Teen Wolf Episode 316
“Illuminated”
Written By: Alyssa Clark
Directed By: Russell Mulcahy
Original Airdate: 27 January 2014
In This Episode…
Allison and Chris finally get to Isaac, who is icy cold and seizing on the floor. Chris punches him to bring out the wolf in him, which snaps him back to his senses. He describes the shadowy, cloaked figures he saw, but he couldn’t see their faces - just their eyes, which looked like fireflies. Chris is concerned, but won’t tell the kids anything yet. He wants 24 hours before they breathe a word of this to anyone, but Chris thinks they were after him. In his study, in a secret box, he has a mask just like the firefly men, broken in half.
Agent McCall has Stiles, Scott, Kira, and Lydia in for questioning after the Barrow incident. While Agent McCall doesn’t quite believe the “we were in the right place at the right time” explanation but he lets them go for now. Kira’s phone has to stay behind as it is evidence.
The power is still out in Beacon Hills the next day, but the coach (with his trusty megaphone) assures students that classes are in session. This puts a damper on Danny’s plans for a blacklight party, but Ethan has a plan to get the party back in action. After classes, Scott sits with Kira in the hall. She doesn’t want to talk about what happened, but that lasts all of four seconds. She asks Scott to take a photo of her with his phone, with the flash on. He does, and the image that he gets makes it look like Kira is being engulfed in flames. This only started a few months ago, she explains, and it only happens when the flash is used to take a photo. Barrow took pictures of her on her phone, which is why she needs it back.
Stiles agrees to help them out. That night, he keeps watch while Scott and Kira sneak into the police station with cloned access keys. (I assume that the police station has a backup generator that only supplies power to those digital access doors…?) They make it into the evidence room and find Kira’s phone, but it is out of juice so she can’t delete the photos, and the cops will notice if the whole phone is missing. Scott has a plan. He finds a cable and links the phone to a fully-charged laptop that was just sitting there. They wait for the phone to get juiced up enough to turn on. It’s slow going, and Stiles sees Agent McCall head into the station. Stiles chases him down and rambles on about how Barrow probably had a guy at the school to help him break in. McCall is actually thankful for the useful tip, one that he had pondered earlier. In a last-ditch effort to keep him out, Stiles menacingly warns him that his dad knows something about McCall that he doesn’t want him to know - and Stiles knows it too. McCall is shaken, but still enters the office. By this time, Scott and Kira have escaped out another door, the photos successfully deleted.
All the kids descend on Danny’s blacklight party. Ethan and Aidan helped set it up in Derek’s loft, with a portable generator powering the blacklights and the music. Ethan goes to another room to get more ice, and he is attacked by one of the firefly men. Lydia is bored by the party, but she sees the shadowy firefly men and gets scared. She can’t find Scott, and when no one else seems to see them, she goes outside to get some fresh air. Of course, the firefly men find her out there and attack. Isaac and Allison are flirting and almost kiss but she sees something behind his ear. They go to the ice room and she sees he has a mark like a backwards 5 behind his ear. This is where they find Ethan passed out. Danny and Aidan, while searching for Ethan, find Lydia on the balcony. Stiles has been making out with Kaitlyn, the bisexual girl whose girlfriend died earlier this season. She notices that one of his keys glows - it has phosphors on it. Stiles is distracted by this. All day, he has been wondering where this strange key came from, and figured his dad put it on his key ring - but why? Kaitlyn suggests he was handling chemicals recently, and Stiles rushes out.
Meanwhile, Derek comes home, finds the kids have run amok, and kicks everyone out. The firefly men arrive in full force, and Derek and Scott start fighting them in a beautifully choreographed sequence. Of course, since they can dissipate on a whim, stuff like breaking their necks won’t actually have any effect. The kids discover that Lydia, Derek, and both twins have been marked like Isaac. One of the firefly men seems to be gunning for Kira, but the sun comes up and they all evaporate.
Chris returns home - from where, we don’t know - but he is broken and bloody and can barely make it inside before he collapses.
And Stiles, with fear in his eyes, tries the mystery key. It lets him into the chemistry lab at school, where he and Lydia found the periodic elements clue. Stiles checks the handwriting. It is his. Stiles was the inside man.
Dig It or Bury It?
Okay, now I am dying to know what is going on with Agent McCall. Before tonight’s episode, I just assumed the McCalls split up over those generic “irreconcilable differences.” But now there is something dark there. Maybe he tampered with evidence or cheated in order to get ahead in his career? Nah, it has to be something worse. Maybe he killed someone and didn’t follow procedure? I don’t know, but I want to know!
Best. Moment. Ever.
Major points go to Stiles for remarking that Kira absorbed “1.21 gigawatts” of electricity. Back to the Future for the win! Extra bonus points go to the producers, who slip a few bars of the Halloween theme music into the opening scenes, when kids are smashing jack o’ lanterns.
Silly Stiles
Stiles hands the access cards over to Scott, who asks if they are stolen.
“I cloned them.”
“Is that worse?”
Beat. “It’s smarter.”
Prophecies?
The firefly men are after Kira.