Teen Wolf Season 4 Episode 1 recap: The search for Derek begins!

Tonight, MTV was able to finally please us Teen Wolf diehards, debuting the show’s much-anticipated Season 4 premiere. Here’s how the action went down (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD)!

Teen Wolf Season 4 cast

We begin with Lydia (Holland Roden) and Stiles (Dylan O’Brien) arriving in Mexico, but  it’s not for the same intentions most teens have. They try to gain access into this door guarded by two men and, even with Lydia’s impressive Spanish skills,have no luck. Then Stiles pulls out a card and shows it to the guards — and the camera —which ends up being their ticket in.

Once inside, they walk into a room crowded with tons of teens that crossed over into Mexico for the reason most teens do— a rage party with tons of alcohol. As Lydia and Stiles make their way awkwardly to the bar, they’re offered shots on the house. Lydia lets the head guard, Severo (Ivo Nandi), that they aren’t interested in drinking by dropping the Calaveras bullet into her shot glass.

The two teens are taken to lead headmaster, Araya (Ivonne Coll), and offer their deal of $50,000 for Derek Hale (Tyler Hochlin). Araya realizes that teenagers would never have this kind of money unless they got it from the Japanese mafia and is angered that they’d offer her tainted money. As she’s about to threaten them, Stiles assures her that they aren’t two stupid kids like she thinks: They didn’t come alone but actually brought Scott (Tyler Posey), Kira (Arden Cho), and Malia (Shelley Henning) with them. The three try to blend into the party as Araya makes the call to take them out.  Kira does her best to dance but ends up looking like a chicken, so Malia, the wild coyote who hasn’t been a human for very long, has to teach her how to relax and move.

Scott makes good on his role as Alpha and takes out a security guard, then uses his walkie to tell Stiles to take $10,000 off the table to show they mean business. Lydia tells Araya that she should take the offer, but the hunter leader has something else up her sleeves. Araya has her minions release wolfsbane into the air as Scott, Kira, and Malia are captured by security.

Next we get a flashback to before Derek went missing in which Scott is telling Stiles and Lydia that he hasn’t heard back from him in a while and feels that something isn’t right. Scott says he went to Derek’s apartment and noticed the security system was still locked and armed. But he found a load of bullets with a special marking on them — the marking of the hunters, the Calaveras. They give Lydia the bullets to try to work her magic and figure out why the Calaveras would want Derek, but.she can only feel that something is wrong and Derek isn’t safe.

The gang decides that the only thing to do is head to Mexiaco to find the Calaveras.

The flashback ends when Scott wakes up from being knocked out and finds himself — along with Malia, Kira, and Stiles — in the Calaveras’ grasp and discover that Lydia has now been taken, too. Araya wants to use Lydia to find out what kind of Alpha Scott really is. She has Lydia and Scott tied to chairs and tells Kira that if Scott doesn’t answer her questions properly, Kira will have to shock him. If she refuses, Severo will turn up the voltage on Lydia.

Araya then tells Scott he knows who took Derek and when he keeps answering that he doesn’t, she makes Kira increase the voltage. Malia, in the other room with Stiles, tries to tune into what’s going on, but  she can’t focus with all the commotion. Stiles tries to offer her some tips on ways to concentrate, but she just smacks a big kiss on him instead — which seemed to help her focus because she then starts hearing the conversation between Araya and Scott.

Araya tells Scott that whomever has Derek had to be someone who turned without knowing, and it wasn’t from a bite. As she orders Kira to keep increasing the voltage running through Scott’s body, Malia tells Stiles that they’re killing him. Finally, Scott switches into Alpha mode and remembers Kate Argent (Jill Wagner) asking if someone could turn just from a scratch wound.

Araya wants Scott and the gang to find Kate and even gives them a guide, Braeden (Meagan Tandy,  a mercenary who will take them to La Iglesia. Araya tells Scott that she sees what kind of Alpha he really is and is waiting for him to take the next step — bite  an innocent and make a wolf of his own. She warns him that that’s when she’ll be in his town.

As they follow Braeden in Stile’s infamous Jeep, Malia and Kira find out that Kate was:Allison’s aunt and Kira tells Scott that he doesn’t have to continue, but Malia demands he must.  Kate was the one who set the fire that killed most of Derek’s family leaving only Peter (Ian Bohen) and Cora (Adelaide Kane) as survivors. Scott tells them that Peter was actually the one who turned him and ended up killing Kate.

The Calaveras must’ve heard that Kate was killed by an Alpha’s claws and went to check if she was really dead; as the full moon got closer, she kept changing and transforming. They took her and, as a hunter’s code, made sure she was going to take her own life before she fully changed. However, she tricked them and feasted on security until she was able to fully change and escape.

All of a sudden, the trusty Jeep breaks down in the middle of the desert. Braeden warns Scott that they need to reach La Iglesia before sundown so he leaves with her and Stiles stays with the girls. While Stiles tries to be the handyman and fix the Jeep, Malia finds something jammed up above the tire. It looks like an animal’s horn, as if something ran into them.

Scott arrives at La Iglesia with Braeden and she tells him the story of how the land got wiped out by an earthquake. The only thing left standing is the church which is said to be there still because of the ancient Aztec burial grounds underneath it. The name translated means shape shifters or jaguars, for their god. Once inside La Iglesia, Scott senses something not human is also in there with them.

Back at the Jeep, Malia also senses that something is watching them in the shadows. As it turns to night, Kira gets her sword and reflects the light from the headlights into the darkness and spots a figure out in the distance. Malia spots it too, and darts out after it, with Kira behind her. Kira loses Malia in the darkness — and when she finally shows up, she has a very deep battle wound. She explains that she couldn’t see whatever attacked her, but it was huge and fast.

Stiles gets upset with Malia for going after the creature because he thought he’d lost her for good. She tells him that she’d never leave him, but wouldn’t think twice about leaving Kira and Lydia. Aw, how sweet! She also mentions that this creature had a very strong scent of something rotten or decaying such as death.

Back at La Iglesia, Scott and Braeden are also attacked by something in the shadows and Scott steps forward and lets his inner Alpha roar out, scaring the attacker away. In doing so, he also opens up a secret passageway that leads to a door with the marking of the jaguar god on it, which is most likely where Derek is. Once Scott breaks down the door with his fist, a hand pokes up, reaching desperately for help.

Stiles and the gang arrive just in time to see Scott and Braeden carrying Derek out. Once they get closer, Malia asks if that was really Derek and a confused looking Stiles answers that it kind of was him. Once the camera pans over to Derek’s face, viewers understand his confusion: It was indeed Derek they were carrying, however, it was a much younger-looking Derek.

What were your thoughts on this episode? What do you think Araya means by what kind of Alpha Scott truly is? Do you think Stiles and Malia will become boyfriend and girlfriend? Who will be left for Lydia? What do you think really happened to Derek? Let us know in the comments section below.

New episodes of Teen Wolf Season 4 air Monday nights at 10/9CT on MTV.

Photo credit: MTV/Jamie Trueblood