Wolf Pack Season 1 Episode 1 Review: From a Spark to a Flame

Wolf Pack Season 1 Episode 1, “From a Spark to a Flame,” has what this teen drama needs to grow into its howl, even after it puts out its roaring wildfire.

The show also utilizes its inciting incident to distinguish itself from its closest predecessor, Teen Wolf. Paramount+‘s budget and advanced streaming rating immediately grant the show fewer constraints.

However, the anonymous caller does sound a lot like Teen Wolf‘s Ian Bohen, who plays the begrudging anti-hero, Peter Hale.

Whether that discreet cameo is true, Wolf Pack delivers surprises through its dedication to embracing the horror elements of the supernatural genre and how those meld with the growing pains of teen drama.

The violence displayed within the episode’s opening minutes is almost jarring because the camera never pans away from the gore — it moves towards it.

Even how Wolf Pack presents the werewolf transformation embraces horror. Everett hallucinates the bleeding ram in the bed next to him, only for another animal to attempt to emerge from the wound, combining psychological and body horror.

In that sense, “From a Spark to a Flame” is an unflinching prelude to what’s to come as Wolf Pack settles into itself. But, for now, the intense chaos on the highway inspires a widespread panic that reverberates throughout the episode — and the characters.

The wildfire rages from Wolf Pack‘s opening second, pulling viewers into the show with a devastating scene. However, the inciting incident’s placement leaves little time to invest in the characters at the heart of the environmental disaster.

“From a Spark to a Flame” struggles to define the characterization and motivations of some of the main characters. As a result, for most of the episode, characters like Everett and Blake largely fit around the fire rather than the opposite.

While the sequence on the bus presents Everett and Blake as people who act, look, and speak like teenagers (a surprisingly rare feat in teen dramas), their most distinct characteristics are Everett’s anxiety (an important mental health struggle to normalize on teen shows) and Blake’s aversion to technology.

Wolf Pack eventually (and thankfully) provides layers to those characteristics by showing how Everett’s mother downplays and dismisses his anxiety and its triggers, revealing Blake’s complicated relationship with her father and responsibilities at home, and Everett helping Blake through her anxiety attack on the overpass.

Adjusting the script’s structure for some of that character work to precede the wildfire would elevate the climactic reveal of Everett and Blake being bitten, creating a better opportunity to understand what such a change means for them.

Instead, “From a Spark to a Flame” constantly juggles general exposition, introductory characterization, and supernatural world-building with slightly less than satisfying results. Still, Wolf Pack‘s overall potential shines through those rougher parts.

Wolf Pack unsurprisingly finds its best beats through how it marries the supernatural story at its core and the teen characters who make it all worthwhile.

For instance, one of its best sequences is when Everett and Blake realize that their bodies are changing post-bite, elevating Everett’s anxiety and Blake’s skepticism.

Unfortunately, much of Harlan and Luna Briggs’ dialogue carries the weight of exposition, disclosing information about everything from a fire 18 years ago that changed their lives to heavy-handed details about werewolves’ basic abilities.

Once “From a Spark to a Flame” gets that necessary exposition out of the way, Wolf Pack shows its hand of where their stories will go — Luna wants to belong, perhaps with a pack, and Harlan wants to find their biological father.

That yearning for a community is a recurring theme in most narratives, especially teen stories. Life changes quickly during that fundamental time in a young person’s life, and everything feels like life or death.

A supernatural element only amplifies those life-altering concerns and genuine emotions, and no one knows that better than Sarah Michelle Gellar, who makes her return to genre TV after bringing stories like those to life on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Gellar makes a fiery entrance as the LAFD’s arson investigator, Kristin Ramsey. The camera breaks through the emergency room’s chaos to find her as the score swells — it’s an entrance fit for an actress with such a renowned presence in the subgenre.

Subsequently, Gellar’s Kristin should bring the heat in one of the episode’s final, propelling reveals — a teenager, possibly one on the bus, started the fire in the woods that forced the monster out and resulted in Everett and Blake being bitten.

While Kristin doesn’t know about all those moving parts, the arson investigator provides the vital connective tissue Wolf Pack‘s opening sequence lacks. Finally, “From a Spark to a Flame” fits the fire around the teens and teen wolves at Wolf Pack‘s heart.

That murder mystery’s twist coinciding with Blake, Everrett, Harlan, and Luna inexplicably being drawn to each other as — perhaps — members of the same pack instills enough intrigue and potential for Wolf Pack to burn bright in its debut season.

—

What did you think of the series premiere of Wolf Pack? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Critic Rating:

User Rating:

 

New episodes of Wolf Pack stream Thursdays on Paramount+. Try Paramount+ for free, right here

 Follow us on Twitter and on Instagram!

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!

15 Supernatural Teen TV Shows to Sink Your Teeth Into if You’re Excited About ‘Wolf Pack’