Four months will have passed when Teen Wolf Season 3 kicks off tonight on MTV.
And while some faces are gone (Colton Haynes is now fighting crime in Starling City on Arrow), plenty of new faces are on the way in the form of a treacherous Alpha pack that plans to make life hell for Scott, Stiles, Allison, Lydia, Isaac Danny and Derek.
So who better to give us a peek at the new season, but creator Jeff Davis? Scroll down for an exclusive interview with the executive producer, who gave us some juicy new season intel worth howling about...
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TV Fanatic: There’s definitely a sense of fun in this first episode. Is it safe to say we’re going to see more of that this year or is that just kind of we’ll start at a fun place to start before we go darker?
Jeff Davis: We can go pretty dark, but we always like to start with a little more light-hearted mood. We want to see them being teenagers again. We want to make sure that the tone is still the same as our show. I always liked the fact that Teen Wolf has a sense of humor which a lot of these dark genre shows don’t. So we get to be a little playful.
TVF: Scott and Allison had their issues last season. Are they on or off in the season premiere?
JD: They’re off but they’re thrown back into each other’s sphere by the mystery and by this Alpha pack that arrives. They don’t get a breather for too long. They’ve had four months off Scott is dealing with it the best he can, but they’re definitely going to be forced back into close quarters, very, very close quarters with each other. So it’ll be interesting to see how they deal with that.
TVF: Stiles is going to see a bit more romance in the new season, right?
JD: Romance is definitely in the air for Stiles…with more than one person actually.
TVF: Oh, I like that! Is Isaac going to play a part of any kind of love triangle? I saw a hint of something in one of the new clips that made me think he could be...
JD: Yeah, and that’s definitely a meaningful look [in the clip] and it will cause some issues definitely later in the season. It will make Scott wonder if first love isn’t always the last love and they have some difficult times ahead. And seeing someone who’s becoming very close to him covet his former girlfriend.
TVF: Jeff, you’re a twin right?
JD: Yes, I am. I’m an identical twin which is part of where the twin Alphas came from, my desire to explore that in a narrative. It came from my own experience.
TVF: Scott’s mom found out last season that her son is a werewolf but will she find out about where he’s at in terms of becoming the Alpha?
JD: Whether Scott becomes an Alpha or not is the key part. So in fact that question is hinted at in the first episode but it’s not answered for a while so you’ll see what the mythology is around that. But Scott rising to new responsibilities and new power is very much what season three A is about. (The first 12 episodes of the third season make up the ‘A’ half of the season)
TVF: Is it safe to say we might be seeing Scott fully transformed this season?
JD: Scott will look the same. A slight variation in his make-up but he’ll look as he does in the first episode.
TVF: Lydia is definitely working through some stuff whether it’s with really hot guys in her own bed who may look a little like Jackson…
JD: When we did our casting, we thought how would [Lydia] deal with the breakup? She gets back out there and maybe in a not-so-healthy way and she starts proving that she can have anyone and anything anytime she wants. Some of her bad habits may come back to bite her. No pun intended.
TVF: Will we see her go back to those dark places because last season was definitely not fun for her.
JD: Oh, no. She’s right in the middle of it. But what her arc this time is she is no longer a pawn in this game. She becomes a player in her own rights and it’s a story of her taking control of her becoming empowered, which is what we love about our female characters is they don’t play the damsel in distress very long.
TVF: Allison got a taste of that power last season even if she didn’t use it to the best means last season, but maybe this season she will?
JD: Exactly. This is very much the season where both girls find their heroism and the power to be heroes in their own stories. One of the things I love about episode six is that it’s very much a Lydia episode. The episode where she gets to be a hero.
TVF: Is it safe to say that this new pack of alphas is the ‘big bad’ of this season or is there more bad to come?
JD: Well, we writers always like to keep some tricks up our sleeve, but I would say that they’re definitely not the only threat this season. There are other malicious people out in Beacon Hills. We’ve never been one to shy away from piling up the villains. So you can have your Gerard, your Kanima, your Alpha. I think it creates all the more tension. There may be some other supernatural forces at work beyond the alpha pack.
TVF: Would these be new threats or could some of them actually be threats that we’ve seen in past seasons?
JD: Maybe. [Laughs] I’m going to sidestep that question.
TVF: We also see in the first episode a lot of strange things happening with animals. What does that signify?
JD: Well, as Scott says in the first episode it’s like that stampede of deer that nearly trampled him in the pilot episode, it’s the idea of nature run amuck. When something unnatural like an Alpha pack enters the town, as Stiles says, animals can sense it. They can sense when something terrible is about to happen and a lot of terrible things are about to happen in Beacon Hills.