Hello there.
I’m Paul Rea from the official Teen Wolf Wiki and today I’m talking about the teen wolf Timeline.
Specifically I’m sore from all the pushback I got on my recent video
explaining that Derek’s 15 year-old son was born at least a couple years after the Hale House fire
meaning that it happened in a period of Derek’s life we know nothing about.
If you like it when I talk about Teen Wolf – you should totally subscribe
to the channel. I’m here at least once a week.
So, a lot of people didn’t like the canonical facts surrounding the potential birthdate of Eli Hale.
This mostly took the form of...
Mocking: "But Derek’s ID said he was born in 88."
Well, it’s canonically a fake ID so there’s no reason to trust it.
But also I had a lot of people who apparently decided that Teen Wolf
just doesn’t actually have a cohesive timeline.
The Doctor: It's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.
That is not true. There is a timeline there. The show sometimes completely ignores it,
but it doesn’t change the underlying facts that a timeline does exist.
Okay, so, Paul hates asking for money, but the facts are these,
YouTube revenue is down significantly since they did away with the dislike button.
No, the drop started when his jaw was broken and he couldn't use his real voice.
What?
I'm saying that, in addition to YouTube messing with audience interaction,
Paul had that dental surgery mishap and couldn't work as much as before. That too effects revenue.
Whatever, you're just complicating it. YouTube revenue is down at the worst possible time.
Agreed, Paul is getting ready to spend a few days in Atlanta on the Teen Wolf set,
which is going to cost quite a bit in travel. lodging, food, and other expenses.
To pay for all that, Paul needs folks to financially support the channel.
Tell them about the t-shirts.
They know about the t-shirts, the t-shirts are cool but they're way too expensive and
Paul only sees a fraction of that money. That's why he's set up a Ko-Fi page.
I think that's pronounced Coffee.
what?
It's Coffee - their thing is you can spend as much as a cup of coffee to support a creator.
they spell it weird.
It's the internet, everything is spelled weird. but the link is in
the description and above so people don't actually need to know how to spell it.
Anyway, there will be exclusive content for folks who do a monthly membership of
two dollars so check it out to support Paul and his work with Teen Wolf News.
This is actually my second version of this video. The first one laid out the whole canonical
timeline to a mathematical certainty with dates and multiple onscreen time checks as receipts.
But, in the end, it was 12 minutes of math and was really kind of boring. It’s the kind of thing
that only canon whores like me care about, but it did little to clear things up for casual viewers.
And doing it the long way causes me and other folks to focus on all the stuff the production got
wrong when they tried to mention specific years.
For the purposes of establishing canon, the Official Teen Wolf Wiki ignores
anything that doesn’t match within established on-screen timeline.
Canon is, as far as this site is concerned,
the events that transpire on screen during each episode.
It also takes into account past events as described by characters on the show
as well as some of the information relayed via props on the show.
The latter, the show's props, prove, more often than not,
to conflict with prior established canon. When a conflict occurs we make note of
it but give precedence to the information provided via dialog as this is more likely
to convey the writer's intent than would a prop they did not create themselves.
The worst time crime of all was probably Malia’s disastrous birth certificate prop
which placed her age between 12 and 15.
This is, again, not possible.
Sheriff: Eight years ago when I was elected Sheriff of the county, my first official duty was
to tell a man that, as best we could tell, the body of his nine-year-old daughter had been
dragged from the wreck by coyotes.
We were told she was nine years old when she disappeared eight years ago.
The Official Teen Wolf Wiki rule is that, pretty much, if there’s a date on a prop,
it’s going to be wrong. So trying to do specific years for a timeline is a fool’s errand.
In the end, I decided you don’t need a calendar to
understand when things happened in the Teen Wolf Universe.
Let’s start with the run of the show.
It takes place over three years in-universe. It starts with the winter semester in Year One
and ends with the fall semester in Year Three.
We know it’s winter when it starts because the
Wolf Moon happens in January and the very first episode is called Wolf Moon.
Also we know only a couple days pass between the end of Season 1 and the beginning of Season 2.
Victoria: They'll be here in two days.
And then Lydia’s birthday is in March
with the worm moon as helpfully explained by dead Peter Hale.
Peter: Do you know what they call the full moon in March? It's called the worm moon.
We have a solid block of non-stop timeline comprising about three months.
And that gives us a solid base for the beginning of year one.
Teacher: Have a great summer everyone. Stiles: No.
Teacher: To the seniors, I'll see you at graduation.
Stiles: No, no, no. That's it? What?
At the end, Scott, Lydia, Stiles and Malia graduate at the end of
6A giving us an indisputable time check. It’s spring of year three.
Then in 6B the story picks up at the beginning of a new school year in the fall.
Mason: The point is, summer is almost over. We're about to be seniors.
This is about to be the best year of our entire life.
Teen Wolf the TV show is three years of time broken up into 6 seasons.
All the history of the show branches off in both directions from these three years.
We know Derek and Paige were in high school more than 10 years before Year One,
because the Sheriff said it.
Sheriff: The records would be over ten years old.
I just need to look over a couple files.
We know the Hale House fire took place six years before year one because everyone,
save a single onscreen reference, placed the fire six years before year one.
Derek: Now he's barely even human.
Six years ago my sister and I were at school, our house caught fire.
Again, at the official Teen Wolf Wiki we trust dialogue over props, but we
also have to judge dialog based on who said it and under what circumstance.
The perfect example is that Stiles says the fire happened like 10 years ago.
Stiles: Dude! That was Derek Hale. You remember. Right? He's only like a few years older than us.
Scott: Remember what? Stiles: His family.
They all burned to death in a fire like ten years ago.
But then we learned it was actually six.
Both of these can’t be right.
Picking which one is canonical in this case is really simple.
Stiles was talking casually, about an event that happened to someone else when he himself
was just a little kid.
Derek was talking about something that he experienced personally
so we believe him over Stiles.
Each contradiction like this has to be judged with context. Again, most of the bad props
can’t be saved, but Teen Wolf does have a pretty simple and straightforward
timeline if you don’t get bogged down in the minutiae.
Derek was in high school more than ten years before Year One. We know this because the
sheriff said, in Year One, that the Alpha Pack formation happened more than ten years ago.
We believe the sheriff here because he was being specific. asking for
official medical records related to something he experienced.
So, more than ten years before Year One, Derek was at least 14. The fire happened at least four years
after the formation of the Alpha Pack meaning Derek would have to be in his late teens. Then
you add the six years after the fire and Derek is at least in his mid-20s when Year One begins.
Then we come to Eli Hale. He was born 15 years ago. If the movie is happening "now",
then Teen Wolf Year One was at least 11 years ago in-universe at the time the movie begins.
That places Eli’s birth at least four years before Year One and at least two years after the fire
during the period of Derek’s life we know nothing at all about.