Teen Wolf, the fan-favorite MTV series, has found new life in the eagerly anticipated movie at Paramount+. While audiences are waiting for any and all news about the project with bated breath, they are taking the opportunity to revisit the beloved original show, which ran for six seasons and 100 episodes. There are bound to be interesting details either overlooked or unnoticed by viewers with that much content.
One of Teen Wolf's most common locations was Beacon Hills High School, where the majority of characters were students. Given the fact audiences spent a lot of time in the halls of Beacon Hills High throughout the series, there are plenty of things about the school and the characters that inhabited it that viewers may have missed.
The Different Locations Of Beacon Hills High
During Teen Wolf's run, two different high schools were used for Beacon Hills High's exterior and some interior shots. In seasons 1 and 2 of Teen Wolf, Briarcliff High School in Dekalb County, Georgia was used for the high school. Dekalb County is right outside of Atlanta. From season 3 to season 6, Teen Wolf moved production from Georgia to California, which meant they couldn't use Briarcliff anymore.
Palisades Charter High School was used as the new Beacon Hills High after this move. In addition, sets were built for interior shots because the school is still an active school. This school, in particular, appears a lot in television and movies dating back to the 1970s.
Hale Family Vault
Much like how Sunnydale High was built over the opening of the Hellmouth in The Hale Family Vault, according to Derek Hale (Tyler Hoechlin), predates Beacon Hills High School by many years. The vault contains mementos, family heirlooms, and millions of dollars in bonds.
Needless to say, the Hale Family Vault underneath the school is a wild detail for the series. It was also pretty underutilized—it took until season 4 for someone to mention it.
Convergence Of Currents
In addition to the buried treasure underneath the school, there is also a supernatural connection with Beacon Hills High. There's a convergence of telluric currents running under BHHS, which the McCall Pack tries (and spectacularly fails) to use in season 5 in an effort to trap the Dread Doctors. It doesn't work, but the detail is interesting to keep in mind.
A telluric current is an energy field that's found all over the world with a high number of them within Beacon Hills. The currents can also affect supernatural beings, which makes viewers wonder if that's why Beacon Hills High is a natural center of weird occurrences.
Senior Scribe
Worldbuilding is a writing technique that allows viewers to feel the show or movie they are watching is lived in with its own traditions and sets of rules. One of the best things Teen Wolf did with its worldbuilding was creating traditions within the town and the school. The best example of this is Senior Scribe, which is when the senior class of Beacon Hills High writes their initials on a bookshelf in the library.
Not only does this allow for the characters to reflect on those they had lost previously, such as Allison Argent (Crystal Reed), it also allows fans to look for nods to other characters who graduated and moved on from Beacon Hills.
Diverse Classes
Depending on the sort of school and the district, classes in U.S. public schools can vary from place to place. Even so, Beacon Hills High has a diverse class roster that includes such things as Economics, Introduction to Business, and Latin. Though, English teachers are evil given that two notable villains in the series, Victoria Argent (Eaddy Mays) and Jennifer Blake (Haley Webb), both taught the course.
At the very least, it's an odd detail to note. The other classes offered at Beacon Hills High School remain fairly normal, but its more eclectic offerings make the course curriculum stand out.
The Deaths
Given that Teen Wolf is supernatural drama series set in high school, it's not surprising some of the students end up dying over the course of the series. The real shock, however, is how relatively low the Teen Wolf student body count is in comparison to other similar series out there.
During the McCall Pack's time at Beacon Hills High School, fourteen students died. While this is a high number for a regular high school, it pales in comparison to the number of teenagers killed on other supernatural shows like The Vampire Diaries and its spinoffs.
ROTC Program
Like a lot of high schools across the U.S., Beacon Hills has an ROTC program. ROTC stands for Reserve Officers' Training Corps and is where students are trained to meet academic and physical requirements in order to enlist in one of the five branches of the U.S. military. In Teen Wolf, Vernon Boyd (Sinqua Walls) was a member of the Beacon Hills ROTC with aspirations of ing the Air Force.
After Boyd's death in the series, the ROTC wasn't really mentioned again. Presumably, it's still active at Beacon Hills High.
The Cyclones
Lacrosse is the big sport on campus at Beacon Hills High School, with most of the McCall Pack of the team at one point or another during the show's run. The name for all athletic teams at Beacon Hills High is the Cyclones with the lacrosse, basketball, cross country, and swim teams using it. Though, it's unknown if the girls' teams use the same name or a different one, which can happen at many U.S. schools.
Either way, athletes in one sport tend to participate in another during the off-season. In this case, Coach Bobby Finstock (Orny Adams) required the lacrosse team to cross-country in order to remain fit for lacrosse.
Battleground
As a central location for the characters of Teen Wolf, the school was a battleground multiple times over the course of the series. From fighting the Alpha back in season 1 to the Dread Doctors in season 5, Beacon Hills High ends up being a place where warring packs or supernatural beings come to duke things out once and for all.
One of the best examples of this is the final showdown of the Nogitsune in season 3 after the pack got the creature out of Stiles.
How Many Teachers?
Much like the Defense Against the Dark Arts professors at Hogwarts, Beacon Hills High went through a lot of teachers over the show's run. Whether evil, killed, or somehow manipulated into working there, Teen Wolf's teachers weren't made to last very long within the school or the world. Finstock and Ken Yukimura (Tom T. Choi) have emerged as the only "good" teachers within Beacon Hills High School.