Of all the characters on Teen Wolf, Lydia definitely got the worst deal when her Banshee
kicked in.
Lydia: Well, is anyone going to get me a coat?
Basically you get these crazy making noises in your head.
Most of the time t's a name-that-sound guessing game.
Is that insects?
Is it power lines?
Is it both?
The only thing we know for sure is - you will not figure out what it is until it's pretty
much too late.
Lydia: It's like it's on the tip of my tongue and I don't know how to trigger it.
Meredith: I really think they should know.
Yes I do.
One of them standing right behind me.
The rest of the time banshees get a bunch of low volume mumble voices.
It's like that old song "whispering voices, too many choices, if, why, when, what.
The fact that this incoherent cacophony is often babbling on about people you know dying,
well that's just the non-dairy whipped topping on this putrid parfait of a power set.
Meredith: I can hear them.
They scream.
Coach: Why do they scream?
Meredith: They scream when someone's about to die.
And that is only when you can actually understand what they're trying to tell you, which you
mostly cannot do.
Yes, the banshee in this universe can scream someone else's head off.
But how often are you going to use that in daily life?
No, the Banshee experience is just way too crazy-making.
It's why every single one on the show except Lydia was severely mentally unstable.
Lydia is the exception to the bonkers banshee rule but don't get me started on how it basically
ruined her love life.
The question of who is and who is not a supernatural creature on Teen Wolf was at the heart of
the early episodes in season five and raised some serious questions about the nature of
Lydia Martin's abilities.
When they captured Tracy the kanima in the episode Dreamcatchers, resident druid Doctor
Deaton cast a circle of mountain ash to keep her contained.
We've seen mountain ash, stop everything from werewolves to Oni.
It's the go-to supernatural repellent of the Teen Wolf universe.
So it came as a shock to everyone.
When Tracy woke up and jumped right over what should have been an almost impossible-to-break
mystical barrier.
Deaton: So if Tracy was able to cross the mountain ash and no one's supernatural can
do that?
Scott: Tracy's not supernatural.
Deaton: Exactly.
In Tracy's case, she could cross because she was a manufactured creature, a chimera created
by the Dread Doctors.
But Deaton's declaration that nothing supernatural could pass, brought
up a new question.
What about Lydia?
The Beacon Hills banshee never had any trouble with the mystical roadblock.
So fans wondered, is this a production screw up, a plot hole or was something else going on?
I reached out to Teen Wolff, creator and executive producer, Jeff Davis for a definitive answer,
but it turns out fans weren't the only ones wondering about Lydia's nature.
Jeff says the writers debated the Lydia/mountain ash question too.
He says they decided that Lydia is not supernatural by nature.
She has inherited abilities that allow her to access the supernatural.
The same goes for other banshee like Lydia's grandmother and Meredith Walker.
To be clear, this only applies to banshee in the Teen Wolf universe.
Other shows have other rules for their special characters.
Jeff Davis says that while Lydia always had the banshee gift inside, it didn't manifest
until Peter Hale bit her at the end of season one.
Her heredity gave her immunity from the
bite while the bite turned on her latent abilities.
[scream]
Lydia can do all sorts of cool things as a banshee, but she is not supernatural.
Peter: You think power like that was going to come out on its own?
I'm the spark that let your fire sweetheart
I used this quote in another video this week and it struck me how misinterpreted that it's
been over the years.
Yes, Peter did brutally attack Lydia and embed memories in her that caused her dormant banshee
abilities to flare up.
But it was the trauma of that event that triggered her.
It was not the bite.
It was not Peter's spark trying to make a new werewolf.
Trauma makes banshees more powerful.
We saw it at least three times, maybe four times, on the show.
First we had Lydia's story where Peter used her and her latent banshee as a backup plan
in case he died
You can see how this trauma played out right there on Lydia's face.
This is why her abilities began to grow.
Lydia's grandmother Lorraine was the same way.
For much of her life she just had little intuitions until an upcoming personal trauma - the death
of her partner Maddie - triggered her first and, for a while, her only banshee experience
with seeing future death.
After that experience she hunted for clues about herself and her limited foreknowledge
which kind of drove her crazy.
Lorraine never had banshee-level power until after she was committed to Eichen House and
they drilled a hole in her head.
Natalie: I told you to stay in the car.
Lydia!
The physical and emotional trauma literally opened her up and she developed abilities
so strong she was able to predict the entire benefactor plan and all the individuals who
would be in danger from it years in advance.
She didn't realize that she was creating the benefactor victims list at the time.
But she knew her granddaughter would be in the middle of it and tried to plan accordingly.
Lorraine: They're coming Lydia.
They're coming for all of us.
We saw that a hole in Lydia's skull had the same effect.
It was greatly amplified by further tampering and pain visited on her by Dr. Valack.
This show makes it clear that trauma brings out the abilities of banshee.
Meredith's experience in the white room amplified her power.
It could be argued that losing her whole town and being the only one left behind by the
Ghost Riders in Canaan was enough trauma to trigger Lenore's banshee abilities.
While Lydia ranks as average in durability and strength, she more than makes up for it
with intelligence and super human abilities.
Lydia was already a genius before her banshee abilities allowed her to glimpse the future.
As she learned to harness those skills, her scream rose to an earthshattering level allowing
her to punch way harder than any other character.
intelligence pretty much towers above everything else on Teen Wolf because smart characters
overcome brute strength almost every time on this show.
Being physically strong is great when it comes to hand-to-hand combat but it has never been
the deciding factor in defeating a big bad on Teen Wolf.
Lydia: MASON!
So yeah, brute strength doesn't make you powerful on this show.