Aaron goes to the hospital morgue and opens the drawer holding the faceless body. Unlike Chris and Melissa, he doesn’t show any signs of fear. He leans over it and spiders pour out of his mouth. They crawl all over the body, then inside it. Aaron collapses as the body sits up.
A couple of men come across a teen named Quinn, who has a flat tire. They offer their help, which she declines. They ignore her and start changing the tire as more men join them. One of the guys pulls an arrow out of the tire and asks if Quinn has ever seen one of them before. She says she has, then wolfs out. She fights the men, unstoppable even when one of them tases her with a shock baton. Deputy Vargas arrives, to Quinn’s relief, but instead of arresting the men or helping Quinn, she fires her gun at the werewolf.
The next morning, Scott wakes Liam up, dismissing his lies that he’s sick and can’t go to school. (Werewolves can’t get pneumonia, Liam.) Scott advises his beta to act like nothing happened. When Superman gets caught without his glasses, he just puts them back on and says he’s still Clark Kent. Liam may have been exposed as a werewolf, but he can still be Liam Dunbar. Liam argues that people still love Clark Kent and Peter Parker and Steve Rogers even when they’re not using their superhero alter egos. Beacon Hills’ residents now hate the supernatural beings in town, even though those supernatural beings are trying to save their lives.
Scott admits that Liam’s right, but they need to keep going on with their lives because if they don’t, more people could die. Liam blames himself for Brett and Lori’s deaths, though, so he doesn’t see his use there. Scott tells him that if he’s afraid of seeing more of his friends die, he’ll go to school like normal. So Liam goes, but everyone stares at him and whispers about him. Mason tells him to block it all out – they don’t know anything. Corey contradicts that as he joins them. A couple lacrosse players were on the street last night when Liam was wolfed out, and rumors have spread that he’s something that’s not human.
Mason encourages Liam to be a regular kid. Liam says he can’t do that, since he’s not a regular kid. Mason tells him to be Clark Kent, then. Liam doesn’t think that’s the same as being a werewolf. Corey suggests that he just get through the day without shifting. Mason says that the cover story is that Brett and Lori died in a car accident. Only the pack knows the truth.
Scott discusses that truth with Lydia, Malia, and Chris in the bunker – Brett and Lori were murdered by Beacon Hills’ newest hunter. Whoever they are, they have a mentor, Gerard. Chris blames himself for not doing anything to keep Gerard locked up. Lydia says he couldn’t have done anything. “He could’ve killed him,” Malia says matter-of-factly (though I guess that’s just how she says everything). Lydia argues that they’re not executioners, but Malia believes that when it comes to war, the rules are different. Scott announces that they’re going to make peace to try to prevent that war.
Chris suggests a peace summit. Scott thinks that’s a great idea, but Lydia reminds him that Gerard’s last peace summit didn’t go so well. Chris offers to present the idea to Gerard, since Gerard won’t kill him. Well, probably. Scott just needs Chris to find out what Gerard wants so they can bargain. Chris warns that his terms might be demanding. Scott expects that he’ll have to give something up to get peace. Chris tells him he’ll need to decide how much he’s willing to give, and how far he’s willing to go to prevent a war.
Liam goes to the locker room, interrupting a team meeting he wasn’t invited to. The other players have agreed that they don’t want him as their captain anymore. Liam stands his ground, so Nolan steps up to him. He looks half ready to throw down and half like he’s going to start crying any second. Liam makes his eyes glow yellow, warning that Nolan won’t be able to take him. Coach comes in and asks who called the team meeting. Liam says that he did. His grades are slipping, so he needs to take a step back. The team has voted for Nolan to take over as captain. Coach likes that idea – Nolan is a great player with excellent leadership skills. Now…which one of them is Nolan?
Chris goes to see Gerard, who’s set up shop in his own kind of bunker full of weapons. Chris asks for a peace summit, but Gerard would like Scott to request it himself. Chris says he wanted to be the intermediary because of Scott and Gerard’s touchy history. Gerard notes that the last person who shot him was Chris. Chris tells Gerard that if he still believes in the code, he’ll meet with Scott. Yeah, I don’t think he still believes in the code. Gerard gives Chris a message to relay to Scott: Run.
Corey has been spying on Nolan and another lacrosse player, Gabe, and he lets Liam know that Nolan plans to make hi shift so everyone will see that he’s a werewolf. Nolan and Gabe come around the corner just then, so Liam hides in Monroe’s office. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire. She tells him that she heard a rumor about him and knows that his classmates are giving him a hard time. She asks him to name names so she can talk to them. Liam won’t be turning in bullies – he’ll be helping them become better classmates.
Liam glances around the office and spots a couple of books on the supernatural. He sees Brett’s claw marks on Monroe’s neck, which she says are scrapes from a branch in the woods, when she was running. Liam asks who she was running from. She just corrects his grammar. Using the word “whom” feels unnatural, but we should do things that make us uncomfortable when they’re the right thing to do. Liam asks again whom she was running from. Monroe presses him to give her the names of the kids bugging him, and when he doesn’t, she says she can’t help him. As he leaves, she realizes that he saw her books.
Chris goes to Maison McCall to tell Melissa that Scott and his pack need to leave town ASAP. Gerard isn’t going to negotiate peace. In fact, he seems to be leaning toward genocide. He believes that Scott’s responsible for Allison and Victoria’s deaths, Kate becoming whatever she is now, and Chris turning against him. Melissa doesn’t want to tell her son to give up. Chris says that’s not what this is about – it’s about survival. But she’s never told Scott to run and hide, and she’s not going to do it now.
Chris reminds her that she’s already had to bring Scott back from the dead once. This could be a fight that he doesn’t come back from. Scott arrives and says there doesn’t have to be a fight. Thanks to Liam’s observations, the pack now knows that Monroe is the new hunter.
Parrish looks at crime-scene photos of Halwyn, which make him as scared as Chris and Melissa were around the faceless body. Or maybe he has PTSD now. He thinks he sees Halwyn in the sheriff’s station. He pulls his gun out, but Sheriff S. stops him before he can fire it (there’s nothing there anyway).
Monroe gets summoned to Natalie’s office, but by Lydia instead of her mother. She wants to discuss coexistence between humans and the supernatural. She asks Monroe to convince Gerard to agree to the peace summit. Monroe could be the only one who can stop this. “What if I don’t want to?” Monroe asks. Lydia is sure that Monroe didn’t become a guidance counselor to hunt people. She’s supposed to help them. Monroe declines, and as she starts to leave, Lydia puts her hand on her arm. Monroe asks if she has to touch people to make her banshee predictions. Lydia says no, so Monroe asks how she knows who’s going to die next. “There doesn’t have to be a next,” Lydia replies. She begs Monroe to meet with Scott.
Monroe must have agreed, because Malia tries to talk Scott out of the summit, sure that it’s a trap. Scott reminds her that Gerard is recruiting new hunters and killing their friends. He won’t stop unless Scott can convince him that they’re not a threat. Malia thinks that Scott will fail and get himself killed. They need him. Scott thinks she means as an alpha, but Malia seems to mean something else. He tells her he’s just going to get Monroe to trust the pack.
Back at school, Mason is shocked to learn that Monroe is a hunter: “I’m never asking for guidance again.” Liam’s seatmate in biology doesn’t want to sit next to him. Mrs. Finch asks who will let him in their lab group (not you, Mason and Corey). No one offers, so Mrs. Finch threatens to fail everyone for the day’s lab if no one steps up. Liam complains to Mason and Corey that she’s making things worse. Corey admits that things are about to get “worse worse.” “Why do you only show up when there’s bad news?” Liam asks. Corey tells him that the lacrosse team is looking for him so they can make him shift in front of everyone.
Chris, Parrish, and Sheriff S. go to the morgue to see the faceless body, but it’s no longer there. Scott goes to the tunnels to meet with Monroe, who’s brought a few other hunters with her. I don’t think peace is going to be a topic of discussion. After class, Corey turns Liam invisible to sneak him out of the school, but the lacrosse players catch on and surround them and Mason. Nolan tosses some powder at them that makes them visible, and Gabe grabs Liam and throws him on the floor.
Gerard joins Scott and Monroe, and Scott tries to convince Monroe that she shouldn’t act on Gerard’s side of the story. He’s not the sort of person she should be following. Gerard says that he’s just an advisor here – Monroe is running the show. Scott asks her what she wants to settle all of this. She replies that she wants to see him beg for peace. He’s willing to do that if it means there won’t be violence. Monroe spits out that Scott only cares about that now because his people are the ones dying.
Scott says that Monroe has to want something other than the death of all supernaturals. He offers to take them all out of town. Monroe vows to hunt them down until they’re all gone. Scott tells her that some of the supernaturals have been trying to protect humans. Humans don’t need to be afraid of them. She replies that Scott doesn’t know anything about people like her.
He asks what happened to make her hate supernaturals so much. Monroe tells him that she and some faculty members were leaving the school late one night when the Beast attacked. She pretended to be dead while surrounded by bodies. Scott says that if someone from his pack had been there, they would have saved her. Monroe replies that he was there – it was the night of the bus attack. Scott just didn’t bother to check if anyone was still alive.
Monroe thinks that Scott didn’t care. He just wants to keep his secret so he and his friends can continue living their lives as if nothing happened. She waited for rescue, which finally came in the form of Sheriff S. She tells Scott that he shouldn’t have come to their meeting alone. “He didn’t,” Malia announces as she and Lydia join the summit.
Sheriff S. and Parrish haven’t heard any reports of a faceless, skinless corpse running around town, and Sheriff S. isn’t sure that’s where they should be focusing their energy anyway. I mean, what’s it going to do? Parrish thinks that, like the rats and wolves, it’s there to stir up fear. Maybe it wants humans to end up the same way, so scared that they turn on each other.
The lacrosse players shove Liam into a classroom so they can fight him and force him to shift. Liam manages to control himself. Monroe pulls a gun on Scott, who says they didn’t come there to fight. Gerard replies that Scott came there to die. Malia tells Monroe that they’re trying to protect the humans. Gerard advises Scott to control his beta before she gets them all killed. Amazingly, Malia doesn’t just leap at Gerard and bite him right then and there.
Lydia tries to convince the hunters that the supernatural aren’t their enemy, and there’s a bigger threat right now. Monroe is familiar with all sorts of supernatural stuff and knows how many lives have been lost because the pack couldn’t save them. One of the other new hunters lost a son to Jennifer’s sacrifices, and another had a brother killed in an “animal attack.” Lydia sees the faceless body in the tunnel and realizes that it’s amplifying the hunters’ fear. Scott stays calm, saying he understands that the hunters want revenge, but they need to deal with something that left the Wild Hunt. Lydia tells him that it’s there. A hunter starts firing his gun.
Liam continues maintaining control of himself as Nolan and Gabe hit him and egg him on to shift. Liam ignores them and recites his mantra. Monroe yells for the hunter to stop shooting as Malia just runs up to the faceless corpse to hit it. There’s nothing there. Liam’s eyes glow yellow but he continues fighting the shift. Nolan taunts that he can’t hold back forever. Mrs. Finch comes in, and Mason, who’s being held back by classmates, begs her to do something. She says that sometimes it’s best to let the students work things out on their own.
Scott, Lydia, and Malia find themselves literally backed into a corner in the tunnels, but fortunately, backup has arrived. Even more fortunately, that backup is Parrish. Someone also runs in to save Liam from Nolan and Gabe – it’s Coach, and he’s disgusted at the sight of Liam, bloody and bruised, surrounded by students who won’t help him. Mason’s impressed that he withstood his beating with shifting. “Clark Kent, right?” Liam says.
Parrish marches up to the faceless corpse with a road flare and grabs it by the neck. He lights himself on fire, which makes the corpse go up in flames, too. By the time the fire’s out, the corpse is burnt to a crisp and the hunters have fled. Malia tries to cheer Scott up, telling him that he did everything he could, considering the hunters didn’t come there to negotiate. Scott says he hasn’t done everything yet.
Mason helps Liam to his car, sharing his theory that Liam took the beating because he feels like he deserved it for not saving Brett and Lori. The beating wasn’t just to make Liam shift in front of witnesses – it was to show them that he’s the enemy, and that the enemy should be hunted.
Monroe and Gerard regroup at his lair, where she wonders why he chose her as a mentee. She failed their mission and Scott got away. Gerard says that he’s just one more wolf to hunt. Monroe gave the people of Beacon Hills a voice. As a victim herself, she’s the perfect messenger. The message is that “this world belongs to us.”
Scott, Lydia, and Malia go to Maison McCall, where Quinn is waiting for them. She tells them that a deputy attacked her. Scott realizes that they’re dealing with something beyond just the hunters’ hatred of them.
Etc.: Linden Ashby (Sheriff S.) directed this episode.
I’d forgotten how gross this half of the season was, between the faceless, skinless body and the spiders.
I’m definitely not saying that Monroe is right, but…yeah, she’s kind of right. Scott, Liam, Stiles, and Chris were all there after the bus attack. Only one of them needed to go see if anyone was still alive.
Now that the pack knows that Monroe is a hunter and that Mrs. Finch is a horrible person, they should really take advantage of their connection to Natalie and say something to her about her employees.
Coach, on the other hand, deserve a raise for his actions. He’s legitimately furious with all the students who enabled Liam’s beating. It’s one of the few moments in the series where he doesn’t say anything funny or quippy – he’s too angry not to be serious.
An Eternity of Misery 