When the Wolfbane Blooms…
WOLF PACK – Season 1 Episode 8 – SPOILERS
Several young wolves get in trouble. Everett (Armani Jackson) is detained for a 72- hour psychiatric evaluation; Blake (Bella Shepard) and her brother Danny (Nevada Jose) are placed in the custody of social services; and Cyrus (Zack Nelson) is held for questioning in connection with the recent forest fires. Ramsey lets Harlan (Tyler Lawrence Gray) speak to Cyrus alone, and suggests he use the white noise machine in her office to ensure privacy. It turns out that white noise acts as a sort of carrier wave making other sounds louder and clearer to werewolves (or at least to Ramsey and Luna). Rain is white noise. Do werewolves hear better in the rain?
Aisling McBee as nine-year-old Luna
Cyrus, who was born about the same time his father was killed, maintains he did not start this fire, but confesses to Harlan that when he was nine years old he set a vacant housing development alight just to watch it burn. (In California, the statute of limitations prevents prosecution for Arson after six years, so Cyrus is safe.) Harlan promises to get Cyrus “out of this”. A short while later, Harlan is arrested for the murder of Officer Trent Miller, whom he did not kill.
Baron (Chase Liefeld), who last episode was stabbed with a silver-coated knife to turn him human, is taken to the local hospital by Briggs (Rodrigo Santoro), and is immediately kidnapped by Malcom (Gideon Emery) who uses him to lure Ramsey (Sarah Michelle Gellar) to Fire Station 45. Gellar can still do action scenes. In a Buffy-style battle, Malcom tries to kill Ramsey with an axe and a gun. He is subdued.
Blake Navarro and Everett Lang
Ramsey tells Briggs: “I’m Harlan and Luna’s mother. Baron is their brother,” and in the ensuing conversation, we learn that Blake, Everett, Harlan, and Luna are a pack, and that each pack member has a different superpower. Everett is strong; Blake has speed; Harlan has enhanced hearing; and Luna has an excellent sense of smell, but only Baron has the power to turn people into werewolves. Ramsey demonstrates her own superpower by healing Baron’s chest wound. Her healing ability seems similar to that of Nynaeve al’Meara in THE WHEEL OF TIME.
Indications are that Cyrus and Austin have wolfy tendencies as well. (See Baron’s fever dreams at the start of this episode.) They might be part of a different pack, spawned by a different mother wolf. If they are part of Ramsey’s pack, she isn’t saying. The average size of a litter of wolves is between four and seven cubs.
Ramsey points out the trophic cascade that resulted when wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in 1995. and when Briggs suggests that she wants Baron back just to create more wolves she responds: “I want my family back. This isn’t a moral quandary Garrett. I knew you were a good parent. I need you to help protect our children. Baron is gonna be just like Harlan and Luna. He’s gonna need both of us. Think about it. Blake and her brother can have a normal life. Everett never has to feel anxious again. Luna can have the pack she’s searching for. And Harlan can have the father he’s always wanted, in you.”
Rainer Dawn as Cody Malcom, Harlan’s drug supplier. | Dawn is also Noah in David DeCocteau‘s thriller THE WRONG BLIND DATE
Baron probably doesn’t need to actually bite Briggs to turn him. The transformation must be a result of mixing werewolf saliva with human blood, so Ramsey could just cut Briggs, get some of Baron’s saliva, and rub it in.
Malcom thought he saw a male werewolf killed by fire eighteen years ago, but the birth father of Harlan, Luna, and Baron might not be dead. Six years ago, when Harlan was twelve, he encountered a grey wolf in the woods that he strongly felt was his father. We don’t know that Baron was the werewolf who killed Officer Miller to protect Harlan. It’s more likely that Harlan’s biological dad would do something like that.
Sarah Michelle Gellar described her character, Ramsey, to Randy Swift of TVLine. “She’s fiercely protective of her cubs, and I think she did what she thought was right at the time. Sometimes loving someone means making sacrifices to protect them, like finding her cubs a home where she knew they’d be safe. I don’t think she knew Baron was alive until much later…And she’s losing some of those animal instincts as she becomes more human.” Asked where she would put Ramsey on the good/evil spectrum, she said: “I think she does bad things, but they’re for a good reason — at least in her mind. Is she evil, or is she just an apex predator? We’ll have to wait and find out.”