Stiles, portrayed by well-known actor Dylan O’Brien, immediately steals the show. I never noticed, however, the absolute growth his character goes through until I started to rewatch the series.
In Season 1, Stiles is portrayed as being the “awkward nerd,” a part of the outcasts in high school, along with his best friend Scott. They spend the entire season trying to go out with girls that they like, with only Scott being successful.
Stiles is such a great friend and a very outgoing person, and at the beginning of the series shows that through this support of Scott in school, his research of werewolves and the constant attempts he makes to ask out his school crush, Lydia.
As the series goes on, however, Stiles changes, and not just because he starts to grow up.
He starts to become more interested in solving mysteries and completing lots of research, which is shown quite literally when he uses his wall (and later gets his own whiteboard) to map out all of the supernatural mysteries in town like cops do at the police department.
He becomes more confident, taking up his baseball bat and his wits against enemies instead of hiding and running away. He marches into battle without a supernatural defense, trusting in his friends and his sheer will to survive.
Siles also displays this newfound confidence in his romantic life. He has the courage to finally ask out a girl he likes, who rejects him. However, he continues his search, finally getting the bits of romance he deserves, even having a girlfriend at one point.
Finally, Stiles grows overall as a person. He becomes completely selfless, telling his friends to sacrifice him in the worst of situations if it is for the greater good.
He still keeps the quirks that make Stiles himself, such as his frequent ADHD-like movement and his sarcasm, but he learns how to work with other people to work towards the greater good.
By the end of the series, we see Stiles go off to college, confident in his abilities and optimistic for his future. He’s ready to use the skills and lessons learned to help people through the FBI, and I’m here for it.
- Lydia Martin
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I think that Lydia Martin initially started as an underrated character.
She is portrayed as being the mean girl in the first season, until Stiles actually realizes that she is smart. She is only hiding it, which finally leads the show to start humanizing her.
For this reason, she starts the show by showing off her intelligence as a way to “one-up” other people without completely losing her “popular” status. As the show progresses, she realizes that her knowledge is quite literally a superpower, and therefore begins to use it to help solve the supernatural mysteries in each season.
Lydia also has a supernatural character arc. She starts off completely separated from the supernatural aspect of the story, but at the end of Season 1 and beginning of Season 2 is dragged in since she gets bitten by a werewolf.
In Season 3, she learns that she is a banshee and starts to use this new knowledge to help her friends with her supernatural abilities in addition to her intelligence.
She goes through so much trauma in each season, but continues to push through it to improve herself and support her friends. By the end of the series, she is a confident, loyal and intelligent woman. She becomes the true strong female lead that every series needs.
And, like the amazing character that she is, she gets the ending she deserves: a spot studying at MIT.
I love both Lydia and Stiles, and I firmly believe that their character arcs are unmatched.
Hopefully you take this as a sign to watch “Teen Wolf” so that you can witness their character arcs yourself!