With Teen Wolf‘s final New York Comic-Con panel in the books, it was a nostalgic and emotional weekend for the fans as well as the cast and crew of the MTV show. A devoted fan of the series myself, I jumped at the chance to sit down with stars Tyler Posey and Holland Roden as well as Executive Producer Jeff Davis (also the creator of Criminal Minds) and hear their perspectives personally. Cast members Linden Ashby, Melissa Ponzio, and Shelley Hennig were also in the room and are included in the photo ops below.

Read what they had to say and check out exclusive photos from the roundtable interviews here below.

Tyler Posey

Q: Is there anything you’re excited for fans to see this season?
Posey: I’m not too sure of what Scott’s arc consists of this season…We filmed 6A, so I know what that consists of, which is really cool because we’re toying with this whole memory thing. There’s not much I can say about that, but it’s really, really interesting. I’m just excited for the fans to see how we wrap it up. I’m excited to see that. 6A is…still very much Teen Wolf: dark, edgy, scary, and funny. There’s just the element of Stiles missing that kind of changes everything.

Q: Do you think Stiles being gone helps with the other characters’ development?
Posey: Yeah, definitely. You definitely see a different dynamic between Scott and Liam, between Scott and Malia; the entire pack…they’re trying to fill the place of Stiles without knowing that they’re trying to do that. There’s moments where Scott is kind of confused, and he kind of sits there for a moment and thinks, “I feel like I’m missing something.” That kind of thing. There’s a little bit of a ripple effect.

Q: Where does your character go from here?
Posey: I would just love for them to keep the show on. I want fans to actually see where Scott goes. I don’t know where Scott’s going to go. I’ve always toyed with the idea of Scott going to a really dark place. I’ve always wanted to jump like five years in the future and bring Scott to a f***ed up, dark place where you’ve never seen him before. He’s older, he’s an adult. He would be a good dude. He would come out of that s*** a better person, a stronger person.

Q: Do you think they would go into a movie?
Posey: Ever since the show started, I always thought the future of this show was going to be four to five seasons and then a movie. That’s always been my wish…I would love that!

Sarah Pfeffer, Geeks of Doom: I noticed at the end of the panel, you guys stayed and were giving hugs and taking pictures with the fans, most of which were teens. You guys really know that you have an affect on these kids. Was there a moment when you realized that, “Wow, this is making a big impact on these younger people?”
Posey: I have that moment every single day. That fan experience is really emotional and touching. I think I realized it when we started traveling the world to all these different fan conventions and kids would come up to me at signings and spill their heart and soul to me…about how I saved their life, they tattooed their signature over the scars on their arms. I’m getting chills talking about it. That was the first time I really noticed that I was making a big difference in people’s lives. It kind of helped me find out my role in this life. All I want to do – f*** fame, acting is great, the movie business is great because it gives me a platform – is just be that person that all those kids see me as. I want to change people’s lives. I want to affect them positively. I feel like I view life in a unique way, I feel like I was sent here for a reason, and it was to make this world a better place. I’ve never felt more strongly about anything in my entire life.

Sarah Pfeffer, Geeks of Doom: Do you feel like the character of Scott helped you transform in that way?
Posey: It totally did. This whole experience of Teen Wolf really helped me figure out my role in life. My purpose. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been philosophical and spiritual…insightful, but this show really helped me figure out why I’m here. It’s been a really cool feeling.

Q: The heart of this show is your bromance with Stiles. Can you tease us a little bit about how he’s going to be acting…is he going to be brooding in a corner when I realizes there is something missing?
Posey: No, no, because what Scott’s all about is moving on and keeping the pack together even when he’s feeling a little down. With the element of Stiles gone, there’s like this confusing feeling like, “I know I left something behind in the hotel room.”

Q: What does life for Tyler Posey look like after Teen Wolf?
Posey: It looks very promising. I have found in the last year-and-a-half or two years that if I stop constantly trying to take over the world, I become very depressed and I don’t know what to do with myself. So, I have a lot of stuff coming up. I have a podcast [Doin’ it Raw] that’s started and a network picked it up. We just finished our first season. I just put together another band; we’re going to constantly be doing lots of music. I’m going to be directing. I just filmed a short with my friends. We’re going to be releasing it on Halloween. Producing – I’ve got a really big secret that I’m not allowed to tell you.

Jeff Davis

Q: What can we expect this season that will “wow” the fans?
Davis: We don’t know ourselves because we haven’t finished writing it. We do know the last scene – we’re pretty certain of how the last scene will be.

Q: Will anyone who is no longer on the show be coming back?
Davis: I am working on bringing one or two back. I can’t mention who because you never know how these contract things work out.

Q: Have you ever thought of working Teen Wolf into a feature film?
Davis: I’ve always wanted to do this as a film. We would be working with a larger budget, too. But, we’ve got other projects cooking now. I’ve done another pilot for TNT, actually, for Let the Right One In. We just hired a couple cast members; we’ll be shooting in two weeks in Vancouver. Euros Lyn, director of shows like Happy Valley, he’s done Doctor Who, two episodes of Daredevil, he’s directing the pilot…it’s going to be more inspired by the book than by the film…I wrote the pilot and will likely be showrunning it. I’m splitting my time between the two projects now.

Q: What is going to be your biggest takeaway from Teen Wolf?
Davis: That it was the best working experience that I’ve ever had. It’s a rather amazing thing to love the people you work with. I worked in IT for years and I was sitting in a basement; it was dark and dismal. I said, “I’m getting out of cubicle hell and never working here again.” And then you have a place where you love to come to work every day. You love the people you work with. There are stresses of it as well, but it’s very gratifying to know that millions of people all over the world are watching and it means something to them.

Sarah Pfeffer, Geeks of Doom: Did you just sort of quit the IT thing or was it a long-term plan to change careers?
Davis: That was to pay the bills. I wrote my first screenplay when I was 16 years old. By the time I got to college, I had written about 18 or 20, and I went to USC for screenwriting. The day I was on the cover of Variety, I had sold a pitch to Paramount with William Friedkin directing; it never went anywhere. But I was on the cover, and I worked at Fox and went to the Fox Studio store, bought three copies of Variety, brought it back, and did the rest of my IT gig where I basically helped UPS unload computer boxes, pick them up, put department stickers on them, tape them back up, and ship them out for installs. I was broke.

Q: So is that a message to fans, to not give up their dreams?
Davis: I was at a screenwriting conference once doing a talk on a panel. One of the people in the audience said, “Seriously, how likely is it that one of us is going to become one of you?” And I said to him, “Five years ago, I was in the audience at the screenwriting conference thinking the same thing. So, not only is it possible, but if you work at it, it’s likely.”

Sarah Pfeffer, Geeks of Doom: You spoke about battling depression in high school and wanting to give back. What do you hope that people will take from the show in the end?
Davis: A big takeaway for anyone who watches is that friendship is the most important. Sticking by your friends and being loyal is everything. I always say that these are the type of friendships that I wish I had. It’s very gratifying for me to hear that people have met some of their best friends because of the show. That’s extraordinary.

Holland Roden

Q: How do you want fans to see the character of Lydia?
Roden: I think many of them can see the evolution from how the walls were up when you first meet her and how she was really focused on herself and her grades. She really has blossomed into this empathetic, passionate person that wants to solve every crime in Beacon Hills and that has nothing to do with her! She’s friends with guys younger than her. Who does that in high school? Nobody. So, I commend her.

Sarah Pfeffer, Geeks of Doom: Do you think it was her friends that made her change?
Roden: I think Allison is the catalyst to her becoming friends with Scott and Stiles and I think that’s partly why she was drawn to Allison so much – she felt safe. She could be vulnerable with her and thus, if Allison feels comfortable with these people, maybe she could feel comfortable with these people.

Q: What is your biggest takeaway from Teen Wolf personally?
Roden: For me, personally, it has let me screw up a lot and waste a lot of time in my personal life. And it protected me, because I had Teen Wolf by my side and that support system. Also, by letting me have that space to kind of breathe – I was way too busy in college, working a normal job and acting and I was trying to pursue nursing school outside at night – it was just too crazy. Teen Wolf gave me that kind of college experience in my personal life. Curriculum-wise, I got that done in college, but Teen Wolf gave me the college experience that I never had.

Sarah Pfeffer, Geeks of Doom: Tyler also said that. What do you mean by “college experience?”
Roden: It was just parties back in the day. It was a very lively set to be on despite the material that we were shooting. We had the best time isolated in Atlanta – away from our friends, away from our families. The ones who had family in California, they had just graduated, so that’s all they knew after high school and I just graduated college, but I did not go to one party in four years of college.

Q: What projects are you planning on doing when the show ends?
Roden: I’ve taken the last few years to really think about what’s the next thing I want to do and I was in my young 20s when I started this show and now I’m 30. I feel like documentaries are something that mean a lot to me. I find myself watching those a lot more than I watch scripted television. So producing is something I have a really strong passion for. I don’t know if that’s going back to school for producing – unscripted as well as scripted, or trying to segue in the field. I’ve got three scripts that I’m working on with three different writers and two of them are pretty much done, so we’re getting our pitches together to sell. Little side projects: I’m working on a two-way interactive video chat phone app called Bidchat. It’s a cool device that is surprisingly not in the market.

Q: Is there going to be a scene where Lydia tells her mom about the supernatural world?
Roden: You do get some more fun tiptoeing in season six with Ms. Martin and Lydia. There are a couple of great scenes coming up. I love working with Susan [Walters]…She’s so cute. I love watching Linden and Susan on set together and it’s truly family…we see each other quite a bit in our real lives. Ian [Bohen] and Crystal [Reed] are two of my very, very, very, very best friends. I forget I met them on Teen Wolf! Charlie Carver, Max Carver – I forget I met them through the show.

The sixth and final season of Teen Wolf premieres on November 15, 2016 at 9/8 central.

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Photos

[Photos by Max Pfeffer and Sarah Pfeffer for Geeks of Doom.]