The Hale House fire is the inciting incident in both Season 1 and Season 4 of Teen Wolf.
The house burned six years before we meet protagonist Scott McCall – but had the fire
not killed 8 of the Hale Family - Scott would likely never become a werewolf.
Visually - we have only Peter Hale’s admittedly faulty memory of the event. In those flashes
there are only two men, Unger and Reddick, splashing gasoline around the base of Hale
house and lighting it up. Thanks to Sheriff Stilinski’s investigation
in response to Peter’s killing spree, we now know there was a conspiracy with at least
six people involved. At the heart of the plan was Kate Argent – a
hunter by training – she wanted to wipe out the Hale Family. She got close to Young
Derek Hale, gained information on the family then formulated her plan.
Kate approached Science Teacher Adrian Harris and pumped him for information on how to commit
arson and get away with it. She then approached Unger, Reddick and the
guy from the video store - all had criminal records and experience with arson.
Finally – to cover up the crime – she managed to get Insurance Investigator Garrison
Myers to rule the fire accidental – avoiding further investigation. Myers was later fired
for suspected fraud and became Scott McCall’s school bus driver.
With the exception of Adrien Harris, all the conspirators died at the hands of Peter Hale.
This section is satire - "the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues."
Is Kate Argent a Hero?
That might seem like a stupid question but when I put forth my belief that all murder
is wrong and any killing of another person will always damage the killer’s soul,
I got paragraphs about how killing bad guys is the moral thing to do and a good guy with
a gun and if only the batman had killed the joker.
So, let’s follow that train along to its logical terminus.
If you know of a potential threat to human life, killing to neutralize that threat is
the right thing to do.
Werewolves present a constant danger to human life.
Sure, they’re well behaved most of the time,
but within Young Kate Argent’s life
she witnessed at least one murder by a werewolf within her group of hunters.
Marco: Because your young naïve beta killed one of them.
Deucalion: Marco.
Marco: He killed a hunter, didn't he?
Ennis: Accidentally.
Yes, yes, it was an accident. I'm sure.
But the danger that it might happen again is just too great.
So season one Kate represents the ultimate good guy with a gun, several guns and special
werewolf-killing ammo.
This logic train means we also have to examine pre season-two Gerard.
I say "pre season two" because everything he did
from then on was self-serving hypocrisy.
But before the cancer it’s obvious that he was just protecting people.
I mean, he’d heard what happened to his brother Alexander.
Gerard knew how easily werewolves could turn violent and killing them could potentially
save a lot of lives.
Gerard: We find them. We kill them.
We kill them all.
Alright enough pontificating. The bottom line is that there are no heroes when it comes
to killing.
Good guys with gun damage their souls too.
It’s inescapable for anyone who takes another person’s life.
Hello there, I'm Paul Rea from the Official Teen Wolf Wiki and today I'm taking my life
in my hands by defending one of the most hated women in the entire Teen Wolf universe
If you like my weekly wanderings into the woods of Beacon Hills, subscribe to the channel
and hit the bell so they'll let you know when new videos come out.
Like I said I'm putting my life in mortal danger here.
In fact, I'm releasing this video right after that big behind the scenes thing I did so
most people are still watching that and we'll just ignore this one.
I'm not delusional I know everybody hates Kate and we all have some very good reasons
to hate Kate.
Kate: If you want to provoke him say something like, ‘too bad your sister bit it before
she had her first litter.’ ‘Too bad she howled like a bitch when we cut her in half!'
Hey handsome.
Some very good reasons to hate Kate, but the thing I've been hearing most about lately,
since we heard about Derek's 15 year old son, is that Kate was a sex offender who molested
an underage boy and then killed his family.
In case that part didn't get past the YouTube censors, Kate was this guy from that cartoon
on Fox.
Kid 2: I can't go any faster!
Herbert: Where you going kids? Hey I just want to talk to you. Why don't you come over
to my place for a glass of wine and a couple of fruit pies and then we go in the back room
and play crazy snakes!”
Anyway, my recent videos explaining the canonical timeline likely mean that Derek was 18 or
19 when Kate deceived him. This means that Derek was either over the age of consent and
majority in California or he was extremely close at the time of the fire.
It also means that Kate and Derek were, at most, just four years apart in age when they
were together. So, while she was a literal psychopath, Kate probably wasn't Jared from Subway.
Now, at the time of her first death in February of Year One, Kate was 28. So, she was around
22 at the time of the fire.
I don't think they were together very long, but even if she started grooming Derek immediately
after Paige's death, that would have been a 17 or 18 year old targeting a 15 year old.
That's not good. I'm not saying that that's fine. But, even in California where they don't
have the so-called Romeo and Juliet exceptions to age inappropriate relationships that's
not a felony
Example Only - Laws Vary by State: The victim in the case must be between 14 and 17, a willing participant in the sexual activity and no more than four years younger than the offender. The offense must be the only sex crime on the offender's record. This law does not make it legal to have sexual relations with minors, but merely stops the accused from being held out as a sex offender in society.
I did not expect the news that Derek was probably older during the fire to upset so many people
but apparently in building their personal fandoms a lot of folks need Derek to be even
more victimized than he already was
Again, Kate is super villain level evil. She used Derek to get information that she later
would use to murder his family. That is bad enough. I don't understand why people need
her to be guilty of an additional set of crimes.
Yes. I believe Kate is just a malformed werewolf too.
As I proposed with Jackson and his kanima transformation, Kate was created by a werewolf
spark and therefore Kate - just like all the bites gone wrong - should be considered just
a malformed werewolf.
Let's go back to the beginning
Peter scratches and kills Kate.
But his scratch is so deep that he shared some of his werewolf-making Alpha spark with her.
Just like with my Jackson theory, Peter's spark encounters a twisted soul.
But this soul is twisted in a different way and the spark gets twisted into a brand new shape.
Meanwhile, this news story reaches Mexico and while the Argents are too busy mourning
to think about it, Araya Calavera knows that the scratch of an alpha can be transformative.
She heads to Beacon Hills to make sure.
As she feared, Kate's wounds are healing.
They take the body so she can do the right thing and unalive herself.
We all know what follows from watching season four.
Attendant: Hey! You all right?
Kate: Just a second.
As spectacular and cat-like as Kate is here, what you are seeing is just a malformed werewolf.
You say "Kate looks like a cat and we call her a Were-Jaguar?"
This is true. But to that I will say that sometimes we call ugly grapes raisins but
it doesn't change the fact that all raisins are grapes from the same vine.
But here my malformed werewolf explanation gets a little more complicated.
Severo: Why don't you just tell us? where is La Loba?
Araya: Where is the she-wolf?
Araya and Severo don't seem to think of her as a traditional Mexican were-jaguar.
And they repeatedly call Kate "La Loba", which is from another native Mexican myth about
a woman who collects skeletons and breathes life back into them.
That describes Kate's protectors - the Berserkers - pretty well but it doesn't mention her cat
parts at all.
Braeden: The church was built over the ruins of an Aztec Temple. It belonged to a people
called the nagual.
Scott: Shapeshifters.
Braeden: Werejaguars.
There were undoubtedly werejaguars in Mexico at one time.
So, why didn't the Calaveras call her that?
I suggest that they had enough experience to know that - despite what Kate looked like
- she was just another malformed werewolf.
Again werejaguars are a real thing in Mexico.
They built a whole temple to Tezcatlipoca that was run by a bunch of warlock were-folk
who could turn into cat-like creatures.
Kate was apparently similar enough to those creatures to make the temple work but really
she was just another malformed werewolf.