I have been a fan of Teen Wolf for years now and have recently started re-watching the show to write a fanfiction I came up with an idea for ages back, however, there's something that has always bugged me and I would love to hear everyone's opinions on! I know the simplest (and most likely) explanation is that Jeff Davis didn't fully think this through, but my brain craves order so please bear with me.
Laura Hale is found in two halves a fair distance away from each other (considering the police didn't find her immediately after conducting their search) and it's unclear to me whether the hunters were responsible or Peter. This is because I can't see the reasons WHY the hunters would involve themselves in Laura's death (implying it was Peter) but Kate does later claim they did it when she goads Derek into a fight ["Too bad she howled like a b**ch...WHEN WE CUT HER IN HALF"] which implied Derek was right in thinking they were responsible for the state of Laura's body. However, she always asserts they DIDN'T kill Laura which we know is true and means at least the first half of that sentence is definitely a lie.
The two halves being so far apart is also strange. We could explain it as coyotes carrying one or both parts of Laura away later on, but if that were the case there wouldn't be much left of her by the time she was found (as gross as it is). This tells me the separation was either deliberate or a result of the force from whatever cut/ripped her in half.
I can only come up with two possible scenarios for what happened, but they both have their problems:
- Peter killed Laura and a member of Chris' hunting party (or a group of them) found her body later on. They somehow recognized her was a werewolf who died in a fight with another werewolf (maybe because Laura Hale was well-known?) and decided to cut her in half to send a message to other supernatural creatures in the area that the hunters were here, effectively taking credit for Laura's death. They then told Kate what happened and she embellished for the sake of provoking Derek.
This one, while plausible, seems a little unlikely to me. The window this would have needed to happen in would be very tight. It also seems strange to (presumably) string up her dead body and cut it in half only to scatter the pieces, effectively losing the symbolism behind her being found in that state as it would take longer to identify her. It also doesn't seem to fit with the hunters' usual MO. They show no interest in the affairs going on between packs beyond what they need to for strategy and their code kind of depends on their prey being both alive and having killed a human (Laura fit neither of these prerequisites). I don't see a feasible reason they would have inserted themselves into Laura's death beyond the one I already laid out and even that could have been demonstrated through one of their ACTUAL kills.
- Peter killed Laura AND ripped her in half. The force it took to do so, with his strength, then sends the two halves of her body a large distance from each other by sheer happenstance. This is done to both take Laura's position as Alpha and either cover his tracks or blame the hunters so when Derek came he could use that to convince him to join the pack. The statement Kate gave when goading Derek was a lie intended to piss him off enough to come out.
This one seems more likely to me as it's in character for the insidious nature we see from Peter in season 1 and Kate is shown to have no problems with lying to anyone and everyone to get what she wants, but it also has its problems. If Peter ripped Laura in half to make it harder for the police to identify her and cover his tracks, that doesn't seem in character at all as he never seemed to care about that stuff and had legit the best apparent alibi in the show. If he did it to blame the hunters it WOULD be in character but would require he already knew the hunters were in town. He could have technically found this out at any point over the winter break (it's never said when exactly in those few weeks they arrived) but still somehow feels unlikely.
Which one do you think happened or is there a third possibility I haven't considered?
I know I'm overthinking it, but please I need to understand how this happened. It's literally crucial for the plot of my story lmao