Personality: If there’s one thing that can be said about Derek, it’s that he’s come a long way from his initial appearance back in S1. He’s still not a very sociable person by any means but there has been a marked improvement over the course of the seasons. Despite what the fandom may have you believe, he’s perfectly capable of talking in full sentences and even extended ones from time to time, it’s just that he tends to have a little more emphasis on body language and facial expressions. He’s a quiet guy, not overly talkative but not silent either, and he does appear to prefer his own company as opposed to a large crowd. That doesn’t mean he’s socially inept though, in fact he’s actually quite adaptable when it comes to interacting with people. To give a couple of examples, he can turn on the charm and flirt with the best of them at a moment’s notice, a skill that seems to primarily be used for the sake of manipulating people, or he can pull the blank faced straight man for the sake of playing the ‘tough guy’ role, which admittedly tends to be his default expression. Following a toning down of his violent tendencies, and his general ‘kill everything’ line of thinking, he’s also perfectly capable of holding a civil conversation, even if the topic in question revolves around a point of view that he may disagree with. Overall he’s just more tolerant of people in general. It could be said that Derek’s come out of his shell in a way, while he still isn’t the sort to openly swap background stories and he’s certainly not the type of guy to talk about his feelings, he can at least uphold a general, everyday talk. Which is more than could be said for his social skills way back at the start of the show.
The interesting thing about Derek’s recent role change within the Beacon Hill’s supernatural group is that he’s settled into a mentor-like role despite his less than impressive teaching history. In the past he’s been very hit or miss at supplying useful information, literally to the point where he’s withheld useful titbits and made situations more difficult than they needed to be. Not to mention the fact that he likely put the entire population at risk due to his silent act. These days the werewolf is thankfully a little more open with sharing his knowledge amongst his acquaintances and allies. He still holds back on what he knows until someone actually asks or needs to know but he doesn’t hold out for half as long as he would have done in the past. If someone were to ask him a question, he would actually answer it instead of giving a vague holdover statement. It doesn’t make him a perfect mentor but it allows him to get the job done and, given his previously terrible attempt at being an Alpha, it’s a role that simply fits him by comparison. It’s also been a position that he’s been trying to fill since season 1, now he actually has a chance to teach Scott, to teach Stiles and everyone else involved. It’s another chance for him to actually be useful instead of relying solely on his ability to be a meat shield. Needless to say a lot of his information revolves around supernatural stories and his own experiences, the latter of which comes into play with both Scott and the former alpha twins who were temporarily under his wing. With Scott he notably teaches him about smelling lingering emotions, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, with the twins he goes into a speech about not giving up and pushing through the difficult times. For Derek it’s a matter of teaching from experience and turning potentially negative memories into something that will be helpful to others. Now, make no mistake, he’s not about to win any awards for this new role within the resident supernatural community, insulting your ‘students’ isn’t the best way to go, but he’s got a lot of information under his belt and he’s willing to try and give more detailed advice this time around. He’s willing to be more of a team player instead of the lonely guy standing off to the side. Again.
Trust is a complicated topic when it comes to Derek, and that’s putting it nicely, given his close history with matters of betrayal one would likely assume that he’d be through with trusting other people. That isn’t necessarily the case. You see, Derek has somewhat of a history of saying that he doesn’t trust certain people and then he usually ends up following their advice a few scenes later. Now, on the one hand this could be seen as straight up naivety, especially when his uncle is involved, or it could be seen as him simply being a guy of second chances in certain cases, such as with the former alpha twins.
In his uncle’s case, there’s a fair amount of history that logically should have put Derek off the idea of trusting him, his sister’s death, a point-blank warning to avoid trusting him and a few personal experiences with Peter’s manipulative personality. And yet Derek frequently takes his advice within the recent seasons, he doesn’t question his uncle’s motives and at one point actually allowed the man to stab him in the back of the neck with his mother’s claws. Now, to be fair to the character it’s clear that Derek doesn’t fully trust his uncle but for all his deeds in the past, he seems to give Peter a larger ‘benefit of the doubt’ than he really should be given. It could be argued that this is down to their familial connection, there are only a couple of Hales wandering about and Derek feels a sense of guilt over the death of his family. In his instance Derek generally seems to come across as naïve simply because of his seeming desire to keep a family member around.
The case of the twins is a little less surprising in comparison. While the twins did assist in forcing Derek to kill one of his betas, Boyd, they actually had a heel-turn character moment at the end of 3a. One of the twins even went so far as to give a warning to Derek, telling him that he had to leave town if he wanted to live. Whether that change of heart played a role in Derek’s decision to try and help the twins integrate into Scott’s pack or whether he simply saw some sort of comparison between himself and them is unclear. All we know is that during 3b, Derek offered up several pieces of advice to try and get on the resident alpha’s good side. In this instance he seems to be giving a clear-cut second chase to the pair, he places their pasts to one side and even states near the end that he’ll make sure to tell Lydia about the one of the twins dying as ‘the good guy’.
With all that in mind let’s make one thing clear, his trust primarily extends to current happenings and life or death situations; it does not extend to stories from his background. To date the only time he’s mentioned an event from his past was to Scott back in S1 and he brought up the Hale house fire to prove a point. He’s very guarded when it comes to both his emotions and his history unless it is somehow relevant to larger problems occurring within Beacon Hills. Perhaps more so guarded in the romance department since his last girlfriend turned out to be yet another psychotic killer. And whether he fully trusts other people to have his back is another matter entirely.
You see, Derek doesn’t have a great sense of self-worth; in fact he’s practically perfected the art of putting himself down. Given the amount of guilt on his shoulders it kind of makes sense that he isn’t a huge fan of himself, he has a long standing history of terrible decisions coming back to bite him in the worst ways imaginable after all. He gave into his uncle’s manipulation, first girlfriend died. He gave into a pretty face, majority of his family died. He let his sister return to Beacon hills alone, sister died. The list goes on. A lot of terrible events either occur around him or can be linked back to him at a later point and, more often than not, the events in question happen to the people closest to him. With that in mind, is it a huge surprise that he feels responsible for everything? As far as he’s concerned he gets people into these situations so he’s either got to get them out of their predicament or take the blame should the worst case scenario occur.
Naturally when you’ve got an amount of guilt like that on your shoulders, you start to think a little pessimistically. In Derek’s case his thoughts seem to translate directly into his actions. Over the course of the show Derek has been a bit of a punching bag character, normally this trait is shown in relation to the current villains although recently he has allowed a couple of the teenagers to verbally vent their anger at him. He’s there to beaten up and cut down and he just lets it happen. The majority of these scenes involve him effectively sacrificing his own life for the sake of protecting someone else, which sounds like a ‘heroic’ thing in theory but, given certain lines of his dialogue, it would appear that that is what Derek thinks he’s useful for. He notably never thinks twice about throwing his life on the line, he just sees a situation that could potentially be solved if a physical sacrifice is made and goes for it, as far as he seems to be concerned his primary use within the group is the role of either a distraction or a temporary meat shield. The notable example of this would be the Sheriff’s station scene from 3b where he and Chris Argent, a man who he hasn’t seen eye to eye with in the past, are handcuffed to a bench. When Derek hears a bomb timer ticking down in the nearby office he doesn’t break out of the cuffs to save himself, despite mentioning earlier on that he could do it if he wanted, instead he literally turns to shield Chris with his own body. He does it instinctively and he does it regardless of his earlier comment about how he wouldn’t help the other man out. Call it a combination of his clear protective streak compared with a complete disregard for his own safety.
Given said lack of regard for his own well-being and combined with a few questionable decisions on his part, there is an overhanging question on just how healthy Derek is on a mental level. After all he’s suffered a large number of losses within a short span of time, been tortured on several occasions and he’s faced several acts of betrayal on top of all of that. Allowing your traitorous, murderous uncle into your home after all of that doesn’t seem like the sanest decision to make, family or no. It’s a popular theory that Derek suffers from PTSD whether that’s true or not remains to be seen but he has recently had a somewhat questionable episode involving a dream sequence. During the finale of 3b Derek is shot by a certain returning character, upon seeing this specific shooter Derek essentially retreats into his own head for a bit. There’s a short dream sequence where he explains what just happened within the waking world to an imaginary version of Stiles and then proceeds to state that he isn’t certain whether he’s dreaming or not. While the scene ends with him coming back to reality the more interesting thing to note id that this is the first time that an event has effectively proved to be too much for Derek to take in. Whether he has a particular diagnosable problem or not he’s clearly reached a point where he can no longer push aside traumatic events and carry on as though they didn’t happen, he’s reached his limit in terms of stress.
no subject
The interesting thing about Derek’s recent role change within the Beacon Hill’s supernatural group is that he’s settled into a mentor-like role despite his less than impressive teaching history. In the past he’s been very hit or miss at supplying useful information, literally to the point where he’s withheld useful titbits and made situations more difficult than they needed to be. Not to mention the fact that he likely put the entire population at risk due to his silent act. These days the werewolf is thankfully a little more open with sharing his knowledge amongst his acquaintances and allies. He still holds back on what he knows until someone actually asks or needs to know but he doesn’t hold out for half as long as he would have done in the past. If someone were to ask him a question, he would actually answer it instead of giving a vague holdover statement. It doesn’t make him a perfect mentor but it allows him to get the job done and, given his previously terrible attempt at being an Alpha, it’s a role that simply fits him by comparison. It’s also been a position that he’s been trying to fill since season 1, now he actually has a chance to teach Scott, to teach Stiles and everyone else involved. It’s another chance for him to actually be useful instead of relying solely on his ability to be a meat shield. Needless to say a lot of his information revolves around supernatural stories and his own experiences, the latter of which comes into play with both Scott and the former alpha twins who were temporarily under his wing. With Scott he notably teaches him about smelling lingering emotions, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, with the twins he goes into a speech about not giving up and pushing through the difficult times. For Derek it’s a matter of teaching from experience and turning potentially negative memories into something that will be helpful to others. Now, make no mistake, he’s not about to win any awards for this new role within the resident supernatural community, insulting your ‘students’ isn’t the best way to go, but he’s got a lot of information under his belt and he’s willing to try and give more detailed advice this time around. He’s willing to be more of a team player instead of the lonely guy standing off to the side. Again.
Trust is a complicated topic when it comes to Derek, and that’s putting it nicely, given his close history with matters of betrayal one would likely assume that he’d be through with trusting other people. That isn’t necessarily the case. You see, Derek has somewhat of a history of saying that he doesn’t trust certain people and then he usually ends up following their advice a few scenes later. Now, on the one hand this could be seen as straight up naivety, especially when his uncle is involved, or it could be seen as him simply being a guy of second chances in certain cases, such as with the former alpha twins.
In his uncle’s case, there’s a fair amount of history that logically should have put Derek off the idea of trusting him, his sister’s death, a point-blank warning to avoid trusting him and a few personal experiences with Peter’s manipulative personality. And yet Derek frequently takes his advice within the recent seasons, he doesn’t question his uncle’s motives and at one point actually allowed the man to stab him in the back of the neck with his mother’s claws. Now, to be fair to the character it’s clear that Derek doesn’t fully trust his uncle but for all his deeds in the past, he seems to give Peter a larger ‘benefit of the doubt’ than he really should be given. It could be argued that this is down to their familial connection, there are only a couple of Hales wandering about and Derek feels a sense of guilt over the death of his family. In his instance Derek generally seems to come across as naïve simply because of his seeming desire to keep a family member around.
The case of the twins is a little less surprising in comparison. While the twins did assist in forcing Derek to kill one of his betas, Boyd, they actually had a heel-turn character moment at the end of 3a. One of the twins even went so far as to give a warning to Derek, telling him that he had to leave town if he wanted to live. Whether that change of heart played a role in Derek’s decision to try and help the twins integrate into Scott’s pack or whether he simply saw some sort of comparison between himself and them is unclear. All we know is that during 3b, Derek offered up several pieces of advice to try and get on the resident alpha’s good side. In this instance he seems to be giving a clear-cut second chase to the pair, he places their pasts to one side and even states near the end that he’ll make sure to tell Lydia about the one of the twins dying as ‘the good guy’.
With all that in mind let’s make one thing clear, his trust primarily extends to current happenings and life or death situations; it does not extend to stories from his background. To date the only time he’s mentioned an event from his past was to Scott back in S1 and he brought up the Hale house fire to prove a point. He’s very guarded when it comes to both his emotions and his history unless it is somehow relevant to larger problems occurring within Beacon Hills. Perhaps more so guarded in the romance department since his last girlfriend turned out to be yet another psychotic killer. And whether he fully trusts other people to have his back is another matter entirely.
You see, Derek doesn’t have a great sense of self-worth; in fact he’s practically perfected the art of putting himself down. Given the amount of guilt on his shoulders it kind of makes sense that he isn’t a huge fan of himself, he has a long standing history of terrible decisions coming back to bite him in the worst ways imaginable after all. He gave into his uncle’s manipulation, first girlfriend died. He gave into a pretty face, majority of his family died. He let his sister return to Beacon hills alone, sister died. The list goes on. A lot of terrible events either occur around him or can be linked back to him at a later point and, more often than not, the events in question happen to the people closest to him. With that in mind, is it a huge surprise that he feels responsible for everything? As far as he’s concerned he gets people into these situations so he’s either got to get them out of their predicament or take the blame should the worst case scenario occur.
Naturally when you’ve got an amount of guilt like that on your shoulders, you start to think a little pessimistically. In Derek’s case his thoughts seem to translate directly into his actions. Over the course of the show Derek has been a bit of a punching bag character, normally this trait is shown in relation to the current villains although recently he has allowed a couple of the teenagers to verbally vent their anger at him. He’s there to beaten up and cut down and he just lets it happen. The majority of these scenes involve him effectively sacrificing his own life for the sake of protecting someone else, which sounds like a ‘heroic’ thing in theory but, given certain lines of his dialogue, it would appear that that is what Derek thinks he’s useful for. He notably never thinks twice about throwing his life on the line, he just sees a situation that could potentially be solved if a physical sacrifice is made and goes for it, as far as he seems to be concerned his primary use within the group is the role of either a distraction or a temporary meat shield. The notable example of this would be the Sheriff’s station scene from 3b where he and Chris Argent, a man who he hasn’t seen eye to eye with in the past, are handcuffed to a bench. When Derek hears a bomb timer ticking down in the nearby office he doesn’t break out of the cuffs to save himself, despite mentioning earlier on that he could do it if he wanted, instead he literally turns to shield Chris with his own body. He does it instinctively and he does it regardless of his earlier comment about how he wouldn’t help the other man out. Call it a combination of his clear protective streak compared with a complete disregard for his own safety.
Given said lack of regard for his own well-being and combined with a few questionable decisions on his part, there is an overhanging question on just how healthy Derek is on a mental level. After all he’s suffered a large number of losses within a short span of time, been tortured on several occasions and he’s faced several acts of betrayal on top of all of that. Allowing your traitorous, murderous uncle into your home after all of that doesn’t seem like the sanest decision to make, family or no. It’s a popular theory that Derek suffers from PTSD whether that’s true or not remains to be seen but he has recently had a somewhat questionable episode involving a dream sequence. During the finale of 3b Derek is shot by a certain returning character, upon seeing this specific shooter Derek essentially retreats into his own head for a bit. There’s a short dream sequence where he explains what just happened within the waking world to an imaginary version of Stiles and then proceeds to state that he isn’t certain whether he’s dreaming or not. While the scene ends with him coming back to reality the more interesting thing to note id that this is the first time that an event has effectively proved to be too much for Derek to take in. Whether he has a particular diagnosable problem or not he’s clearly reached a point where he can no longer push aside traumatic events and carry on as though they didn’t happen, he’s reached his limit in terms of stress.