Despite the titular wolves of Teen Wolf, some characters in MTV’s supernatural drama became other creatures, such as Lydia Martin (Holland Roden) when she becomes a banshee, even after receiving werewolf bite. Teen Wolf enjoyed great success from 2011-2017, as one of the most lucrative werewolf shows during the first two decades of the 2000s. Carrying out six seasons while following the lives of the supernatural students of Beacon Hills, some of the show’s twists came as a surprise to those familiar with werewolf lore.
Teen Wolf follows Scott McCall (Tyler Posey) and his friends after he’s bitten by a werewolf, becoming one himself. However, he’s not the only supernatural creature in his California town. Among Teen Wolf's monsters are werewolves Derek Hale (Tyler Hoechlin) and Liam Dunbar (Dylan Sprayberry), werecoyote Malia Tate (Shelley Hennig), kitsune Kira Yukimura (Arden Cho), and banshee Lydia Martin. Lydia’s story is unusual, however, in that she became a banshee after she was bitten by Alpha werewolf Peter Hale (Ian Bohen) in season 1. At the time, Peter was an Alpha werewolf looking to create a pack to take revenge on the werewolf hunters who burned his family home down, killing most of his family inside. Typically, someone bitten by an Alpha werewolf either becomes their Beta wolf in their pack hierarchy or dies of the wound.
Lydia, however, neither passed away nor became a werewolf as a result of Peter’s attack. Instead, the bite unlocked her hereditary powers as one of Teen Wolf’s other supernatural creatures, a role she played through Teen Wolf's canceled season 7. After her attack at the end of season 1, she became a banshee, a creature with a psychic connection to the dead and the impending dead.
How Lydia Got Her Banshee Powers In Teen Wolf
In the later seasons of Teen Wolf, Lydia learns that her paternal grandmother, with whom she was close, was a banshee. They are also known as a Wailing Woman due to how they scream to announce when someone has died of supernatural causes. When her grandmother was taken to a mental health facility known as the Eichen House, because of her deathly premonitions, Lydia repressed these memories and any hints of her heritage. Were it not for Peter’s intervention, Lydia might not have developed her powers until she turned 18, if at all. The Alpha’s magic unlocked her hidden potential early. While it’s unclear whether it was Peter’s status as an Alpha that awakened Lydia’s abilities, possibly any werewolf bite could have triggered Lydia’s heritage, protecting her from becoming a werewolf. It’s further possible that the traumatic, near-death experience itself conjured Lydia’s affinity for the dead. Either way, the influence of the supernatural coaxed Lydia’s nature to the surface. After her encounter with Peter, Lydia slowly learned to sense impending death as a Harbinger of Death, hear the details of a person’s death, experience premonitions, and project herself into her premonitions, among other abilities.
Although Lydia’s encounter with Peter, at first glance, creates an inconsistency in terms of Teen Wolf’s lore on how lycanthropy is passed from person to person, it also works thematically for her character arc as a whole. In keeping with Teen Wolf's differences from the original movie, Lydia's arc is darker, but more emotional for her experience. Throughout Teen Wolf, Lydia grows in confidence and self-acceptance, as she begins the show hiding her true intelligence and submersing herself in a catty persona while at school. But her near-death experience changes her on a fundamental level and reconnects her with her grandmother, showing how even though she lost her innocence of mortality, she uses her trauma to become a more empathetic person who is determined to help those like her.