“We’re being hunted,” -- ‘Bitten’ Is Back For a Second Season

Laura Vandervoort stars as Elena Michaels; with fellow pack members Logan, Clay, Jeremy and Nick.

“We’re being hunted,” -- ‘Bitten’ Is Back For a Second Season

Four stars-- blood runs thick and tensions are high.

SyFy’s paranormal thriller, ‘Bitten’ returned Friday night with a double episode premiere. Season one introduced viewers to Elena Michaels a young twenty-something and the world’s only female werewolf who was desperate for a human existence. Her posh city residence, photography job, and dedicated boyfriend weren’t enough to keep her past, in particular the pack of fellow werewolves she abandoned, from catching up with her.

Elena was an absolute warrior in season one.

Season one was an explosive trip that featured murderous “mutts” -- a pack of deranged serial-killers-turned werewolves-- led by a power-hungry lone wolf with the goal to destroy other packs, starting with Stone Haven, the elegant estate helmed by alpha Jeremy Danvers and home to the pack that Elena was so eager to never return to. Reluctantly, Elena rejoined her pack and fought back claw and fang against Daniel Santos and his ruthless crew. Stone Haven came out on top, but not without heavy casualties.

Jeremy, Elena, and the whole Stone Haven pack, spring into action seconds into the episode. What starts with a simple case of tracking down the pack’s undesirable number one, Jeremy’s father-- Malcolm-- and finding pack-member Logan’s pregnant fiancee -- Rachel who was spirited away last season-- is just the beginning.

The wolves are guilty, furious, and determined to get revenge, right the wrongs, and prove their might. They’re at the end of their rope but they are not even close to losing. All fang and claw, 'Bitten' slashes right into the action from the opening seconds of the premiere. The newest assault on Elena and Stone Haven is like no other.

Ruth Winterbourne (Tammie Isbell) & her witchy daughter Paige (Tommie-Amber Pirie) 

Prodded by new powerful dark forces from a coven of witches and other supernatural baddies, ‘Bitten’ is at once  bloody, gorey, violent, and fantastic. Tongues are ripped out. Necks are snapped. Eyes are flooded with blood. The CGI werewolf effects, especially in the opening scene where Nate Parker made a run for it from the bleak holding cell he was trapped in-- are far improved from the earlier, clumsier looking, models of last season. And OFC can’t forget the hot and hungry sex scenes. Yup. Bitten is back.

“We’re being hunted.”  The leader of the coven, Ruth Winterbourne,  warns. Malcolm Danvers, she says, is a most-wanted werewolf. A mysterious “He” is eager to get their hands on Malcolm and shred whoever and whatever tries to get in the way of it.

“Everyone’s afraid of something. Even the devil.” Elena says grimly.

Elena is a wonderful character and easily one of the strongest parts of the show. She sells it. There’s no doubt that she’s fierce, determined, and an absolute firecracker. She’s got a lot of rage in her and when she lashes out in the scene when she screams, “You wanna see the wolf? HERE I AM!” it’s a stunning performance, that shoots the tension (and the stakes) up higher than ever.

Yes, she’s tall, blond and pretty, but she’s no pushover. Much like how Sarah Michelle Gellar was able to sell Buffy with her positively pixie proportions in Joss Whedon’s ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ series, Elena is a convincing whirlwind of grit and spunk.

However, Elena is less cuddly than Buffy. “I don’t smile much any more these days,”  she says with her words as heavy as stones.She hasn’t been defeated, but she’s definitely been beaten down bad, and fueled by a furious rage, Elena is still hanging on.

The pack vigilantly searches for Rachel.

The witches mention that the force, whatever or whoever “He” is, has something they want. A witch who hasn’t yet come into her powers. Immediately Rachel comes to mind. Tensions certainly would be astronomically high to have Logan’s fiancee be a witch, and their child have both witch and werewolf genes--not to mention the fight over where Rachel would belong.

There’s already a great deal of tension of how the child is going to turn out, and the fact that Jeremy insists on taking the child from Rachel as pack law dictates and raising him with the Stone Haven pack-- something Logan is fervently against, and what originally led him to haul ass out of town with Rachel in the first place, before she got abducted by a rival pack.

I'm surprised young Clay's (Tristan Culbert) little twig leg didn't snap clean off! 

Even the bonus flashback to young Clay is saturated in bloodshed and tragedy when viewers see him running for his life before he’s bitten for the first time. We’ve seen and known relatively nothing about his family up till now so it’s a treat to be able to see his family story being etched out, although the ending was far from happy. When he returns to the ramshackle trailer he lived in as an adult in the present day, his performance is raw and emotional. I look forward to seeing more young Clay flashbacks, especially some scenes of him first being taken in by surrogate father- and-alpha leader Jeremy Danvers.

In an energy-charged premier, ‘Bad Blood’ and ‘Scare Tactics’ have  the same ferocity and bite as the episodes in the season before it. There’s going to be hell to pay and these wolves aren’t going to go down without a fight.

Clay (Greyston Holt) is uncharacteristically diplomatic with Malcolm.

IMAGES FROM SYFY AND IMDB