Warning: This story contains spoilers from Teen Wolf: The Movie and the series premiere of Wolf Pack.
Paving the way for a crossover? Teen Wolf: The Movie and Wolf Pack seemingly had different stories to tell during their double-feature Paramount+ drop — but a surprising detail brought them together.
During the Teen Wolf revival, which was released on Thursday, January 26, viewers were introduced to Scott McCall’s (Tyler Posey) new life after leaving Beacon Hills. The werewolf moved to another portion of California — Los Angeles — to open up an animal shelter and assist the local authorities with incidents that involve dogs.
In the first part of the film, viewers saw Scott lending a helping hand to the fire department when a girl was stuck in a burning building with her ferocious dog. Scott’s journey later took him back to Beacon Hills as mysterious fires and visions of his ex-girlfriend Allison Argent (Crystal Reed) continued to plague him.
Teen Wolf: The Movie ended with Scott and Allison making their way back to Los Angeles to run his shelter and help raise Eli Hale (Vince Mattis) after his father, Derek Hale (Tyler Hoechlin), passed away.
Meanwhile, Wolf Pack brought fans right back into the action in Los Angeles where a California wildfire leads a supernatural creature to turn two teenagers into werewolves. As Everett (Armani Jackson) and Blake (Bella Shepard) attempt to face their new normal, chief arson investigator Kristin Ramsey (Sarah Michelle Gellar) arrives looking for answers about what really caused the catastrophe.
The connection between Teen Wolf and Wolf Pack doesn’t stop on the screen. Both shows — and the revival film — have been developed by Jeff Davis. Ahead of Wolf Pack’s release, the creator, 49, explained that the series is not a spin-off of his other property.
“I know that everybody gets confused by it, but I always say, ‘Nobody thinks Twilight is in the same universe as Interview With The Vampire,'” he told SFX magazine earlier this month. “There can be two werewolf shows that exist in separate spaces. It’s funny because one of the things we did was consciously try and do things differently with Wolf Pack.”
According to Davis, his new series, based on the 2004 novel by Edo van Belkom, is more “sophisticated” compared to MTV’s Teen Wolf. (The social media account for Wolf Pack also created a campaign titled #NotASpinOff.)
“I said, ‘I don’t want to do the same show. I want to do something more adult, a little bit extreme in places. Not necessarily darker, but a little bit more sophisticated in terms of themes,'” he continued. “Teen Wolf was very comic book. It had a real sense of humor — not that Wolf Pack doesn’t have a sense of humor, but it’s not as comedic as Teen Wolf.”
Gellar, for her part, previously discussed how her return to television mirrored the show that helped solidify her into stardom.
“I realized the other day that one of the things that I love so much about Buffy [the Vampire Slayer] was how it was utilizing the idea of the horrors of high school and the vampires were the metaphorical version of those horrors. And you could only take it so far in those days because it was network television,” the actress, 45, exclusively told Us Weekly in September 2022. “So now you take what our horrors are today, which is depression and anxiety. And we are utilizing these monsters [in Wolf Pack] as the actual personification of that and what happens and finding how much harder it is to face your past these days.”
The Cruel Intentions star added: “It’s really truly scary and we can push that envelope that much farther on streaming. Also the backdrop of the Los Angeles fires on our Earth [is addressed]. As someone who was evacuated for over a week in the last fire and didn’t know if our house was gonna make it, I really understand those emotions and what it does and what we’re doing to our Earth and how we’re not helping it prepare for these disasters.”
Teen Wolf: The Movie and Wolf Pack are currently streaming on Paramount+.
