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| Anuk-ite • Banshee • Berserker • Chimera • Darach • Druid • Ghost Rider • Hellhound • Human • Kanima • Kitsune • Löwenmensch • Oni • Skinwalker • Wendigo • Werecoyote • Werejaguar • Werewolf | ||||||||||
Werejaguars, also known as the Nagual, are a species of shape-shifters that were introduced during Season 4 of MTV's Teen Wolf. The lore behind the werejaguar is based on the Aztec legend of Tezcatlipoca, a god who has a strong connection to jaguars. Kate Argent is the only true Werejaguar seen to date. Hayden Romero was a part-werejaguar Chimera prior to being bitten and turned into a Werewolf by Scott McCall, but demonstrated very few werejaguar abilities.
Due to there only being one true werejaguar in the series, there is very little known about the species' mythology. The most notable characteristic of the werejaguar is their connection to the Berserker species; Kate Argent has the ability to both control Berserkers and create them, and during Hayden's brief time as a part-werejaguar Chimera, she was able to sense the location and current status of Noah Patrick, a part-Berserker Chimera. Because of these abilities, there's is clearly some kind of established connection between werejaguars and Berserkers.
So far in the series, the only werejaguars who have appeared were turned or made, with Kate Argent being deeply scratched by then-Alpha werewolf Peter Hale, and with Hayden Romero being scientifically transformed into a part-werejaguar Chimera by the Dread Doctors. If born werejaguars exist, they have yet to be introduced in the series, though it was implied by Braeden that there are more werejaguars in Mexico in the area around La Iglesia, a church built over the ruins of an Aztec temple to Tezcatlipoca, who is said to be the werejaguar god. It is also unknown if werejaguars can turn humans into more of their kind, due in part to the mystery as to whether they have a hierarchy within their species like werewolves do, with Alphas being the only ones who can turn humans into werewolves or other shapeshifters through a bite or scratch.
Physical Appearance
When shifted, a werejaguar's eyes will glow green, a color that has yet to be seen on any other species; it is unclear if the color of their eyes is due to genetics, symbolism or possibly a third unknown reason. A werejaguar's fangs are much shorter than those of a werewolf but seem to be used to the same effect. Werejaguars have been known to partially shift on occasion, like their werewolf and werecoyote counterparts, as evidenced by when Kate has only flashed her green werejaguar eyes or has only extended her teeth and fingernails into fangs and claws. When a werejaguar completely shapeshifts, their skin changes from its normal color to a bluish-purple tone with black jaguar-esque spots. Though Kate is usually fully-clothed when she shifts, it has been shown that the skin on her face, neck, chest, shoulders, and arms change color, indicating that the skin on the rest of her body may transform as well.
Berserker Connection
Werejaguars have a unique but currently unspecified connection with Berserkers. The former hunter turned werejaguar, Kate Argent, who is also known by the nicknames "La Loba" or "The Bone Woman," was not only able to control the Berserkers, but she was able to create them as well, as evidenced when she turned Scott McCall, a True Alpha werewolf, into a Berserker, though this transformation was temporary.
Shortly after Kate completed her transformation into a werejaguar, she was drawn to the Temple of Tezcatlipoca (the patron god of the Nahual people and werejaguars in general), which was located under a Mexican church called La Iglesia, where she discovered two Berserkers waiting for her. Although she did not understand why, the Berserkers quickly demonstrated that they obeyed her every command, as shown when the beasts retreated from a fight with the McCall Pack when she roared at them. These Berserkers then began acting as her bodyguards and helped her survive while she was on the run from the Calavera family of hunters.
It was unknown if this connection was a werejaguar trait or something specific to Kate until Season 5B's The Last Chimera, when it was revealed by Theo Raeken that Hayden Romero, who was then a part-Werejaguar, part-Werewolf Chimera, had a connection with Noah Patrick, a part-Berserker Chimera. Through this connection, Hayden was able to sense that Noah had been in their vicinity recently, and could also sense that he was close to death. It was implied by Theo that the Dread Doctors informed him that werejaguars have a special connection to Berserkers.
Powers and Abilities
- Super Strength: Werejaguars possess incredible superhuman strength, to the point that they appear to be on par with Alpha werewolves. This was demonstrated during Kate Argent's battle against the True Alpha Scott McCall, who she managed to defeat with the help of her Berserker.
- Super Speed: Werejaguars possess superhuman speed that allows them to run faster than even the most athletic human beings. Veteran Hunter Chris Argent admitted that he was having difficulty tracking his sister Kate and her Berserkers, who he said were too fast for him to follow.
- Super Agility/Reflexes: Werejaguars possess superhuman agility, allowing them to jump extremely high and far in a single bound and perform various gymnastic and acrobatic feats. Kate demonstrated this enhanced agility when she jumped through the wall of windows in Derek's loft, which was at least a dozen floors from the ground, indicating that she could jump extremely high and far without tiring her out before her battle with Scott and Kira. This agility also extends to a werejaguar's reflexes, allowing them to easily dodge attacks and projectiles such as arrows and bullets before they can be hit.
- Super Durability: Werejaguars, while being vulnerable to open wounds like slashes and punctures, are extremely durable to blunt force trauma, allowing them to endure severe blows with only minor injury. Kate jumped through a wall of plate-glass windows without being slowed down. Additionally, even open wounds such as being shot with various bullets doesn't seem to slow werejaguars down, though it can anger them enough to force them to transform against their will.
- Super Senses: Like their jaguar counterparts, werejaguars possess extremely sensitive and acute senses of sight, hearing, and smell. With their enhanced sight, they can see much farther than normal humans and have perfect eyesight in the dark, as well as being able to see supernatural phenomenon that cannot be perceived by human eyes, such as a Kitsune's aura or the Nemeton while it is hiding itself. With their enhanced sense of smell, werejaguars can track scents for up to several miles, so long as they are not covered up by stronger scents like chemicals or washed away by the rain, and they can also interpret individual human scents, allowing them to discern the personal identity and emotional state through chemosignals. A werejaguar's enhanced hearing can allow them to hear extremely quiet sounds that would ordinarily not be picked up by human ears, such as whispered conversations from several yards away. These senses, while working together, can help a werejaguar significantly in battle, aiding them in fighting at night, hearing the footsteps of approaching enemies before they can get close, and locating missing people by scent.
- Accelerated Healing: Like their fellow werecreatures, Wolves and Coyotes, werejaguars have immensely accelerated cellular regeneration, allowing them to heal from mild to moderate wounds within moments. Werejaguars' healing seems to be even more rapid than the average shapeshifter, as Kate Argent has not only shown that she can be shot multiple times without being slowed down, but her healing ability was so advanced that it actually resurrected her after she was killed by Peter Hale; he clawed her so deeply when ripping out her throat that she was transformed into a werejaguar, and her healing ability, enhanced by the impending full moon, brought Kate back to life so she could complete her transformation. Additionally, this enhanced healing ability gives werejaguars an immunity to human illnesses and conditions, and prevents them from becoming drunk on alcohol or high on drugs due to their bodies healing the damage too quickly for the effects to be felt.
- Longevity: Because of a werejaguar's enhanced healing ability that replaces aging and damaged cells at a constant rate, they, along with their fellow shapeshifters, possess an incredibly expanded lifespan. It is unknown how old a werejaguar can live, but the oldest known werecreature, the Alpha werewolf Satomi Ito, is 110+ years old while maintaining the appearance of a woman in her mid-late 50s to early 60s, indicating that a werecreature could possibly live decades longer than even that. This also allows a werejaguar and their fellow animal shapeshifters to maintain their youthful appearance for a longer period of time.
- Shapeshifting: Werejaguars by definition are shapeshifters, allowing them to transform their physical features into ones that resemble their jaguar counterparts. When a werejaguar shifts, their eyes glow green, their teeth and fingernails extend into fangs and claws, and their skin changes from its usual shade to a dark bluish-purple with darker spots. This transformation can be a conscious or unconscious act. While a werejaguar can shift on command, they can also involuntarily shift as well if they do not have control over their transformations, especially during periods of extreme emotions such as anger or fear, or during a full moon.
- Animal Instincts: As an animalistic shapeshifter, werejaguars possess the same animal instincts as their jaguar counterparts, giving then intuitive instincts as to how a real jaguar would behave. Since jaguars are predators, werejaguars can presumably assert dominance over lesser creatures such as dogs, cats, and deer, just like werewolves and werecoyotes, and share a jaguar's hunting, predatory and solitary instincts.
- Magic/Mysticism: The only known werejaguar, Kate Argent, demonstrated the ability to perform certain magical or mystical rituals to defy the laws of the human world. Her first ritual was one involving wolfsbane that temporarily de-aged Derek Hale from being an adult man in his mid-20s to his 16-year-old self. His de-aged form only possessed the knowledge, memory and skills of his younger self, so he didn't remember any of his packmates, could not control himself on full moons, didn't remember that the Hale House Fire had happened, and thus also didn't remember that it was Kate who caused the fire. It was later revealed that Kate had performed this ritual to turn Derek back to an age where he still trusted her so she could manipulate him into giving her the Triskelion medallion, which she believed to be a truly mystical talisman that could give her control over her werejaguar transformations. The second ritual she performed also involved wolfsbane and a special room in La Iglesia, where she used a bear skull to turn Scott McCall into a Berserker. Both rituals required Kate to transport her victims to the Temple of Tezcatlipoca. It is unknown if this is a power that all werejaguars possess.
Weaknesses
- Mountain Ash: Since werejaguars are supernatural creatures, they are vulnerable to rowan, both in its wood form and its incinerated form known as mountain ash. As a result, not only can they not touch or handle it, but they can also be barred from entering an area that has been warded with an unbroken circle of it, and can also be trapped within a circle in the same way.
- Wolfsbane: Yellow wolfsbane seemed to weaken Kate Argent when nothing else would, but it didn't have as extreme of an effect as it had on werewolves and werecoyotes. This could possibly be because jaguars are a feline species, not a canine species like the aforementioned shapeshifters, making them less vulnerable to the herb. It is unknown what effects, if any, other forms of wolfsbane, such as the blue and purple varieties, would have on werejaguars.
- Full Moon: Werejaguars, like werewolves and werecoyotes, are beholden to the full moon, as it is the source of their powers. During a full moon, a werejaguar's powers will be enhanced to even stronger levels, but also come with a cost of enhanced agitation, aggression, and bloodlust that they will need to learn to control to prevent exposing their supernatural identity to humans and hunters. Werejaguars without training will be overcome with such rage and aggression that they will be compelled to attack any living creature they cross who crosses their path. This was evidenced by Kate Argent, whose control over her transformations was tenuous at best, and who inadvertently killed a gas station attendant after he heard her roaring in discomfort while trying not to shift and forced his way into the restroom where she was hiding.
- Intense Emotions: Like their werewolf and werecoyote counterparts, werejaguars' transformations can be triggered by increased heart rates, which means that intense emotions such as anger, fear, stress, or lust can cause them to transform if they do not learn how to control their pulse. While pain usually helps shapeshifters remain human instead of transforming, it can have the opposite effect if the pain causes the shapeshifter to become angry, as evidenced by the werejaguar Kate Argent when she was shot by a hunter while trying to interrogate them on the identity of The Benefactor. Shapeshifters who are impulsive and reckless also have difficulty controlling their emotions and their transformations, which was demonstrated by Kate when it took her much longer to learn to control her werejaguar transformations than other shapeshifters like Scott McCall or Isaac Lahey, who learned to control their werewolf shifts by their second or third full moon.
- Lunar Eclipse: Since werewolves and werecoyotes, who are beholden to the moon just like werejaguars, lose their powers during the phase in a lunar eclipse when the moon is in the Earth's umbral shadow, it can be assumed that werejaguars will also lose their powers during this lunar phase as well.
- Electricity (possibly): Electricity is a weakness that seems to be shared by most animalistic shapeshifters, such as werewolves and werecoyotes, indicating that it could be a werejaguar weakness as well. This seems to be implied when Araya Calavera had a taser wand while preparing to battle Kate Argent, but since a werejaguar has yet to be electrocuted, it is unknown if this is truly a werejaguar's weakness or not.
Werejaguars
Kate Argent
Full Werejaguar
Kate is a member of the Argent Family, a wealthy and renowned family of Hunters who focus on hunting werewolves but who will also hunt other creatures if necessary. She is the daughter of Gerard Argent, the younger sister of Chris Argent, the sister-in-law of the late Victoria Argent, and the aunt of Allison Argent. Just like her father, she eschewed the Hunter Code to which the rest of her family devoted themselves, and instead did whatever she wanted, even if it meant killing innocent shapeshifters who had never spilled human blood. It was this blatant disregard for the Code and Gerard's corruption that led Kate to orchestrate the Hale House Fire, which resulted in the death of both innocent werewolves and innocent humans alike in the Hale Family. After Peter Hale made this discovery, he killed Kate by slashing her throat with his claws.
Though Kate died, his claws slashed her throat so deeply that he inadvertently caused her to transform into a werejaguar, with the impending full moon enhancing her healing ability enough to come back to life so she could finish her transformation. Though she was captured by the Calavera family of Hunters, who intended to uphold the Code by forcing her to kill herself before her first shift on that night's full moon, Kate decided instead to live as a werejaguar, faking her death and using her new powers to kill the Hunters and make her escape. She was then drawn to the Temple of Tezcatlipoca under La Iglesia in Mexico, where she found two Berserkers waiting for her. The Berserkers then became her bodyguards and protectors while she continued to go on the run from the Calaveras, and she quickly learned she had absolute power of control over them. Upon learning she was on the Deadpool for $12 million, she returned to Beacon Hills, both to learn who was funding the Deadpool and to get her revenge on the True Alpha Scott McCall, who she believed was to blame for the decimation of her family. However, after an epic battle at La Iglesia between herself and the Calaveras (as well as her ally Peter Hale against the McCall Pack), both of Kate's Berserkers were killed, and Kate was forced to once again go on the run to avoid being killed after she was weakened with yellow wolfsbane. Though the Calaveras and her brother Chris continue to track her, her whereabouts are currently unknown.
Hayden Romero
Part-Werejaguar; Chimera (formerly)
Hayden, a sophomore at Beacon Hills High School, was first introduced as a frenemy of the werewolf Liam Dunbar and a friend of Mason Hewitt who worked at the Sinema nightclub to help her sister and guardian Valerie Clark pay for her anti-rejection medications following a kidney transplant. However, it was quickly revealed that Hayden, who had genetic chimerism due to her aforementioned transplant, had been turned into a werejaguar-werewolf Chimera by the Dread Doctors. Like most of the other Chimeras, Hayden initially rejected her transformation and began bleeding modified mercury from her nose and eyes and was ultimately killed by the Dread Doctors after being given an overdose of the mercury.
However, shortly after the Hellhound Jordan Parrish brought her body to the Nemeton in order to protect the secret of the supernatural, the werewolf-werecoyote Chimera Theo Raeken came to the Nemeton with a large syringe full of the Dread Doctors' green serum, which he then used to resurrect Hayden and fellow Chimeras Tracy Stewart, Josh Diaz, and Corey. Out of gratitude for their resurrections, Hayden and the others joined the Chimera Pack, though Hayden was torn between her debt to Theo and her romantic relationship with Liam, a member of the McCall Pack who wanted her to join them instead. Though she initially showed a darkened personality as a result of her resurrection, she eventually overcame it, and after realizing that Scott was their best shot to everyone surviving the Beast of Gevaudan, Hayden left the Chimera Pack and pledged her loyalty to the McCall Pack. Once the Chimera Pack was essentially disbanded with the death of Tracy and Josh, and the defeat of Theo, Hayden, who sustained life-threatening injuries from Sebastien Valet, was ultimately given the Bite from Scott McCall, transforming her into a real supernatural werewolf and making her Scott's second true Beta after Liam. The Bite negated the werejaguar traits she had gained through her transformation into a Chimera.
Trivia
- Even though Kate was scratched by a werewolf, she was turned into a werejaguar. Why she became a werejaguar remains unknown, but it has suggested it is due to the common saying with regards to the Bite, which is "the shape you take reflects the person you are." This seems to indicate that Kate possessed traits that made her similar enough to a werejaguar that she became one instead of a werewolf, as what traditionally happens after being transformed by an Alpha's bite or scratch.
- Werejaguars seem to be far more durable then werewolves, which is accurate, since in nature, jaguars are stronger than wolves.
- The only werejaguars seen to date in the series are those who were turned or made. We've yet to see a born werejaguar.
