Lydia Martin, Iconic Banshee Character

For this week’s Femme Fatale Friday, I have decided to discuss Lydia Martin from Teen Wolf.    Lydia is the most iconic example of a Banshee on a television show, as this specific type of Faery woman is not often featured on television, especially not as a main character.   This is also an example of one of the only times that we see a Banshee as a Faery woman instead of as a demon, as is mostly what is used in pop culture interpretations of this supernatural being!

Lydia is first introduced as a popular girl whom Stiles had a huge crush on.   She quickly becomes Allison’s best friend and is at first Jackson’s girlfriend.   It is soon shown that Stiles is the only one to really know certain things about Lydia, like just how insanely intelligent she is!    The audience learns at the end of season one that she is the most intelligent character on the show.    She wants to one day get a Fields Medal for her work in mathematics.

At the very end of season one she is attacked by Peter Hale and this attack leave her with unique symptoms.   The audience does not know why she is having these strange dreams and visions (which happen all through season two) until season three part A.   It is through the Darach, or dark Druid, that we learn that Lydia is a Banshee, a Wailing Woman!

Over the course of the coming seasons, the audience gets to know that Lydia is able to grow her abilities.   She is often seen accidentally finding dead bodies, so much so that she eventually begins to simply call Stiles when she feels like she is about to find a body!   In the later seasons, she is able to weaponize her scream, which earlier had only been used to signal the impending deaths of those close to her.    I really enjoyed that she began to have an active power that could protect herself, rather than simply being able to have dreams, visions, and screaming at impending death.

In season six part A the audience gets to see that Banshees are safe from the Wild Hunt due to their connection to the Morrigan.   I truly adored that they brought in the Morrigan, adding some real-world Irish myth connected to Banshees to the mythos of the series!   Lydia is a powerhouse female lead character in this series.    I will end by noting that I was so happy to watch her evolution as a character and see her and Stiles developing into a couple!   

I hope you have enjoyed this short look at Lydia from Teen Wolf.   Are you a fan of this character?   Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is Lydia screaming.   I found the image on https://teenwolffc.wordpress.com/lydia-martin/.

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Further Watching

• Teen Wolf (2011)