Jackson will never have wings.
The faction of the fandom obsessed with the monsters of Teen Wolf seem
desperate to see what comes next in the kanima life cycle.
This scene from the end of season two had fun with the idea that the almost
indestructible kanima form that we had seen with Jackson was only an appetizer.
Peter: Okay look, I think I found something. Looks like what you've
seen from Jackson is just the kanima's beta shape.
Derek: Meaning what? It can turn into something bigger?
Peter: Bigger and badder.
Derek: He's turning into that? That has wings.
Peter: I can see that.
Look somebody actually made an animation of it. Maybe it's less frightening if we..
Computer: Screech
Peter: Nope. Not at all. We should probably meet them half way.
Okay. If you can't see that for the comic relief scene that it was meant to be,
you can stop watching because you are not going to like the rest of this video.
Yes this was building in the tension that Jackson might be turning into something, but overall the
scene, and the idea of something worse yet to come, is meant to be taken with a wink.
Derek: Go now!
And that should have been that - a funny bit of business that ended with the slamming of
a laptop - because Jackson didn't remain a kanima long enough to butterfly out.
Called from his cocoon by master Gerard, Jackson continued to be
his mostly lizard self until he spanked his inner child and got his mind right.
A lovely end to the story of the kanima.
And that's where it would have ended had it not been for that
damn MTV bestiary giveaway at Comic-Con in 2014.
This project from artist and Teen Wolf fan Swann Smith is brilliant
and it's beautiful and it's all the other accolades I can heap on it.
But this is not canonical content. Let me repeat that - nothing in this absolutely gorgeous book
produced by a hired artist at the behest of the MTV network was considered canon for the show...
until the end of season four.
Lydia: This used to be on a hard drive but we eventually decided it might be
a good idea to have a hard copy around so we put it in a book.
Broadly, Official Teen Wolf Wiki only considers things appearing on the show as canon
and at the end of season four we got this exchange between Lydia and Parrish.
Parrish: What is it?
Lydia: It's called the bestiary.
And there is Swann Smith's vision of the next level kanima.
Again it's gorgeous and now because it's had a cameo on screen, these pages are officially canon.
But this is not the alpha kanima the fanboys are imagining.
Smith also included details of how this form comes to be
and it hints at just how sad and tragic a winged kanima really is.
According to the text "Unless a kanima can resolve what in its past caused it,
it will enter a cocoon stage and emerge as a winged creature."
The subtext here is that the creature loses all its humanity and becomes a monster.
It's as if Peter or Sebastien got stuck in their beast mode forms and were no longer human.
The next level of kanima is an absolute tragedy.