In the first episode of Wolf Pack, a wildfire injures several students, but the injuries sustained by Everett and Blake are anything but ordinary. The episode is now streaming on Paramount+.
Recap
Everett, a teenager, is on the phone with his therapist on the school bus. He asks his doctor if he could take another pill to help with his anxiety, but the doctor has to get off the phone because his building is being evacuated due to the wildfire.
The students watch people abandoning their cars and running away from the window of the bus as the fire draws closer. When his hands start shaking, he explains to a girl named Blake that it is due to his anxiety, but she rudely dismisses his explanation.
The students find out that people are being evacuated from their houses. Blake, who does not have a phone, wants to borrow the phone of a girl she has not spoken to in a year, but the girl, Phoebe, refuses.
A student asks the bus driver to let them go. He starts recording the driver when she tells him that she could lose her job if she listens to him. Blake comes to the driver’s rescue and throws the phone out of the window.
The students rush out of the bus when they see injured animals running out of the burning forest towards them. Everett witnesses people getting brutally killed by the animals. He himself gets attacked by a dangerous animal and gets injured.
Blake saves Everett’s life, but he notices she has also been bitten by an animal. He walks to the hospital with a bleeding shoulder and informs the nurse that he has been bitten by a wolf before passing out.
Blake’s father screams at her and asks her to look after her autistic brother. He is taking them to a shelter. Before leaving her house, Blake notices a nasty bite mark on her body. She also sees an animal watching her from the shadows when she goes to get her brother.
Everett wakes up in the hospital and hallucinates. The doctor looks at his bite mark, which looks much better now. The nurse tells him that his parents are on their way, but Everett does not want them there.
He picks up the ringing phone beside his bed. The person on the other side knows his name and asks him to leave the hospital before nighttime.
He is told that someone, who cannot move easily during the daytime, will come for him at night and find him before the next full moon. Everett sees his body changing and passes out in pain just when his parents arrive.
Blake’s father cannot afford to take them to a motel. She gives him the money she has saved and asks him to take them to a nearby motel for the night.
She knows about the motel because when her parents fought for hours, she took her brother there. Their father did not notice their absence because he got drunk after the fight ended and their mother left.
When Everett wakes up again, his mother ridicules him for coming to the hospital because of a scratch. He tells her to look at his injury, but his parents cannot even see a scratch there, while he can see a throbbing wound.
Everett wants to get out of the hospital before nighttime, but his mother tells him that it is already night.
Blake notices that her acne scars have disappeared in a span of a few hours, but her wound has grown. She cries out in pain and sees Everett in his hospital room. They make eye contact, even though they are nowhere near each other.
Blake’s father apologizes to her and tells her he just needs a little help to take care of his children. She leaves him to go out for a run.
Luna finds her brother, Harlan, in a club with another man. She tells him that their father, Garrett, is missing, but he dismisses her concerns because he does not consider him their father and because Garrett is a park ranger.
The siblings discuss that Luna’s sense of smell and Harlan’s hearing are better tonight than ever before. They go looking for their father, whose truck has been found. They discover claw marks on their father’s truck.
Investigator Ramsey from the LAFD comes to the hospital looking for students who were on that school bus. Before she could reach Everett, he runs away to find Blake.
Blake can now run impossibly fast. She reaches her neighborhood and finds that the dog that never liked her is suddenly friendly to her. She sees that her house has been burned down, and she also finds Everett there, who has come to meet her.
Luna and Harlan discuss that this fire is the worst fire in 18 years, similar to the one when Garrett found them as little pups. They wonder if he found their real father this time. If their father is behind the claw marks, then he will come for the two of them.
Everett tells Blake about the phone call and shows her the bite; she can also see it like him. Everett points out that he suddenly has abs now and that Blake has clear skin. The two are then attacked by a werewolf, but they manage to escape.
Trapped in the fire, Garrett leaves a message for his children. In the recorded message, he assures Luna that she will find her pack someday and tells Harlan to remember the good times he spent with him, as they do nothing but argue these days.
Everett helps Blake calm down. She is in denial about getting attacked by a werewolf and leaves to get back to her family.
Everett gets a call from Ramsey. She asks him for help in figuring out who caused the fire. She has evidence that proves that it was caused by a teenager. She also believes that it could be one of the students who were on the bus.
Everett, Blake, Luna, and Harlan hear a high-pitched noise, and their eyes roll back. The four find themselves running to each other. Everett and Luna recognize each other from school.
Their eyes start glowing, which never happens to Harlan and Luna. Ignoring Harlan’s warning, she tells Everett and Blake that they are just like them now; they were bitten, and now they are werewolves.
Review
- The first episode of the show was not free of the usual werewolf clichés; the perks of being a werewolf include not only better senses, strength, and speed, but also bodies that fit into the typical beauty standards.
- The episode has gore and blood in the beginning; the show is not going to shy away from depicting brutal death scenes.
- For a show about werewolves, they could have used better CGI. It is hard for the viewers to take a werewolf that looks like it has come out of a children’s horror show seriously.
- The performances by the actors also did not stand up to the expectations of the viewers. For the most part, the performances lacked depth and emotion.
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