Forest fires drive something awful out of the woods and force a group of teenagers and their parents to face the dark truths of their lives.

Wolf Pack’s first episode unpacks its premise really well. Blake (Bella Shepard) and Everett (Armani Jackson) are high schoolers whose bus is caught in a wildfire stampede. Animals overrun the already parked cars, there are multiple injuries, multiple fatalities and something attacks them both. As Everett, always an anxious kid, struggles to deal with this, Blake tries to keep her family together as the designated adult. Meanwhile Federal Agent Ramsey (Sarah Michelle Gellar, visibly enjoying herself more, it seems, than she has for years) is on the case leading an Arson Task Force investigating the fires and Everett seems to be the number one suspect.

The opening mayhem at the bus tells you a lot about how the show is going to flow and it’s all good news. This is a red in tooth and claw inciting incident and by the end of the first episode it’s clear that there are multiple plots spinning out from it. It’s a smart move, mapping the actual chaos of the terrifying fire onto the thematic chaos of the characters’ lives and new abilities. Both Everett and Blake have far from ideal home lives and it’s deeply refreshing to see them both find joy in their new abilities. It won’t be without a price but for now it’s a nice line to walk, partway between wish fulfilment and desperately needed escape. It’s helped vastly by just how good Jackson and Shepard are. Jackson’s Everett has vast, medicated anxiety and with it, built-in coping mechanism for the change. Shepard’s Blake is belligerent, defensive and absolutely motivated to protect her family. Both have family outside the Wolf Pack. Both also have very good reasons to embrace it too and they both embody just how stacked the show is. Both have familial plots, both have plots focused around their abilities, both have secrets, and all we know is that we don’t know everything by the end of the episode.

The show loses a quarter step at the mid point but quickly recovers it. We meet Luna and Harlan Briggs, played by Chloe Rose Robertson and Tyler Lawrence Gray respectively and for a quarter beat it feels like too much for one episode. But at the exact moment you realize this, the show provides context for them and blows its premise open for the second time in the episode. Luna and Harlan are werewolves, saved by Ranger Garrett Briggs (Rodrigo Santoro) years previously. The fire, and the moon, have triggered their abilities at the same time their father has disappeared into the fire zone. They’re increasingly convinced their biological dad has returned and wants revenge and something large and canine and angry is definitely stalking Everett and Blake. The four are a pack by necessity now and will be one by choice later but right now its great fun seeing them come together.

Wolf Pack crams so much into its first episode that I honestly wondered whether the dog that saves Blake and Everett at one point is a major character we’ll find out more about later. I’m going to be so delighted, and smug, if I’m right too. Regardless, the sheer energy and confidence on display here is impossible not to swept up in, even as the fire sweeps up the lives of the characters.

Verdict: Tremendous fun, that knows exactly what it is and what it needs to do. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart