| “ | You boys do remember that I own a gun, right? | ” |
Henry Tate is a supporting character in Teen Wolf. He is the husband of the late Evelyn Tate, the biological father of Kylie Tate, and the adoptive father of Malia Tate.
He was first introduced in Season 3B, when Scott McCall and Stiles Stilinski were helping Sheriff Noah Stilinski with an old cold case regarding the deaths of Henry's wife and two daughters in a car accident.
During this investigation, Stilinski, Stiles, and Scott learned that the oldest daughter, Malia, was not actually killed in the crash and eaten by coyotes as the Sheriff's department had originally assumed; instead, Malia was actually a Werecoyote herself, and since the crash occurred on a full moon, Malia shapeshifted for the first time into a true coyote and had run away from the scene, spending the next eight years living as a forest animal in the Beacon Hills Nature Preserve out of grief and self-loathing regarding what she had done to her family. Unable to tell him the truth about the situation, Stilinski interviewed Henry at his home in order to get more information on what happened.
Unfortunately, this did nothing to make Henry feel any better, and in fact only made his grief worse, to the point that he made it his mission to find the coyote he believed had killed his wife and daughters after the crash, not knowing that the coyote in question was actually Malia. Luckily, Allison Argent was able to incapacitate Henry with a tranquilizer dart, allowing Scott to find Malia and use his Alpha Roar to get her to change back into her human form for the first time since she was eight years old. Afterward, Henry was finally reunited with his daughter, though he seemingly remains unaware of the full story of how and why she lived in the woods for half of her life. Since then, Henry's well-being has improved dramatically, especially on an emotional level, and he has left behind his life as a homebody in favor of becoming more involved in the community of Beacon Hills again.
Henry is a member of the Tate Family.
Early life[]
Little is known about Henry's early life, except that he married his wife Evelyn at some point and settled in a ranch in Beacon Hills, California. In the mid-1990s, he and his wife adopted a newborn baby who they named Malia, though it is unknown how much, if anything, they knew about her biological parents, a Werewolf named Peter Hale and a Werecoyote named Corinne; regardless, it can be presumed that the Tates knew nothing about their new daughter's supernatural identity. ("Letharia Vulpina"), ("Time of Death")
A few years later, Henry and Evelyn had a biological daughter, Kylie, and she and Malia were raised together as sisters without any indication that Malia was adopted. When Malia was about nine years old, Malia got into a huge fight with Evelyn and her sister before they were getting ready to drive somewhere, likely due to the full moon overhead increasing her aggression. When they were driving down a back road of Beacon Hills, Corinne, now an assassin known as the Desert Wolf, began shooting at the car in an effort to kill Malia, as she blamed her biological daughter for having stolen a portion of her powers during childbirth, which left her weaker than the average Werecoyote. ("Time of Death"), ("A Novel Approach"), ("The Sword and the Spirit")
Evelyn, terrified, instinctively jerked the wheel of the car to the side, which caused them to drive into the Beacon Hills Preserve. The stress of the shooting in conjunction with the car subsequently crashing into a tree caused Malia to transform for the first time under the full moon. To make matters worse, she full-shifted into a true coyote before becoming overcome with aggression, ultimately leading Malia to attack and kill her family and turning her Werecoyote eyes blue. She seemingly came to her senses afterward, but either due to guilt, not knowing how to shift back into a human, or a combination of both, she ended up continuing to live as a coyote for the next eight years. ("More Bad Than Good")
Because of the evidence pointing to an animal attack and the crash presumably covering up the gunshots, Henry was led to believe by the Beacon County Sheriff's Department that his wife and two daughters were mauled to death by coyotes, and that Malia's body had likely been dragged away by the animals who devoured them. Since her body was never found (because she was roaming around as a coyote in the woods), the crash was considered a cold case that joined the dozens of other bizarre (and secretly supernatural-related) cases the Sheriff's department was unable to solve. Henry continued to live at the family ranch by himself, where he withdrew from the community and lived a quiet and solitary existence. ("Anchors")
Throughout Teen Wolf[]
Season 3[]
Henry was first introduced in Anchors, when Sheriff Stilinski (who was recently introduced to the supernatural world and was desperate to solve at least one more case before he was possibly impeached by the FBI) decided to go through his cold case files and see if anything supernatural popped up that he could figure out. It was the disappearance of Malia Tate's body following a car crash on a full moon eight years earlier that intrigued Stilinski the most, and so he enlisted the help of his son Stiles and Stiles' best friend and Alpha, Scott McCall, to look through the house to try to get Malia's scent while he distracted Henry by talking to him downstairs.
When Stilinski arrived at the Tate Ranch, he found Henry opening up several boxes that contained rat traps, which he used to deal with the coyote problem in his area by cutting off their source of food. He explained that he preferred to be left alone these days, and Stilinski assured him that he would leave him be as soon as he asked him a few questions. Stilinski admitted that they may have new evidence that led them to believe it was a murder rather than a simple car crash, which immediately made Henry upset, as he didn't understand why anyone who want to kill his wife and girls. Stilinski assured him that he intended to find out, but Henry insisted that he didn't want to know, because he had no interest in redefining the biggest nightmare of his life from "tragic accident" to "unsolved murder" after having spent eight years getting recovering from the trauma. Stilinski, realizing that he's only made matters worse, apologized for overstepping his bounds, and Henry yelled at him to get out.
Afterward, Stilinski met up with Scott and Stiles, where the former informed him that he was unable to get Malia's scent because it had just been too long since the young girl had spent any time in her bedroom. That night, Scott and Stiles went out into the preserve to check the crash site, since the car was still there due to it being too deep in the forest to be easily pulled out.
After some time, they ultimately found the car's final resting place, where they noticed that it had huge claw gashes through the metal on the back doors and that a baby doll had been left behind. When the two briefly split up, Scott also eventually ran into a coyote in the woods, whose eyes glowed blue, revealing that she was a supernatural and leading Scott to realize that it was Malia, who was still alive and a Werecoyote.
In More Bad Than Good, Scott and Stiles called Stilinski to come to the scene after Stiles found a coyote den in the preserve that had the same child-sized coat and baby blanket that Malia and her sister had the night of the crash inside. Despite Stilinski's best efforts to keep things quiet, Scott's father Rafael McCall, who was the FBI agent in charge of the case for impeachment against Stilinski, heard about what was found and alerted Henry, who showed up and immediately identified the blanket as belonging to his daughter.
The next day, Henry showed up at the high school after Malia, still in coyote form, broke into the school and tried to attack Kira Yukimura when she went into the boy's locker room to bring Scott and Stiles their backpacks (as Scott had brought Stiles there to help him through an unrelated panic attack he had suffered while in class). Malia then tried (and failed) to steal the baby doll that Stiles had taken from the woods and put in his backpack, believing that Scott could use it to get a scent, which indicated that the doll was important to her in some way.
Henry burst into the locker room and became distraught when he saw the doll in Stiles' hands, causing Stilinski to confront him about using a police radio to follow their investigation. When he gently pushed Henry back into the hallway, he noticed a bulge in his jacket and found that he was carrying a handgun in his inner pocket, which, in California, is illegal to bring into a school. Stilinski demanded that Henry leave, and when the other deputies escorted him out, Henry begged him to kill the coyote, as he believed it was the same one that killed his daughters and wife.
Later that afternoon, Stilinski confronted Henry at his home when a jogger in the preserve almost got caught in a coyote trap that he planted in the woods near the crash site. When Stilinski asked him how many traps he put out, Henry refused to answer, forcing the Sheriff to look into his back room for evidence. In the room were stacks of boxes just like the one that held the rat traps, and Stilinski furiously reminded him that a child could get caught and die in the trap. Henry tearfully reminded him that his own kids died, but Stilinski simply insisted that they go out together to clear the traps from the woods.
Unfortunately, when they left to do so, Henry saw that the screen of his front door had a hole in it, and he looked outside to find that Malia, in coyote form, was standing with the baby doll at her feet before they both took off. Stilinski realized that Henry had left with a hunting rifle and called his deputies and Stiles; the former to instruct them to clear the woods of any hikers or joggers, and the latter to order him to stay out of the woods, though Stiles ignored him.
Henry followed the coyote out into the woods with his gun, and was about to shoot it when Allison Argent, with moral support from Isaac Lahey, managed to shoot him in the shoulder with a tranquilizer dart to prevent him from shooting Malia until Scott could Alpha roar at her to force her to change back into human form. However, before Allison could neutralize Malia, she had already run off. Fortunately, Scott eventually caught up with her and was able to turn her back, returning her to her now-teenage human body for the first time in eight years. Afterward, Stilinski brought Malia back to the Tate Ranch, where he reunited Malia with Henry, both of whom immediately began to cry and hug each other out of happiness to be together again.
At some point afterward, Henry checked Malia into Eichen House to help her reintegrate into human life after living in the preserve for nearly a decade, as evidenced in the episode Echo House. Henry was also mentioned in that episode by Malia, who brought him up in a conversation with Stiles to point out why his and Scott's plan to turn her back into a human was not necessarily in her best interest, because she now had to spend every day looking at her father and trying to figure out a way to tell him that the reason why his wife and daughter were dead was because she "ate them on a full moon."
Season 5[]
Henry wasn't seen again until Creatures of the Night, when he and Malia volunteered to help clean up fallen trees after a huge thunderstorm caused a considerable amount of damage to the structures in Beacon Hills. Henry looked shocked when Malia was able to lift up an entire fallen adult tree with one arm, but Malia simply insisted it was just because she has strong legs in order to not arouse suspicions about her supernatural identity.
Afterward, when Malia was anxiously trying to check her email on her phone to find out if she passed summer school, Henry assured her that she would find out when she found out before asking her if she needed a ride to the high school to go to Senior Scribe with her friends. However, when Stiles, Scott, and Liam Dunbar showed up in the Jeep, Malia smiled and told him she already had a ride before skipping over to her friends and kissing Stiles hello right in front of him. Stiles apologized for being late, and Liam, with an amused smirk, replied, "I'm sorry, too," as though he was hoping for a kiss himself, causing Henry to remind them both that he owns a gun. Malia gives him an embarrassed look, but Henry just smiled and winked at her before he turned and left.
Later in that episode, when Malia attended Senior Scribe with the rest of the senior members of the pack, she briefly struggled with which initials to write on the bookshelf, as the recent discovery that she was adopted still seemed to weigh heavily on her. However, she ultimately wrote the initials "M.T." on the shelf, indicating that she saw herself as a Tate more than a Hale, and thus that Henry was more her father than her biological father Peter.
Personality[]
Since Henry has had so little screen time, the full extent of his personality remains a mystery. What is known is that he is extremely devoted to his family, and he became a depressed recluse after the accident that killed Evelyn and his biological daughter (as well as Malia, who he believed to be dead for over eight years). Judging by his gun collection, he appears to enjoy hunting, and now that Malia is back in his life, he has demonstrated a very good-natured sense of humor and a charitable heart, as shown when he volunteered to help clear out fallen trees in Beacon Hills after a powerful thunderstorm.
Physical Appearance[]
Henry is a tall, middle-aged man with graying light brown hair, slightly tanned white skin, and light gray eyes. He usually dresses in a casual country style that favors plain jeans, boots, and flannel button-up shirts, and he often has facial stubble as well.
Skills[]
As a human, Henry possesses no supernatural powers, but he is an avid hunter of mundane animals and is extremely skilled at setting traps and hunting predatory animals by eliminating their food source. He is also quite talented at using firearms, as he possessed a number of guns, which he has been shown to use effectively.
Equipment[]
- 9mm handgun
- Hunting rifle
- Countless animal traps of various sizes
Appearances[]
Season 3[]
Season 5[]
Etymology[]
- Henry: Henry is an English masculine given name derived from the German Heimirich, composed of the elements heim (meaning "home") and ric (meaning "ruler"), ultimately translating to "home ruler." The name was popular among European royalty, starting with seven German kings before being adapted by the French to Henri, derived from the Latin Henricus. From there, the name was introduced to England by the Normans during their conquest, where it turned from Henri to Henry. Nicknames for those named Henry include Harry, Hank, and Hal, and the surname was eventually adapted into Henderson, Hendry, and Henryson.
- Variations of the name in other languages include: Henrik (Armenian, Croatian, Danish, German, Hungarian, Norwegian, Slovene, Swedish), Hendrick, Henricus, Heike, Heiko, Hein, Henk, Hennie, Rik (Dutch), Henri (French), Anraí, Einrí (Irish), Enrico, Arrigo, Enzo, Rico (Italian), Henning (Norwegian, Swedish), Henryk (Polish), Henrique (Portuguese), Eanraig, Hendry (Scottish), Enrique, Kike, Quique (Spanish), Harri (Welsh)
- Tate: Tate, also recorded as Tait, is an Anglo-Scottish surname that is believed to be of Norse Viking origin, likely being derived from the pre-7th century Old Norse word teitr, meaning "glad or cheerful." The word also appears in the Icelandic saga Landnamabok, which details the founding and settlement of Iceland. The earliest known record of the name dates back to 1279 in the Hundred Rolls of Cambridgeshire, England. Ironically, one of the more interesting namebearers is Sir Henry Tate (1819-1899), who shares the name of this very character, and who owned the famous sugar firm Tate & Lyle.
Trivia[]
- Henry Tate's actor, Todd Stashwick, is no stranger to television shows about the supernatural, as he previously played the role of Father Kieran O'Connell, a Catholic priest and leader of the Human Faction who was hexed and briefly turned into a vampire before being mercy-killed on The CW Network's series The Originals. He also played a shapeshifter masquerading as "Dracula" on The CW's long-running series Supernatural and a M'Fashnik Demon on The WB's hit series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- Henry and his family have a Rottweiler named Apollo.
Gallery[]
See also[]