Melissa: Something is biting open heads to what? Steal souls?
Chris: Looks that way.
The real question is why?
Why was Mr. Douglas brain hungry on Teen Wolf season 6?
As with many things on the show, the Nazi Löwenmensch eating the gummy
candy center of human brains was never explained outright.
There are context clues if you watch closely and have
a basic understanding of 17th century philosophy.
You don't have a basic... okay.
You could also do what I do when I can't figure something out.
Just call Jeff Davis and ask him.
Paul Rea: The the pineal glands, why?
Jeff Davis: Seat of the soul. He believed that, in order to be on
the same level as the Ghost Riders, he needed to collect the power of the soul.
Paul Rea: Ah. I love that.
Douglas was apparently an adherent of Renee Descartes.
The French philosopher regarded the pineal gland as the principal seat of the soul.
It was central to his belief that the human body and human soul are separate.
He believed that all our senses feed information through the eyes, ears, skin, whatever,
into the pineal gland where the information is processed and then considered by the soul.
Melissa: Why kill for it?
Chris: The pineal gland is believed to be the seat
of the soul, the conduit to express our souls through physical actions.
Rene was wrong about that of course,
our little brain pine cone actually just pumps out melatonin when it's time to sleep.
Don't get me wrong, that whole process is incredibly important to humans' overall health,
so the pineal is essential to our species survival.
But according to modern science, Descartes was wrong about its metaphysical properties.
That's actually a fun rabbit hole to visit if you have a
few hours or days to read some of Descartes stuff.
I recommend you start with the one about the Passions.
Anyway.
Douglas apparently believed that Descartes was onto something so
he ran around eating pineal glands like canape.
And as Jeff said - he wanted to control the riders - so he wanted to be like the riders.
The riders' primary function is to take souls.
Douglas imitated that by taking human pineal glands and the soul inside it.
A lot of people think Douglas got something from eating this ghost rider's pineal gland.
I don't think so.
Or if he got any benefit at all it was psychosomatic.
His ghost rider abilities were limited.
He could not open a portal but he could command the hellhound to do it.
The riders did seem to recognize him and he could use their weapons.
But that was about it.
And if you think about it, all of that comes back to Douglas soaking
for 70 years in the dimensional energy that was leaking from his own wound.
Theo: He was thrown in the tank and the wound infected the water
and mixed with the fluid from the vat and actually made him stronger.
Soaking it in, swimming in power for 70 years.
While eating that little piece of brain from the ghost rider might have triggered something,
the ghost rider abilities were in him the whole time.