One decision Davis regrets in hindsight? Killing Allison in the season three finale after Reed expressed her desire to leave the show.
‘I don’t know if I would’ve done it now, but back then, it was the time of Game of Thrones‘ big death and it was all about which character could you kill off to shock the audience?” Davis reflected. “There was a lot of pressure to kill a main character. I remember the network saying you have to kill someone off. And me being like, ‘I don’t want to kill anyone, they’re like my children!'”
Reed wasn’t the only cast member to leave the show, with Colton Haynes shocking fans with his exit in season two and Daniel Sharman choosing not to return for the fourth season. Tyler Hoechlin ultimately decided to step back from the show in season five, because, as Davis joked, “He decided he had enough of standing in the woods brooding and staring, which I don’t blame him!”
But, Davis admitted it was “hard” to adapt the storylines in the wake of the respective exits, going on to explain how the writers ultimately handled the coming and going of actors.
“You try to first go with what’s the best story we can tell,” he detailed. “And then the second is you realize and remember who the main characters of the show are. I remember saying, ‘Look guys, the show’s called Teen Wolf. The one we really have to worry about leaving is Tyler Posey.”
Davis also had to find a creative way to write Stiles out of episodes in season three after O’Brien booked the lead role in The Maze Runner.
“We had to do the old trick of knocking him out, so he’s in a coma,” he said with a laugh. “It’s the old put the character in a coma trick!”