1760: Two Frenchmen are running from British soldiers in Montreal during the Seven Years War. It’s rainy and muddy, and one man, Sebastien, falls and is unable to get back up. The other man, Marcel, helps him get to safety. Sebastien writes a letter to his sister, Marie-Jeanne, reporting that they’re losing the war. The only thing keeping him going is the hope of seeing her again.
The men find a house to hide in and are able to avoid being caught by some British soldiers. The woman who lives in the house tells them they shouldn’t be there. There’s something out there other than the British. It’s a “creature of the night,” a shapeshifting demon. Sebastien asks her what kind, and she says it’s a demon wolf. British soldiers surround the house, but an unseen attacker starts picking them off. One begs to be let into the house. He breaks through the door, but the attacker just drags him right back outside.
Gerard voices over that Sebastien’s letter eventually made it to Marie-Jeanne. She was a hunter who later faced the Beast with just a steel-tipped pike. History calls her the Maid of Gévaudan. She would look familiar to the pack if they saw her – she looked exactly like Allison. This better not be another doppelganger situation! I’m not doing that again!
Present: Gerard’s audience is Lydia and Parrish, who should really take a break from story time to shower, since he’s still bloody and sooty from his fight with the Beast. He snarks that someone should resurrect Marie-Jeanne to fight the Beast again. He’s ready to leave, since he thinks he’s causing all the chaos in town. Chris and Gerard tell Lydia to let him go. They think there’s another hope to stop the Beast – her.
Stiles and Hayden take an injured Liam inside the school, where people are still running around after the lacrosse game. Apparently Liam’s fight with the Beast didn’t go well. Hayden asks what the pack normally does when a werewolf gets hurt. “I usually pass out,” Stiles replies. “I still might do that.” He suggests that they do something to trigger Liam’s healing. Instead, Hayden kisses Liam, taking some of his pain. Stiles files that solution away for the future.
Gerard tells Lydia that Marie-Jeanne was a lot like her. She was skeptical of her abilities, and originally just as skeptical about the supernatural.
1764: A man hangs up a poster about the Beast in a tavern. Marie-Jeanne fires an arrow into it to fasten it in place. As she reads Sebastien’s letter, a barkeep urges her not to give up hope. At another table, men are talking about the Beast, which has been described in conflicting ways. The only thing people know about it for sure is that it hunts at night and kills for sport. The king is rumored to be sending professional hunters after it, but one of the men thinks they should form their own hunting party. Sebastien arrives and says they don’t need volunteers – Marie-Jeanne is the best hunter in the village.
Marie-Jeanne is thrilled to see her brother and Marcel. Everyone at the tavern wants her to lead the hunting party, so she can’t really say no. Just then, a man named Henri carries in the body of the barkeep’s young son. Henri found him as he was dying, and his last words were, “La Bête.” Marie-Jeanne announces that the hunting party will set out first thing in the morning.
Present: Scott fights the Beast as Lydia asks Gerard why Sebastien didn’t warn Marie-Jeanne about the Beast. Gerard replies that he did, but, as he said before, Marie-Jeanne was a skeptic.
1764: Marie-Jeanne makes arrowheads and teases Sebastien for being superstitious. He tells her he saw the Beast himself. She says she’s hunted every creature under the sun. “But not the moon,” Marcel replies. Marie-Jeanne thinks her brother is trying to scare her. Sebastien says he’s trying to warn her. He tells her ordinary steel alone won’t stop the Beast. As the hunting party heads out, Marie-Jeanne sees Marcel locking a cellar door.
The hunting party searches all day, hoping to find the nocturnal Beast while it’s asleep. At nightfall, it attacks. Marie-Jeanne is able to hide, and she manages to hit the Beast with an arrow, but it scratches her and she drops her crossbow. She has a backup knife, but that’s no defense against the Beast. Henri comes to her rescue, throwing a circle of mountain ash around them just as the Beast is about to swoop in for the kill. Marie-Jeanne notes that the Beast isn’t a wolf like everyone’s been saying. Henri tells her it’s a werewolf.
Present: Malia looks for Stiles as people continue running around the school. She calls Braeden, telling her to bring her shotgun. Actually, she should bring all her shotguns. Scott rescues a girl from the hallway stampede and whisks her into a classroom to hide. When the Beast tries to break down the door, Scott tells the girl to escape through a window. The Beast busts through the door and yanks Scott into the hallway.
Across town, Lydia can feel that something’s wrong and says she needs to go. Gerard wants her to hear the rest of the story. She doesn’t get why she should listen to him. She’s read the story; she knows the Beast was killed by someone named Jean Chastel. Gerard’s like, “You kids and your lying Internet.” Chris convinces Lydia to stay.
1764: Henri takes Marie-Jeanne to his house, which is surrounded by mountain ash trees. He has jars of ash in the house, as well as jars of mistletoe. He’s spent years gathering supplies and developing skills that will help him survive a werewolf. He offers to teach Marie-Jeanne. She says she doesn’t care about surviving one – she wants to know how to kill one.
Present: Scott somehow got away from the Beast and is now in the library. A bunch of students are hiding there, including Sydney. It looks like it’s just now hitting Scott how big a responsibility he has here to save everyone. He sends them all to the top floor of the stacks, then faces off with the Beast again.
Gerard continues story time: Marie-Jeanne knew she couldn’t defeat the Beast with just Henri’s mistletoe and rowan berries (which come from mountain ash tress). She needed to find an advantage. That required knowing her enemy.
1764: Marie-Jeanne pours drinks at the tavern, ordering everyone to honor the dead members of the hunting party. Marcel notices berries at the bottom of his glass. He breaks the glass, cutting his hand. Marie-Jeanne takes him outside to wash the blood off at a well and asks if he has any cloth to wrap around the wound. He gives her a key to the cellar and says she’ll find what she’s looking for there.
Marie-Jeanne takes a look, then returns to Marcel with her crossbow pointed at his neck. He begs her to kill him. A flashback shows what she saw in the cellar: a bunch of dead bodies. Marcel reaches for the crossbow, which fires into the sky as Marie-Jeanne tries to move away from him. She looks down and sees that the blood from his cut is dripping onto the snow. He can’t be a werewolf if he’s still bleeding.
She realizes that he’s not the killer, but is just covering for him. The real killer is Sebastien. Indeed, back in the tavern, Sebastien chokes on his drink and his eyes glow blue.
Marie-Jeanne goes in to confront Sebastien. He’s unrepetent – it’s just who he is. The night of the attack in 1760, he drank rainwater out of a wolf’s paw print and became a demon wolf. Ew, dude. Have some dignity. Sebastien guesses that Marie-Jeanne wants to tell everyone he’s the killer. If she does, he’ll just kill them all. Marie-Jeanne calls him a monster, and he corrects that he’s a beast. “You won’t catch me and you won’t kill me,” he says. “We’re family.”
Now a full believer in the supernatural, Marie-Jeanne turns to Henri to learn how to kill her brother. Henri says they need something that will use the Beast’s weight against itself. Together they make a spear tip as big as a dagger, shaped like a fleur-de-lis. It cuts Marie-Jeanne’s hands and she bleeds on it as she attaches it to a pike.
Present: Scott and the Beast fight again. Scott’s losing – badly – but he keeps going. Eventually Liam joins in, followed by Braeden and Malia. The Beast must not like its odds here (or the fact that Braeden keeps shooting it), so it runs off. Braeden chastises Scott for taking the Beast on by himself. It didn’t really give him a choice, Braeden. Scott knows he couldn’t have won, but he did get something from the fight: the Beast’s scent.
1767: It’s taken her three years but Marie-Jeanne has found Sebastien. She’s sunk an arrow into his shoulder, but he’s still well enough to chase her. He transforms as he approaches her, his Beast body forming out of black smoke. Marie-Jeanne lets herself slip on the snow on the ground, falling to pick up the pike she hid there. She points it upward and the Beast falls right on it.
It transforms back into Sebastien, who slides forward on the pike toward his sister. He tells her a “minor injury” like this won’t stop the Beast of Gévaudan. When he’s done, everyone will remember the horrors he’s committed. Marie-Jeanne says no one will know about him. Sebastien is offended by the thought of his name being erased by damnatio memoriae.
He sees that he’s bleeding black goo and realizes that the pike isn’t a regular steel one. Marie-Jeanne tells him she combined wolfsbane, mountain ash, and her blood when she forged it under a full moon. “History might remember you, Sebastien,” she tells him, kissing him, “but only as a beast.” She lets him collapse on the ground, dead, then pulls her pike out of him.
Present: Chris and Gerard confirm that all traces of Sebastien were erased. When the Beast remembers that it used to be Sebastian, the teen hosting it will be erased as well.
Lydia notes that Marie-Jeanne didn’t defeat the Beast alone. She had help from Henri and the other townspeople, including Marcel. The pack needs Parrish. As Parrish turns in his badge at the sheriff’s station, Chris warns Lydia that he’s dangerous. He’s only beginning to understand his shapeshifting powers. Lydia says she’s only starting to grasp her powers, too. Chris thinks that’s different – she can access the supernatural and it works through her. Gerard adds that it doesn’t control her. Lydia asks why Gerard cares. Why is he suddenly on the pack’s side? Gerard slides a lighter to her and says his name is at stake as well.
Marie-Jeanne stayed on as Henri’s partner, and their relationship changed from professional to romantic. Eventually they married and she took his name. Lydia sees that the lighter has a fleur-de-lis on it. She guesses correctly that Henri’s last name was Argent. Marie-Jeanne was the first of the family’s hunters. The Argent name will be remembered for killing the Beast. Lydia points out that she’s not an Argent. She also reminds Chris that she’s not Allison.
Scott and Liam go to the parking lot to find something with the Beast’s scent. In a car trunk, they find a pair of sneakers with blood on the soles. When they close the trunk, Mason is standing nearby. “What are you doing to my car?” he asks.
Scott realizes that he’s the Beast. Mason has no idea what he’s talking about. Corey suddenly appears, having been lurking nearby, invisible. He grabs Mason and makes both of them disappear.
Etc.: Crystal Reed’s (Marie-Jeanne) French accent is…not good. It’s especially noticeable because she’s acting opposite Gilles Marini (Sebastien), who’s actually French.
They keep showing Marie-Jeanne in a cloak, which gives the story a kind of Little Red Riding Hood feel that I appreciate.
There are some great effects in this episode: 1) The Beast reaching through the classroom door and pulling Scott through it. 2) Liam jumping up behind the Beast in slow motion to come down on top of him. 3) Sebastien transforming into the Beast while chasing Marie-Jeanne.
Marie-Jeanne being played by the same actress who played Allison kind of takes the surprise out of the revelation that Marie-Jeanne was the first Argent hunter.
I have no problem with with Mason turning out to be the Beast’s host, but there weren’t really any other options. If you’re going to give us a mystery, give us some clues and suspects.
An Eternity of Misery 