Dylan O’Brien played a crucial part in making the Stiles Stilinski and Lydia Martin ‘ship happen on Teen Wolf, after the show had teased it for years. Loosely based on the 1985 movie of the same name, Teen Wolf centered on Scott McCall (Tyler Posey). A young werewolf who defends his California town from dangerous forces, Scott is helped along by a loyal group of friends.
That group included Stiles (O’Brien) and Lydia (Holland Roden). From the earliest episodes of Teen Wolf, which premiered on MTV in 2011, the show looked to set up Stiles and Lydia as a romantic pairing. Similarly to Xander and Cordelia on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as Seth and Summer of The OC, the duo commonly known as Stydia were a classic fixture of the teen drama genre: Stiles was the neurotic and quippy sidekick, while Lydia initially filled the role of a somewhat mean popular girl. Stiles – naturally – had a crush on Lydia, which he’d been harboring for years. Still, despite the chemistry between Roden and O’Brien, there was an evident reluctance to follow through on what had been teased. For the first five seasons of Teen Wolf, Stydia would share a few major scenes that seemed designed to maintain the viability of a romantic relationship. But follow-up proved to be elusive. That started to change, somewhat, in the season 6 premiere “Memory Lost.”
The episode features a moment when an excited Stiles kisses Lydia on the cheek. As revealed by Roden, during an appearance at a convention, the moment was improvised by O’Brien. In the scene, Lydia has helped Stiles figure out a significant element of the season’s mystery. Unable to quell his gratitude, Stiles goes in for a quick peck before running off to tell Scott about what he’s learned. According to Celebeat, and fans who attended the convention, Roden credits O’Brien’s improvisation for finally getting Teen Wolf to commit to the idea of Stydia as a couple.
“Memory Lost” is an important installment of Teen Wolf, as it concludes with the existence of Stiles being erased from everyone’s memory. This storyline was necessary to explain why O’Brien remained off-screen for most of season 6. Prior to being erased, Stiles tells Lydia that he loves her. Later in the season, when he reappears , Lydia tells Stiles that she loves him as well. In fact, she confesses, she’s loved him since the two shared a kiss in season 3 of the supernatural drama. While it’s tempting to credit the series for playing the long game with Stydia, the confession comes across as a hasty bit of revisionist history from Teen Wolf’s writers.
For much of the show’s run, Stiles and Lydia were platonic friends. In and of itself, this would be a commendable approach. It’s certainly true that not every relationship between characters has to be romantic to have value. But, at the same time, Teen Wolf was reluctant to take the romantic option off the table. As a result, it was typical for there to be several episodes in a row with barely any Stydia interaction. And then, abruptly, there would be a huge moment where the pair appeared to be destined for each other. This is also true of Teen Wolf more broadly, as the series struggled with most of its other couples.
The inconsistency would continue even after Stiles and Lydia confessed their feelings. In the show’s final episode, the two hardly interact. Strangely, Lydia seems more interested in her ex-boyfriend, Jackson (Colton Haynes), than her actual boyfriend. After such a long-build up, the couple’s last moments together on-screen aren’t meaningful enough to mention. Teen Wolf stayed true to its flaws until the very end, indifferent to the work of maintaining the romantic relationships between its characters. Although O’Brien might have helped to make Stydia finally happen, the execution by the writers was ultimately too late and too halfhearted to please many viewers.