Fifteen years on, MTV's Teen Wolf is still the best werewolf drama on Netflix

Let’s be honest, the TV landscape in the early 2010s was absolutely crawling with supernatural dramas – vampires, fairytale characters, blokes with trench coats doing battle with demons, you name it. Yet among the howling mob, Teen Wolf (the MTV series, not the cheesy 80s film) morphed into something quite special – and even now, it’s got a real bite to it.

MTV’s Teen Wolf ran for six seasons between 2011 and 2017.

Now, before you start conjuring up images of Michael J. Fox slam-dunking in a werewolf wig, this version’s a whole different animal. Sure, it’s loosely based on the 1985 film, and yes, our main lad Scott McCall (played by Tyler Posey) does get bitten by a wolf and suddenly find himself juggling schoolwork, romance, and a hairy transformation, but MTV’s take cranks the stakes way up. Instead of just awkward body hair and basketball buffs, TV Scott’s after-school special is more along the lines of ‘try not to murder your mates every full moon’ and ‘maybe save the world while you’re at it’ – y’know, normal teenage stuff.

The Pack That Really Worked

The secret sauce here is the cast. Nearly everyone gets something proper to do over the show’s six-season run, but Scott’s central journey carries real weight – not just another moody teen with a secret. And then there’s his best mate Stiles Stilinski (Dylan O'Brien), who is, honestly, the warm heart and sharp wit that glues the whole thing together. Stiles is one of the few characters who stays fully human the whole way, and you might expect that to make him a bit dull by comparison. Instead, he ends up easily the most relatable – O'Brien’s performance genuinely doesn’t get enough credit for how effortlessly it grounds the show.

But Teen Wolf’s biggest trick is that even with all its monster lore, you still feel like you’re just another mate in the group. Scott’s hopeless pining for Allison, Stiles and Lydia stumbling after dark for clues, and the surly one, Derek, showing up in a leather jacket looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. Even when they’re dealing with, say, werewolf hunters or full-on supernatural baddies threatening to flatten Beacon Hills, you care because you know this lot – it’s recognisably the drama and daftness of being a teenager, just with a lot more claws and glowing eyes.

Why This One Stuck

While plenty of shows from that era tried to balance dark plotlines with schoolyard awkwardness, the writing and tone actually lands here. Some episodes get genuinely heavy or creepy, letting the cast go for broke emotionally; then, inevitably, someone trips over their own trainers or cracks a joke literally mid-battle. Much like being seventeen, it’s a bit cringe but also disarmingly honest. It lands somewhere between nostalgic comfort and properly epic monster epic—plus, with Jeff Davis steering the show, there’s always some bonkers supernatural wrinkle you won’t see coming next episode.

• Scott McCall (Tyler Posey) – heroic werewolf, occasionally gets the girl, mostly just wants to survive high school
• Stiles Stilinski (Dylan O'Brien) – loud, loyal, brilliant, human to a fault
• Lydia Martin (Holland Roden) – genius, banshee, better style sense than the rest of them combined
• Derek Hale (Tyler Hoechlin) – wolf, mentor, owns 1,000 jackets
• Allison Argent (Crystal Reed) – love interest, archer, comes with complicated family baggage

Let’s be clear: this isn’t just another teen drama in wolf’s clothing. Teen Wolf stuck around long after its supernatural rivals packed up; you can still binge the whole lot on Netflix now, and even 15 years on, it remains probably the best supernatural YA series of its era. Oh, and that well-meaning but bumpy 2023 reunion film? As far as the fans are concerned, it didn’t happen. We move.