Teen Wolf is no stranger to the “will-they, won’t-they” trope, it is a teen drama after all. As the fifth season progresses though, it looks like Teen Wolf will finally have a fan favorite couple pair up, effectively moving them from “will-they, won’t-they” to “they did.” Stiles and Lydia might finally end up together. The evidence is everywhere. Not just tweets from actors Linden Ashby and Holland Roden but in the show itself. Stiles and Lydia have always been on-screen together quite a bit but in season five that number has only increased. Teen Wolf makes a lot of questionable choices in terms of its character but here the show is right. Stiles and Lydia are absolutely meant to end up together.
Why Stiles and Lydia Will Be Together
When Lydia and Stiles held that long and intense moment while she was severely injured in “Dreamcatchers”, there was a hint that the two might have a romantic future. There has also been an increase of time the two have spent together, at the expense of their other relationships. The final nail in the coffin though, was Scott telling Kira about how Stiles still likes Lydia in “A Novel Approach” and how Stiles’ feelings have changed over the course of the series. Before this speech, Stiles and Lydia’s have always been filled with romantic subtext but Scott brought that subtext to the surface. Stiles has feelings for Lydia and he always will.
Scott’s speech underlined the central reason why now is the perfect time for Stiles and Lydia to come together. Stiles has held a torch for Lydia since the very first episode but it hasn’t always been a healthy attraction. Teen Wolf took every one of its five seasons to move Stiles and Lydia from a slightly obsessive schoolboy unrequited crush to an actual partnership filled with mutual respect and admiration.
Stiles and Lydia have more on-screen interaction than almost any other pair of characters. There is, of course, such a thing about platonic friendship between men and women. Typically though friends don’t heavily grip onto one another in moments of danger or make out with one another to stop panic attacks.
The more Lydia and Stiles spend time together (and less they spend with their other friends), the more obvious it is that Teen Wolf is heading down the path to make “Stydia” canon. As of this moment in season five, Stiles spends more time with Lydia than he does with his actual girlfriend Malia. Teen Wolf has teased Stiles and Lydia getting together before but it has never been this focused and concentrated. Their previous moments of sexual tension have been few and far between. In season five, there has at least been one moment showing their connection in every episode.
Why Stiles and Lydia Need to be Together
There is very little explanation needed to demonstrate why Lydia and Stiles are perfect for each other. There is no other character that is better suited for them as a partner.
Stiles and Malia were cute while they lasted but their relationship has dissolved in a big way in season five. Now they seem more like close acquaintances than longtime boyfriend and girlfriend. While Stiles is problem solving with Lydia, Malia is off somewhere ogling Theo’s disgustingly evil muscles. Unless something changes soon, Stiles and Malia’s relationship is doomed to fail very soon.
As far as Lydia’s other suitor, Deputy Parrish, Stiles has the advantage because his hypothetical relationship with Lydia wouldn’t be considered borderline statutory rape. It’s true that Lydia is eighteen years old and more mature than most grown adults. Still, Lydia’s interactions with Parrish can’t help but feel skin-crawlingly weird and wrong, due to the mere fact that she is in high school and he is not. Not to mention the fact that no one knows what kind of supernatural something Parrish actually is, but it doesn’t appear to be benevolent. Good guys typically don’t hoard bodies in the nude whilst in some kind of hypnotic state.
Simply put there is no one that works better together on Teen Wolf than Lydia and Stiles. Let’s just forgive Scott for his momentary amnesia when he said that Lydia wasn’t supernatural in “A Novel Approach”, everything else he told Kira was true. Lydia and Stiles wouldn’t have survived as long without each other. Hell, no one on Teen Wolf would have survived this long without Stiles and Lydia working together. It helps that Lydia has handy exposition powers so she has visions of everyone’s mortal peril before it happens but without Stiles, she wouldn’t have been able to interpret these visions so quickly.
At the risk of sounding incredibly sappy, though that ship has probably sailed, Lydia and Stiles are two halves of the same whole. They respect and care deeply about one another but they also challenge each other. It is their unique combination of cooperation and bickering that routinely save their lives and everyone around them.
None of Lydia’s previous relationships have been able to match her intellectually. Aiden was barely able to form sentences let alone solve sprawling mysteries. The same goes for Stiles. Malia is a nice match in terms of personality but she has never been able to truly rise to Stiles’ level in terms of deductive reasoning. Stiles and Lydia are already the best couple on Teen Wolf, even if they aren’t officially dating… at least not yet.
But what do you think? Is it obvious that Stiles and Lydia will end up dating by the end of the season? Do you want them to be together? Or do you prefer them with other people? And if so, who hurt you?
Teen Wolf airs Mondays at 10pm on MTV.
(images courtesy of MTV)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
Derek is a Philadelphia based writer and unabashed TV and comic book junkie. The time he doesn’t spend over analyzing all things nerdy he is working on his resume to be the liaison to the Justice League.
