Hello there.
I'm Paul Rea from the official Teen Wolf Wiki.
And today we're looking into the healing abilities that come with being a werewolf on Teen Wolf.
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Melissa: Oh my god.
Scott: I'm fine.
I'm healing.
It's okay.
Like so many of my videos, this one started with a question from a viewer.
Someone wanted to know if a werewolf bite could cure paralysis.
The simple answer is maybe.
The more complicated answer is that it depends on the type and the extent of the injury.
Derek: Side effects may include anxiety, weight gain, acne, ulcerative colitis.
Eh.
What if I told you that all of this could go away?
The side effects, the symptoms, all of it.
During the run of the show, we saw a werewolf bite instantly cured asthma and a seizure
disorder.
Those are both chronic illnesses and while they can be life changing and potentially
devastating to the patient.
Those are both relatively easy fixes for any basic supernatural healing ability.
I mean, asthma is basically an inflammation problem.
The airways of the lungs swell and cut off your air supply.
Since any level of inflammation from a bug bite to rheumatoid arthritis would instantly
trigger our werewolf healing ability.
You would instantly have no more asthma.
Erica's situation is a little more complicated, but werewolf bite offers something that is
especially effective against epilepsy or other seizure disorders or really anything having
to do with the brain.
As I posit in my series on the werewolf spark, the bite offers a transfer of electricity.
In the Teen Wolf universe, it's divine electricity that originated with Zeus.
Alphas share a little bit of their spark with anyone they bite.
And the little spark is what makes you a werewolf.
Since Erica's illness stems from a misfiring of the natural electricity inside the human
brain, adding the werewolf spark onto her body's existing electrical system should solve
that problem.
Of course seizure disorders can also be caused by a brain injury or a tumor or something
else, physical.
If that's the case
we know for sure the werewolf healing ability does a good job of repairing tissue.
So whatever was wrong in the brain could be fixed pretty quickly.
Now let me be clear, the writers of the show used healing factor however they saw fit.
I don't think they followed a strict set of rules, but what they showed us did establish
some basics for how things work.
Healing of tissue and bone can be instantaneous under the right circumstances.
Melissa: Oh my god.
Scott: I'm fine. I'm healing. It's okay.
Allison: Scott, your leg, oh my god, your leg broken.
Scott: Not for long.
It's okay.
I'm fine.
Healing can be stopped or slowed by any number of things.
Stiles: Just let me see it.
Okay?
Scott: okay.
It's because they're from an alpha.
It'll take longer to heal.
Boyd: I think I stopped healing.
Derek: Bullets are laced with wolfsbane.
You've got to go.
Allison: I thought he would be healing by now.
Scott: So did I.
Doctor: Here he have a rather extraordinary case, near fatal burn victim.
Typically in a situation like this, the coma is induced medically.
We're not sure how Mr. Hale became comatose however.
His survival is honestly a mystery we're still trying to solve.
Healing is as much about state of mind as it is about supernatural ability.
Again, there are no hard and fast rules, but there is a basic framework here.
The question that started all this is one of those "what if" situations that didn't
directly come up on the show, so this is all my speculation.
Spinal injuries that cause paralysis among supernaturals, just like with humans, could
either be simple or complex.
A simple injury for a supernatural would be say a bullet that breaks the spinal cord.
In such an instance, the severed nerves and bone just need to repair themselves, which
we've seen can happen pretty quickly.
A more complex injury would be something crushing the spine.
In this case, the healing factor has almost nothing to work with.
It cannot, as far as we know, do the Deadpool thing and grow new limbs and organs.
¿Dónde está la biblioteca?
So a mashed up vertebrae and squished nerves probably can't be fixed.
In this case, I think the injury would be long lasting and possibly permanent for our
hypothetical supernatural.
Now I'm basing my speculation on the difference between Scott and Deucalion's eye injuries.
With Deucalion, Gerard really got in there and mashed his eyes while at the same time
burning all the surrounding tissue and cauterizing the optic nerves.
Deaton: The eyes will heal physically but your sight it's...
The fact that the injury never healed completely is a testament to just how much damage was done.
Now with Scott, he really just scooped out his eyes.
It was a clean severing of the tissue and he might not have even hit the underlying nerves.
He also must have left enough eye tissue behind for his body to regenerate.
Now I said before that it doesn't appear that werewolves can completely regenerate new organs
and I still stand by that, but we have seen them repair tissue as long as there's enough
undamaged material to work with.
So if Scott left enough of the different parts of the eye behind.
It could grow back.
Of course, this could also be just another example of the writers doing whatever they
feel like on the day, but my point still stands.
Werewolf healing can easily fix simple and clean injuries, deep and complex injuries
either can't be fixed or take a really long time.
Gerard: The doctors have no clue why my body keeps producing and ejecting this
bizarre black fluid.
So first things first, why was Gerard oozing like a pus filled maggot after season two?
It comes down to the main reason for Teen Wolf's black goo it's a side effect of
werewolf spark rejection.
Satomi: I think we need to hurry.
I mean, yeah, it came out during every serious werewolf health crisis.
When Derek had the wolfsbane poisoning in magic bullet
Derek: My body is trying to heal itself.
Stiles: Well it's not doing a very good job of it.
And when the werewolf contracted,
souped up distemper in weaponized, there was also a modicum of black goo as their werewolf
sparks fought a losing battle against the poison.
But for my purpose today, I'm looking at those times that it was definitely a sign of
werewolf spark rejection.
The first time we saw this was with Jackson.
Danny: Dude, your nose.
Derek bit Jackson at the end of season one and just a couple of days later at the start
of season two, Jackson started oozing.
Then at the end of season two, Gerard forces Derek to bite him and we get this violent
rejection reaction.
Good times.
Jackson: What is it?
What's happening?
Derek: Your body is fighting the bite.
Jackson: Why?
In Jackson's case, the werewolf spark was facing rejection because of his personal issues.
Speaking of issues, this would be a good spot to push Colton Haynes's new book, Miss Memory
Lane, available everywhere fine books are sold.
Talk about art imitating life, I'm just saying.
But I digress.
So the spark kept trying to turn Jackson into a werewolf, but couldn't.
It also, couldn't just give up because these sparks are apparently a curse from a god and
god curses are forever.
It eventually was able to settle in with Jackson's twisted internal energy.
The black goo stopped because the rejection crisis was solved.
For Gerard, it was a bit more complicated that rascal Scott McCall had replaced his pills.
What were they?
Cancer pills?
Testosterone boosters?
I don't know.
Whatever.
Scott replaced his pills and for like a week, Gerard was ingesting straight up mountain ash.
Scott and Deaton basically created one of these nifty mountain ash barriers around and
through every single cell in Gerard's body.
Along comes Derek's bite and that little spark enters the old man only to find..
Again, the spark is a god curse, meaning it don't give up.
But since the energy was literally blocked from carrying out the curse, it settled into
a constant battle of trying to convert Gerard.
Thus, he was in a constant state of rejection and we get the pus filled black ooze maggot.
As to why this process also managed to cure Gerard's cancer, I can only guess.
I would think that the curse is designed to keep the cursed person alive so that they
can continue to suffer under the curse.
I mean, what good is a curse if it just kills him?
Where is the satisfaction for the God in that?
Willow: Bored now.
So that's why Gerard was destined to live out his life oozing black goo in a low rent
assisted living facility until his son decided to help rid him of this burden once and for
all with some yellow wolfsbane.
And yes, this is where I give you the standard warning.
The effects of wolfsbane shown on Teen Wolf are complete fiction.
In real life, there are more than a dozen different types and almost all of them are
deadly to humans.
Like some of these will kill you within six hours.
Garrett: That's wolfsbane?
I thought it was purple.
Violet: Not this species, which is very rare and very expensive.
Gerard: This is all the yellow wolfsbane we could find.
Extremely rare, but enough to make one bullet
Monroe: And more than powerful enough to kill an alpha.
In Teen Wolf, if you wanna make absolutely sure you kill an alpha or a powerful Aztec
temple-dwelling werejaguar, you are told to use the yellow wolfsbane, because it is said
to be 100% fatal to werewolves of any rank if not treated immediately.
Now I say that "it's said" to be fatal because we saw a bunch of were folks just kind of
walk off the effects of yellow wolfsbane.
Kate: You're not going to catch me.
Not you.
Not Peter, and not the Calaveras.
Derek: No, you're not okay.
It's yellow wolfsbane.
It's going to kill you.
Okay, so some of them had to burn off the effects, but still, this is another case of
the reality not living up to the hype on this show.
Anyway, in theory, the yellow Wolfsbane can snuff out a Zeus spark and kill an alpha outright.
So why did eating yellow wolfsbane stop Gerard's black goo factory?
It fixed his problem because it killed the werewolf spark.
It did not kill Gerard because wolfsbane on the show doesn't affect humans.
And after eating it, he no longer has a spark inside of him fighting to transform him into
a werewolf so he's no longer in a constant state of rejection.