Why did Peter bite Scott?
It’s that same old question that keeps coming up.
In S1, I thought Peter was an insane mastermind who bit Scott because he had some larger plan, as he did with Lydia. Eventually we’d see it play out.
In S4, I still think Peter was insane in S1. He’d been driven crazy by trauma and being in that coma for so long, and possibly by his nurse too. (Was she abusive? How did that whole thing start when he was comatose? I’m really starting to think the theory that Nurse Jennifer was Jennifer Blake has legs.)
He definitely bit Lydia with a cunning plan in mind – he could easily have known Lydia’s family were banshees, given the Hales and Martins have both lived in Beacon Hills a long time. He had a long time to lie there and think about who to bite if he was alpha, so I believe he’d thought Lydia’s bite through.
It’s possible Peter also knows something about Raphael McCall which would make Scott a good target.
But on the other hand, S4 showed pretty clearly that Peter is driven by instinct and emotion, and it undermines his capacity to plan. He’s not a mastermind, he’s just cunning, and it’s actually not that hard to out-maneouver him.
So is there a plan after all? Did he just bite Scott because Scott was there and Peter wanted to get started on making a pack? Peter didn’t show any signs of wanting to bite other people to make a pack, and he had heaps of time to do it in.
Or did he have some other motive? Was it just instinct? Did he bite Scott because Scott was fiddling about right near Laura’s body? Was he being protective of Laura’s body? Did he momentarily think Scott was one of the people who cut Laura in half? Was he trying to bite a hunter as part of his vengeance?
S1 was much more tightly plotted than later seasons, so I think there probably was a reason in Davis’ head. I don’t think it’s the one we were told in canon, that Peter was trying to make a pack. He even stopped and asked Stiles, before biting him. If Lydia was his fall-back, and he didn’t expect her to be pack, and Stiles was how he asked someone to become pack, then what was Scott’s bite about? It doesn’t fit.
Why Scott, is the thing. In S1 it was easy to take for granted that he was a reasonable character to be bitten. Why not? He’s an everyman, right. That’s a common trope.
Except he’s not an everyman, is he. That’s not his role at all. So, why Scott?
I wonder if we’ll ever find out what Peter’s reason was?