“You’ve never seen anything like me. I am the Alpha of Alphas. I am the apex of apex predators! I am death, destroyer of worlds! I am the demon wolf!”

It has been four months since the events of Season 2. However, all is not calm in Beacon Hills, CA. Boyd and Erica had been taken by a new all-Alpha pack of wolves that has come to Beacon Hills, and Peter (Ian Bohen), Isaac (Daniel Sharman) and Derek (Tyler Hoechlin) have spent the last four months looking for them. Among these new Alphas are identical twins Ethan (Charlie Carver) and Aiden (Max Carver), and their leader Deucalion (Gideon Emery), who has his sights set on getting Derek to turn on his own and join his pack.

Meanwhile, Allison (Crystal Reed) spent the summer in France trying to forget Scott, Scott (Tyler Posey) spent his summer reading and going to summer school, and Lydia (Holland Roden) has been trying to find a new guy to replace Jackson, who left for London shortly after he turned. Also back this season are the always-humorous Stiles (Dylan O’Brien), and teammate Danny (Keahu Kahuanui) who gets a bit of a larger role this year.

While the Alphas pose a danger to Scott and his friends, a much larger threat has come to Beacon Hills. Some mysterious creature known as Darach is targeting and ritualistically killing specific groups of people, and it is up to Scott and his gang to figure out who this creature is, and how to stop it.

The first half of the third season is pretty much on par with the rest of the series. The episodes are a nice blend of action, mystery, drama and humor. In addition to the initial set-up mentioned above, other mysteries develop throughout the season. We also finally get some answers to some questions originally raised in the first season—one of which is What is Lydia?. This season, it was also great to see some of the side characters like Danny, Scott’s mother and Stiles’ father get to play a bigger role in Scott’s world.

Sometimes I found the over-arching plot a little hard to follow, but I still found the episodes to be entertaining. There’s an especially interesting 2-part episode in the middle of the season that finds the teens going on a cross-country meet, and staying at a haunted motel.

While this release is “Part 1” of Season 3, it still contains just as many episodes as the previous two DVD releases for the series. The third season of Teen Wolf is double-sized—24 episodes instead of the usual 12—so MTV is airing it in two halves. The first 12 episodes aired in this past Fall, and so Fox has released this first half of the season on DVD now so that viewers can catch up before the second half premieres on MTV in January.

While Teen Wolf airs in HD on MTV, it is only being released on standard-definition DVD. While the picture looks really crisp and clear, some of the special effects in the early episodes of the season look pretty bad, making it evident the actors are working in front of a green screen. One of the worst is the opening chase scene in the season premiere. I don’t recall these scenes looking like this when I first watched the season on MTV, so it might be due to the non-HD release of this DVD. The audio, on the other hand, sounds great and captures all of the excitement and musical soundtrack. Speaking of the soundtrack, it should be noted that the back of the DVD says that the series has been musically edited. While I don’t know what the specific changes are, the series still sounded as great as ever to me while watching this DVD.

As for the bonus features, the DVD contains some deleted scenes, another fun gag reel, the always-popular shirtless montage, as well as the seasons 1 & 2 recap special that aired on MTV just before the third season. Sadly there are no audio commentaries or Comic-Con panel this time around—hopefully these will return when Part 2 of the season is released on DVD.

Overall, fans of the series should be pleased with this DVD release, and will want to pick it up to re-watch the first half of the season before the new episodes return in January.

What’s Included on the DVD:

Episodes:

• All 12 episodes of the first half of Season 3
  Disc 1: “Tattoo”, “Chaos Rising”, “Fireflies”, “Unleashed”
  Disc 2: “Frayed”, “Motel California”, “Currents”, “Visionary”
  Disc 3: “The Girl Who Knew Too Much”, “The Overlooked”, “Alpha Pact”
• Audio: English 5.1 DD
• English SDH, Spanish subtitles

Extras:

• Deleted Scenes (4:21)
  There are six deleted scenes spread across the 3 discs. While they don’t really add anything to the story, it’s nice to see them included here.
• Gag Reel (3:24)
  A really fun blooper real with flubbed lines, pratfalls, cracking up, dancing, and just having fun on set
• Return of the Shirtless Montage (2:08)
  Back for the third go-around, it’s a montage of some of the season’s shirtless scenes and shirtless bloopers set to music.
• Back to the Pack (38:26)
  This special aired on MTV just before the third season premiere. Actors Tyler Posey, Dylan O’Brien, Crystal Reed, Holland Roden and Tyler Hoechlin recap the events and characters of the first two seasons and give viewers a couple hints of what they’ll see in the third season.

Final Thoughts:

This release contains 12 more fun and exciting episodes of MTV’s Teen Wolf series. While there are less bonus features than we’ve seen on the past two releases, those that are included are entertaining. Fans will want to pick this up to re-watch the episodes before the series returns to MTV in January.