| This article is about the Löwenmensch and physics teacher, Garrett Douglas. You may be looking for Garrett, a Deadpool assassin from Season 4. |
| “ | "I'd almost say you enjoy this, Scott-- the pursuit of utterly futile endeavors." "Step back from the diverter... Or I'll make you step back." "Now that's the German way of doing things. You would have made an excellent Nazi Youth." "Maybe you didn't hear me... I said step back." "And maybe you didn't hear me--" |
” |
— Garrett Douglas and Scott McCall in Riders on the Storm
| ||
Garrett Douglas, also known as Der Soldat (German: "The Soldier") and Hauptmann (German: "Captain," referencing his status in the Nazi German military), and most commonly referred to simply as Douglas, was a minor character in Season 5 and a main antagonist in Season 6A of Teen Wolf.
He was initially introduced by the former name as the new physics teacher at Beacon Hills High School; however, it was soon revealed that Douglas was also the Nazi Alpha Löwenmensch (a supernatural Wolf/Lion shapeshifter hybrid) who escaped from the tank in the Dread Doctors' lair at the end of Season 5. According to Theo Raeken, he fought in World War II in the Nazi German military, specifically the Anherbe, the division of the military that dealt with using the occult to win the war. He researched the Wild Hunt, believing that the Ghost Riders, an army of the undead who do not possess the weaknesses of mortals such as exhaustion, age, and mortality, were the key to defeating the Allied powers.
Unfortunately for Douglas, his attempt to enslave the Ghost Riders caused him to sustain a serious whip lash on his back, infecting him with Ghost Rider venom and preventing him from healing as he normally would. He sought out the Dread Doctors, immortal scientists who worship and study the supernatural, believing that they could help heal him, only to become imprisoned and experimented on by them in a tank of green serum of their own making, which was located on telluric currents to make it more powerful.
Douglas stayed in the tank, hooked up to a scuba-style mask in order to breathe, for the next seventy years, where his blood mingled with the green serum and was subsequently absorbed by his bodily tissues, giving him a power boost that made him equivalent strength of an Alpha, a Dread Doctor, and a Ghost Rider.
All the while, the Dread Doctors used him as a way to extend their lifespans by using the green serum as well, which had gained its own power from his blood. Garrett was seen several times throughout Season 5, inside the tube in the operating theater, though his skin was so waterlogged from being in a tank for the better part of a century that he was unrecognizable.
It was later revealed that the green serum inside the tube that Garrett was in possessed certain regenerative properties, which became so powerful after being saturated with Douglas' blood that it allowed Theo Raeken to inject it into four deceased Chimeras (who had been dead anywhere from several weeks to just one day) and return them to life in order to create his own pack.
At the start of Season 6A, this character was said to be a charming new teacher at the high school who posed a threat to the town. According to show writer, Jeff Davis, in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, the Alpha Nazi Löwenmensch has a particular interest in the Ghost Riders who came to town.[1]
Early life[]
Douglas is known as a Löwenmensch, a shapeshifter who is a hybrid of a wolf and a lion. It is unknown if he was born this species or if he was turned through a bite or other means, but at any rate, he was a supernatural as an adult while he served as a Captain (Hauptmann) in the Nazi German military under Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, specifically the Anherbe division created by Himmler to use the occult to win the war.
It's possible that Douglas was part of a secret Nazi occult experiment to hybridize lycanthropy with other animals, thus explaining how he became a Löwenmensch, although this was never confirmed. Douglas' obsession was with the Wild Hunt, as he intended to use them as an "unstoppable force" with which to win the war; however, though the Nazi Party was a means to end for his own agenda (meaning he was not a devout follower of their belief system of white supremacy, though by allying with them he was at least inherently complicit), the exact nature of how he intended to do this remains unknown.
When he led his squadron to a Rift in order to overpower and capture the Wild Hunt, the Ghost Riders appeared and started taking and erasing them all, one at a time. Douglas was one of the last ones standing and ran away out of self-preservation; though he did manage to escape being taken, he was struck in the back by one of the Ghost Riders' whips, which caused a shallow cut that had difficulty healing.
Seeking answers as to how to treat the wound, Douglas sought out the Dread Doctors in hopes that they could help him. However, they wanted him as a test subject more, so they injected him with their green serum before chaining him up, putting an oxygen mask on him, and putting him in a tank of the green serum.
The serum mixed with his blood and the venom from the whip and was then reabsorbed through his tissues over the next seventy years that he spent in the tank, augmenting his Alpha Löwenmensch powers and giving him the additional strength of a Ghost Rider and a Dread Doctor. The Dread Doctors then continued to use the serum to extend their own lives in a form of pseudo-immortality while Douglas remained in suspended animation.
In 2012, when the Dread Doctors were killed by the recently-resurrected Beast of Gevaudan, Douglas (who was no longer being sedated around-the-clock by the now-deceased Doctors) saw his opportunity to escape and punched his way out of his tube before taking on the identity of a Physics teacher at Beacon Hills High School. ("Apotheosis"), ("Memory Lost")
Throughout Teen Wolf[]
Douglas made his first appearance in Creatures of the Night, when Belasko returned to the Dread Doctors' operating theater; he was in the tank of green serum and connected to a ventilator mask and was not identified by name. He was then seen at various points throughout the season, such as during the experimentation on Tracy Stewart ("Parasomnia"), Donovan Donati ("Condition Terminal"), Josh Diaz ("Required Reading"), Corey Bryant, Hayden Romero and Liam Dunbar. ("Ouroboros")
In Status Asthmaticus, Douglas was seen in his tank in the operating theater when Theo Raeken forcibly brought Lydia Martin there. She watched as he extracted a large amount of green serum from the tank in a syringe gun before performing the Memory Manipulation ritual on her to determine the location of the Nemeton. The serum's regenerative properties had been enhanced by Douglas' blood, allowing Theo to use it to resurrect four of the deceased Chimeras-- Hayden Romero, Tracy Stewart, Josh Diaz, and Corey Bryant.
In The Beast of Beacon Hills, Theo Raeken brought Scott McCall and Liam Dunbar to the Beacon Hills Preserve, where he revealed more information about Garrett Douglas. He explained that the Dread Doctors called him Der Soldat, which is German for "The Soldier," and that from what he knew, he fought on the side of Nazi Germany in World War II. Theo went on to say that he was also an Alpha Werewolf, and the Dread Doctors found him and used his healing factor to prolong their lives for decades.
According to Theo, the Dread Doctors took Douglas wherever they went, and that the needed a "pretty unique set of conditions" to keep him alive; namely, a power source and a location that is both underground and on a telluric current. Because of these necessary conditions, Theo, Scott and Liam planned to use their map of the currents to figure out where the Dread Doctors were keeping both Douglas and Mason Hewitt, the last Chimera who became the vessel for the resurrected Beast of Gevaudan.
In Apotheosis, the tank that was used to hold Douglas in the shed in the Beacon Hills Preserve was seen to have had a hole punched through the glass, allowing the green serum to leak out and Douglas to escape his watery prison. Wet footsteps were shown leading away to the tank as Douglas rejoined humanity for the first time in seventy years.
In Memory Lost, Garrett Douglas, now youthful-looking and more or less healthy, had become the new physics teacher at Beacon Hills High School, with the McCall Pack and their allies completely unaware that he was actually the body from the tank in the Dread Doctors' operating theater.
During his junior-level physics class, Douglas explained to the students (including Liam Dunbar, Mason Hewitt, Hayden Romero, and Corey Bryant) the basis of "Schrödinger's cat" through an elaborate illustration of a cat drawn on the blackboard in colored chalk. All of the young women in the class and Corey are clearly swooning over their attractive new teacher, much to Liam and Mason's exasperation.
Douglas called on Hayden Romero to explain the purpose of the day's experiment, and she correctly explained that it illustrated the concept of quantum superposition, since light is both a particle and a wave until it is observed—as a result, the cat is both alive and dead until someone opens the box. Douglas went on to ask, "Does observing something changes its behavior or alter it's outcome?" before instructing them to break up into groups of four for the laboratory assignment.
When Liam, Hayden, Mason, and Corey realized that their phones weren't able to geo-locate as usual, they discovered that their phones' compass was also glitchy and spinning all over the place. This led Corey to use his powers of Adaptive Camouflage to become invisible and steal Douglas' analog compass from the cabinet in hopes of figuring out why the magnetic fields seemed to be disrupted. Liam and Mason were directed by the compass toward the Turner family's home, where each of the members of the family had (unbeknownst to the McCall Pack at the time) been captured by the Ghost Riders of the Wild Hunt and erased from reality.
Once Liam and Mason ran into Scott and Stiles, who were investigating Alex Turner's family after he was found alone in an abandoned car, the compass became so overwhelmed by electromagnetic energy that the glass cover cracked, leading Mason to return it to Douglas' cabinet in hopes that he wouldn't notice it was broken.
In Superposition, Scott McCall, whose mind was trying to figure out what memories he was missing after his best friend Stiles Stilinski was captured by the Ghost Riders and erased from reality, was somehow drawn to Stiles' old locker.
However, just as Scott was about to break the combination lock on the locker and investigate its contents, he was caught by Douglas, who admitted that, though he was new to Beacon Hills and the high school, he was still pretty sure that breaking into someone else's locker was against the rules, causing the sheepish Scott to walk away without argument. However, Douglas seemed to know more than he was letting on as he watched Scott head toward his next class.
In Sundowning, Douglas began teaching another junior-level physics class, with the day's lesson topic being how properties of different substances can be changed by adding or subtracting other substances. His first example was a small metal rod which he said on its own was powerless; when he called on Corey Bryant to see what he thought could make the rod significant, Corey suggested that it could be transformed with electricity into a powerful magnet.
However, just as Douglas demonstrated the rod becoming a magnet by running an electrical current through it, he began having a serious coughing fit that seemed to be triggered by sudden flashbacks to his time as a captive in the tank in the Dread Doctors' operating theater. Though the first fit was easily subdued with a few sips of water, the flashbacks that followed it triggered a coughing attack so severe that he was forced into the laboratory closet to use heliox therapy to calm himself, not only revealing himself to be Der Soldat, but also revealing him to be the person who killed the cube truck driver and stole the medical-grade helium in the season premiere.
In the flashbacks to the events of Apotheosis, Douglas was shown waking up from his sedatives shortly after Mason Hewitt in his Beast form killed the Dread Doctors. Since they were not there to give him more medication to sedate him, he was able to punch through the glass in the tank and free himself, though he was still weakened from spending seven decades in the tank. His skin was initially covered in sores from being underwater for so long, but his accelerated healing power, enhanced by spending so much time in the green serum, caused him to quickly heal back to his youthful appearance. He then smirked as his eyes glowed Alpha red.
Douglas later murdered a janitor at the Beacon Hills High School, where he tore out the back of the man's head in order to consume his pineal gland, which somehow fortified his condition and helped cure him of the respiratory disease he had developed while on a ventilator for nearly a century.
In Relics, Douglas was supposedly at the lacrosse game, where he witnessed the Ghost Riders coming and taking three of the players who had been "marked" at the party at the McCall House in Sundowning—Okafur, Steinbach, Wallace, and Gwen. He would later confess to Hayden and Liam that he saw them shooting and whipping people who then disappeared right before his eyes in a puff of green smoke.
In Ghosted, the McCall Pack split up their focus into two groups, with Scott, Lydia, and Malia going to Canaan, California to check out a lead they got from the still-missing Stiles regarding the Ghost Riders, while Liam and Hayden tried to come up with a way to catch a Ghost Rider in hopes of being able to question them on what they were doing in Beacon Hills.
While Hayden and Liam were discussing their plan—to create a lightning rod and use it to lure the Ghost Riders' into a trap by summoning their lightning—Douglas, who knew they were involved in the Ghost Riders' business, eavesdropped on their plans so that he could set them up to try to help him achieve the same goal, albeit for different reasons. He allowed himself to be "caught" making a lightning rod in the high school supply closet and pretended to be a bystander who witnessed the Riders capturing and erasing students from reality at the lacrosse game in Relics so that the two young Werewolves would be willing to team up with him.
Once the two informed him of their plan, he pointed out the limitations from a physics standpoint—namely, the fact that the Ghost Riders' atmokinetic powers could theoretically allow them to control where the lightning went and that he was not capable of building a conduit strong enough to withstand the electrical current from said lightning, Liam decided their best bet was to break Theo Raeken, who had stolen Josh Diaz's powerful electromagnetokinetic powers, out of his underground prison so that he could act as the conduit, since Josh was able to absorb enormous amounts of electricity with his powers.
Though Theo was initially disoriented and aggressive upon being released from his prison, once he was reoriented, he reluctantly agreed to help them, as he knew they would send him back if he wasn't cooperative. However, after he failed to absorb even one-fifth of the electricity contained in a lightning bolt, Liam, Hayden, and Douglas quickly realized that Theo no longer had Josh's powers, leading the former two to decide to send him back.
Theo, desperate not to return to his prison, insisted that he could still be useful, revealing that he had learned a lot about the Ghost Riders from the Dread Doctors, and that he was certain he knew things that the pack didn't know about, shooting a pointed look at Douglas that implied he was well aware of the man's true identity.
Douglas, not wanting Theo to out him to the others, at least not yet, agreed with Hayden and suggested they send him back, causing Theo to anxiously ask who was making the decisions, wondering aloud where Scott and Stiles were. Hayden and Liam were shocked to learn that Theo still remembered Stiles, who had been erased from the rest of their memories, and ultimately decided he could still be useful to them. Douglas seemingly allowed Theo to return to the McCall House with Hayden and Liam without incident, despite his fear of what Theo would tell him about who he really was.
In Heartless, Douglas appeared when Theo was alone with the captured Ghost Rider. He forced Theo to break the mountain ash barrier around the trap holding the Ghost Rider inside, then stepped into the cage, grabbing the Ghost Rider's mystical whip before killing him and eating his pineal gland. Liam initially blamed the death of the Ghost Rider on Theo until Scott and Mason realized that the cause of death was the same as other murders that had been going on long before Theo was released from his prison, which led them to believe Theo when he explained that Douglas was responsible.
Douglas was then seen in the woods, where he confronted a confused Corey Bryant. Corey, confused, asked what he was doing, to which Douglas responded with, “Something I should have done a long time ago” before extending the whip outward, causing the tip to wrap around Corey's throat. When Douglas yanked the whip back, Corey disappeared into a burst of green smoke, revealing he had been banished to the Phantom Train Station like Stiles Stilinski and many others.
The camera angle changed, making his face visible and revealing that his eyes were no longer the bright red of an Alpha, but a greenish-blue color similar to the color of the smoke created by the Ghost Riders, a change seemingly caused by his consumption of the Ghost Rider's pineal gland.
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In Blitzkrieg,
In Memory Found,
In Riders on the Storm,Personality[]
Not much is known about his true personality, but, as a former Nazi, Douglas likely had racial prejudice towards others. However, Mason believed that the Nazis were only a means to an end for Der Soldat as its revealed that he only wants a supernatural unstoppable army for himself, meaning he cares for no cause but his own, making it unlikely that he was a devout white supremacist. In a strange twist, Garrett told Scott McCall that he would have made an excellent Nazi youth due to his indomitable will and ability to keep fighting against all odds, despite the fact that Scott, as a young man with Hispanic/Latino heritage, would have been discriminated against by the Nazis.
As "Garrett Douglas," he portrayed himself as a friendly and approachable teacher. Outside of the school, he was a serial killer, murdering others for their pineal glands so that he could consume them and become more powerful. It is unknown why he ate the pineal gland of all the organs and tissues in the body; it is likely due to it having some kind of healing properties, as Douglas still needed to recover from being badly lashed by the Ghost Riders' venom-coated whip in the 1940s. It is also possible that he believed he would gain something from the organ, since it is usually known as the "seat of the soul," according to Chris Argent, and Douglas was ultimately shown gaining enhanced powers after he killed and ate the pineal gland of a Ghost Rider.
Ghost Rider[]
After being turned into a Ghost Rider, his personality would have presumably been removed, hollowed out by the transformation process just like his soul.
Physical Appearance[]
Douglas was considered handsome, with most of his students being attracted to him, even those who already have partners. He possessed the physical traits valued by the Nazi Party during World War II, namely blond hair (which he keeps combed neatly to the side), pale white skin, and blue eyes. He typically dressed in the business casual style of a man in the modern age, sticking to jeans or dress pants paired with button-up shirts and/or sweaters in neutral colors.
In 1943, Garrett wore a black and red German Army captain's uniform emblazoned with the Nazi's swastika on his right armband.Garrett's Löwenmensch form is monstrous, being similar to Deucalion's but with Peter's gray and pallid skin tone. His brows are very angular and ridged, his cheek bones prominent and his lips altered and darkened.
Garrett had an identical appearance to the other Riders, with the exception of his coat, which had a red Nazi band around the arm, the only thing that pointed to his former identity.
Powers and Abilities[]
Powers[]
Douglas presumably possesses the typical powers of an Alpha Werewolf, though, as a rare Lowenmensch, he presumably possesses the powers of both a wolf and a lion. Chris Argent noted that the bite marks in Douglas' victims indicate a Werewolf with an unusually strong bite force.
After seventy years submerged in the Dread Doctors' Green Serum mixed with his own blood and the Ghost Rider venom seeping from the wound he sustained from their whip, his powers were enhanced to levels never before seen in a typical shapeshifter. Despite being inert for years, Douglas still had the strength to break free of the Dread Doctor's tube once regaining consciousnesses.
Douglas had recently displayed tremendous strength as he was able to defeat a Ghost Rider effortlessly. He was unaffected by a Ghost Rider's weapon and overpowered the Rider using just one hand, which he used to grab the Rider by its throat before killing it by using his powerful jaws to rip open the Rider's skull. The death of a Ghost Rider was previously believed impossible.
However, despite Douglas' previous display of power, he did not seem as powerful as first portrayed when battling Scott McCall, as the latter was able to go toe-to-toe with him and still land punishing shots, though Douglas was still overpowering Scott.
After consuming the Rider's pineal gland, Douglas' eyes glowed a shade of blue-green, indicating a change in his supernatural powers and status. He was then given abilities similar to that of a Ghost Rider, and was able to use their whips and control Jordan Parrish/Cerberus the Hellhound by speaking commands in German, as well as travel through Rifts without causing himself any harm.
After losing control over the Ghost Riders, they began to turn on Douglas despite his attempts to command them again. When Peter Hale reminded Douglas that the Wild Hunt has no leader, the Ghost Riders surrounded him and clutched on to him, transforming him into a Ghost Rider himself. Afterward, Douglas possessed all the powers of a Ghost Rider, though it is unknown if he retained anything of his original self.
Weaknesses[]
Garrett originally suffered from typical Werewolf weaknesses (Wolfsbane, letharia vulpina, full moons, lunar eclipses, electricity, etc.) but also suffered from breathing problems caused by being lashed in the ribs by the Ghost Rider's whip. This caused him to rely on regular heliox treatments to alleviate his symptoms until he ate one of the Ghost Riders' pineal glands and gained some of their powers.
After being transformed fully into a Ghost Rider, he may have lost his "Werewolf" weaknesses.
Equipment[]
- Ghost Rider Whip: After stealing the power of the Ghost Rider, Garrett is able to use the whip to erase people.
Etymology[]
- Garrett: Garrett is a masculine given name that originates from an English surname, which itself is derived from the given name Gerard or Gerald. Gerald is a Germanic name meaning "ruler of the spear," from the Germanic elements ger, meaning "spear," and wald, meaning "rule," a fitting name for the character Garrett, who wanted to gain control over the Wild Hunt in order to have an unstoppable army over which to rule. In America, the name Garrett means "defender," which is also an ironic choice for the character Garrett, given his line of work. The Normans brought this name to England during their conquest in 1066, where it died out in the Middle Ages (though it remained common in Ireland). The name was then revived in the English-speaking world in the 19th century.
- Douglas: Douglas is an Anglicized version of the Scottish surname Dubhghlas, which means "dark river," derived from the Gaelic elements dubh, meaning "dark, black" and glais, meaning "water, stream, or river." Douglas was originally the name of a river in Scotland before it was adapted by a Scottish clan of powerful earls in the region of the same name in Lanarkshire, south of Glasgow. It has been used as a masculine given name since the 16th century, and was also used as a feminine given name in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Trivia[]
- Douglas was a Nazi soldier in World War II and a member of their occult division, Anherbe.
- It is possible that Douglas has surpassed Satomi Ito as the oldest known living Werewolf due to being born prior to World War II.
- Additionally, since he became more powerful due to being submerged in the green serum, which was also made more powerful with his blood (so powerful that he was able to resurrect four Chimeras, several of whom had been dead for several weeks and kept the Dread Doctors alive for decades) that he was immortal or even more long-lived than typical shapeshifters. This would explain why he was still in his physical prime despite being in a tank for seventy years.
- Douglas is one of several teachers at Beacon Hills High School to be involved or at least aware of the supernatural world.
- This is later revealed to be because he is a Löwenmensch, a Werewolf/lion hybrid.
- It was revealed in Blitzkrieg that Douglas wanted the Wild Hunt for himself as his own supernatural army.
- Douglas later revealed in episode Riders on the Storm that he wanted Scott, Malia and Lydia in the army.
Gallery[]
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References[]
See also[]