Hello there.
I often get questions that I think are too obvious to warrant a whole video.
Usually I just answer in the comments and have done with it, but sometimes I get the same very
obvious question so often that I figure I must be wrong about just how very obvious it is.
Thus is the case with this question about Lydia and Peter.
A number of viewers have asked how Peter “controlled” Lydia in Season 2. You couldn’t
see it but I was doing little finger quotes on the word controlled. That’s because I don’t think
he controlled her as much as he programmed her and then guided her to bring him back to life.
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Nice.
Jeff Davis tells me he’d planned to bring Peter
back long before they even filmed his death scene in the Season 1 finale.
They set everything in motion during the final two episodes of the first season.
The mystery of why Lydia could take a bite from an Alpha but not turn or die was the
cliffhanger from Season 1.
Stiles: Is it completely healed? Scott: No, not at all.
and "The Education of Miss Lydia Martin" was pretty much
designed as the b-story for the whole of season 2.
Lydia: I'm not crazy. I may be the girl who sleepwalks naked and writes backwards on the chalkboard,
but at least I'm not one of those desperate Vicodin-popping wrist cutters at school
The two are inexorably linked because Peter never planned for the bite to turn
or kill Lydia. He wanted her not only alive but fully awake in her abilities so she could carry
out his backup in case he died in the big final confrontation with the hunters. Which he did.
It’s usually at this point that some people want to know how Peter
knew that Lydia was a banshee. If I had to guess,
I would say that he didn’t know for sure but suspected due to the fact that Lydia’s grandmother
had been pretty loud about her involvement with the supernatural and pseudoscience.
In case you didn’t notice, word spreads pretty far and fast in the supernatural world. I mean,
word of Scott’s defeat of Peter and his humiliation of Gerard Argent
reached the Alpha Pack at light speed.
Cora heard there was a new Hale Alpha in Beacon
Hills when she was all the way down in South America.
Cora: All those rumors I heard, a powerful new alpha, one of the hales, building a pack.
Do you know how long I waited to hear something like that?!?
I’m almost positive that Grandma Martin throwing money around to study supernatural stuff would
have been a talking point and a bit of a joke for actual supernaturals who heard about it.
They would immediately think, "Yeah. Well, she’s a banshee they’re all a little crazy at first."
Or maybe Peter didn’t know at all and was bluffing when he said he did.
The resurrection plan and the method he used would probably work
even if Lydia wasn’t able to directly communicate across the death barrier.
Okay, I got off track. Peter’s plan hinged on just one thing, the fact that werewolves can create
a direct connection to another person’s brain and download tons of information.
Most of the times that we saw this ability it was through their claws in the back of the neck.
But any deep contact, even accidental contact like we saw with Derek and Jackson in Magic Bullet,
can transfer memories.
Jackson: I've dreamt about this place. I remember the staircase. I remember these walls. I remember everything.
Derek: You've been here?
Jackson: No, never. I dreamt it.
So, when Peter chowed down on Lydia’s midriff,
he shared all the memories and plans he had regarding how to bring him back to life.
It was a copy of him pretty much embedded in a series of instructions and delivered
directly into her brain via a connection from his alpha spark to her nervous system.
Again, this would have probably worked with anyone. It might not have been as
clearly defined as it was with Lydia’s banshee abilities, but any normal person
would have probably found themselves driven to complete the tasks that Peter implanted.
The only reason I think Peter truly did sense Lydia had harbinger of death
vibes is because any normal person he could choose ran the risk of dying from the bite.
For a professional survivor like Peter, that’s too great a risk.
Peter: At least you know you're not actually crazy.
Personally, I think that you're going to pull through with a minimum amount of post-traumatic stress.
To recap, the bite carried all the information necessary to
bring Peter back including the when, the where, and the who.
But the bite also sparked Lydia’s banshee abilities
which led to her completely freaking the fuck out.
I actually got a question a little while back as to why Lydia freaked out and ran
naked into the woods. Look, I get scared in the shower when I have to close my eyes to wash my
hair. If a hand came out of the drain they’d find me three counties over and still running.
So, I have no problem understanding the motivation here.
Plus the writers needed to set up a mystery of who was killing people.
Stiles: If she's turning, will they actually kill her? Allison: I don't know. They won't tell me anything. Okay?
Lydia’s run into the woods was supposed to remind us of Scott’s waking up in the woods
that one time in Season 1. It misdirects us into thinking Lydia might be a werewolf after all.
What’s most interesting about this Banshee awakening is that way back in Season 2 the writers
gave us the entire banshee playlist that we’d see again and again through the rest of the series.
We saw the scream.
The visual and auditory hallucinations.
GPS Voice: Turn Right and continue for half a mile.
Aiden: You just made your fourth right and four rights make a circle. Maybe the GPS would work better if it was on.
The magnetic pull of dead bodies.
And dreams that weren’t really dreams.
Lydia: Leave me alone.
Peter: Unfortunately, I can't.
Meredith: Break the glass.
Break the glass!
Again, I think Peter’s plan would have worked on a regular human due to that innate werewolf
ability to transfer memory but it was a much more vivid reaction with someone like Lydia
who actually exists with one foot just outside the land of the living.
You guys are the best, thanks for watching and do the YouTube dance with the buttons,
like comment and subscribe. I’ll see you next time we go back to Beacon Hills.