Hello there.
After a couple of weeks of exciting news that rocked the Teen Wolf fandom right down to
its soft gooey center, I’m back into my series on the Gods of Teen Wolf with a
look at the spirit form with the most complicated backstory.
Dogs and death have been associated in human culture since before we had words to describe
either humans or culture.
Spirit dogs have heralded death or guarded the underworld in most of the planet’s multitheistic
religions and regional folklore.
Our Teen Wolf hellhound was solidly linked with Odin’s ghost riding hunt but admitted
it was also known by names that pre-date Odin by centuries.
Lydia: Who am I talking to?
Hellhound: Cerberus, Garmr, Black Shuck. I've had many names.
Today, I’ll try to reconcile all those various versions into a unified theory of the
Teen Wolf hellhound.
If you like these deep dives into the canon and nostalgia of Teen Wolf or if you just
want to keep up with the latest news on the upcoming Teen Wolf movie, you really should
subscribe and join me on these weekly journeys back to Beacon Hills.
As with my other look at the Gods of Teen Wolf,
this is not going to be a graduate studies program.
I’m just trying to take the Teen Wolf canon we know and put it in context with the history
that might have inspired it.
[dogs barking]
Dogs and death, death and dogs, the association probably started from something gross like
the fact that before humans started burying their dead and even shortly after, canine
creatures would often be seen dining out on corpses.
[Ewwwww.]
I know.
Now, I could not find a solid dog-headed deity with the Olmecs or the Sumerians so I’m
starting with Egypt where they had a whole bunch of Jackal gods running around.
It's like like Santa’s reindeer. [singing] You know Set and Anubis and Wepwawet
and Duamutef, but do you recall- Yeah, I've got to stop. As this bad rendition
is, it will probably get copyright claimed.
The point is they had a bunch, and every one of them had something to do with death.
Seth ruled over storms, disorder, violence and foreigners, all things that brought
a lot of death in a world where "stranger danger" wasn’t just catchy propaganda for kids.
Anubis was in charge of death, mummification and lorded over the underworld.
Wepwawet was the “opener of the ways” initially he was a war god and sort of a mascot
of the pharaoh that helped him in battle but eventually he became associated with death
as the guy who opened the way to the afterlife.
Finally Duamutef. He’s also associated with death but he has a very specialized job
description. He is the head on the jar where they store the stomach during mummification
and interment.
His one job is to protect the stomach in the afterlife.
Okay, that’s about a minute and half more about Egyptian dog gods than you needed but
I’m building a platform on which our Teen Wolf Hellhound stands and the next level is
the Greeks who had their multi-headed guardian of the underworld, Cerberus.
I say multi-headed because, while I was always taught he had three heads, many actual
ancient Greeks disagreed and give him just two heads, some say it’s
50 or even more than a hundred heads, but may of them are snakes apparently?
I think those ancient Greeks were ingesting some serious consciousness-enhancing substances.
Anyway, there’s yet another big dog guarding the land of the dead.
Then, separated by 12 thousand miles and about 3000 years, the Aztecs came up with
Xolotl, the dog-headed god that guided the souls of the dead.
You get the idea?
Somewhere in the early human psyche - dog and death became inextricably intertwined.
And by the time Xolotl was ushering deceased Aztecs to their final seats, Odin’s wild
hunt had already been riding the storm for hundreds of years collecting souls along the
way with the hellhounds at their side.
The Norse pantheon also had Garmr who guarded the afterlife.
Almost every culture has a big black
dog myth associated with fire, souls and the afterlife.
So when the Teen Wolf hellhound says he’s known by all these different names -
He’s telling us that the fiery spirit form that came to that battlefield in Afghanistan
and took over the life of poor blowed-to-hell Jordan Parrish, our hellhound, is actually
the basis for all the other death dog myths around the world.
Should I get into the timing of Jordan’s death?
You guys know that, right?
All right, I'll do it quickly.
He died at the exact same moment the Nemeton in Beacon
Hills was being charged up by Scott, Allison and Stiles in the middle of Season 3.
All that new power attracted the attention of the hellhound and it grabbed the first
available corpse that could get it to Beacon Hills to investigate.
Overall, the way I prefer to think about the "hellhound thing" is that, in the Teen Wolf Universe, there
has always been this group of dog-like spirits that serve some supernatural purpose having
to do with death and the afterlife.
They assumed different forms and functions
and names as different cultures became aware of them.
But they were always the same group of spirits doing what they’ve always done.
There are hellhounds riding the storm with Odin because that association is one of the
most widespread and longest remembered.
But the wild hunt is really just a cultural construct
laid over an existing supernatural force.
As I explained in my first "Gods" video, they look like a bunch of cowboys because our culture
laid that construct on them after the idea was spread through a popular song.
But something, some force, has always been out there
spanning the globe and gathering up souls and delivering them to an afterlife.
This could also explain why a Banshee was such a priority for Parrish.
Lydia’s ability to sense death would be very important to hellhounds and in simpler
times their scream might have been what drew them in.
In Parrish’s case, he was also getting very close to Lydia and didn’t want her to get
hurt. So, in this case, the Hellhound’s priories and Parrish's priorities were simpatico.
It also fits that Ghost Riders would leave the Banshee alone since Lydia and her ilk
would be very important to their whole afterlife Uber app thing.
Now, all that is pure speculation but the pieces fit in my head for some reason..
And we saw with Halwyn that he stayed on earth to make sure a particularly nasty resident
of that afterlife didn’t come back.
So keeping things inside the dimension where the Ghost Riders drop them is also the job
of the Hellhound spirits just like the Greek Cerberus did protecting Tartarus.
Am I explaining this well?
In my mind it is so clear. But I don't think I'm explaining it well.
The spirit inside Parrish and the other spirits like it are eternal. They’ll be here
long after these myths are forgotten doing the same thing they always do helping souls
find the afterlife and guarding the doors to keep them there.
Thanks for watching, let’s talk about this in the comments because the more I look into
this particular creature, the more complicated my thoughts become.
I’ll see you next time we go back to Beacon Hills.