Teen Wolf Fans Are Still Not Over The Movie Unceremoniously Ditching Kira
The movie continuation of Teen Wolf remains divisive. As it was released directly to streaming, we cannot use the box office to measure its level success.
And while Teen Wolf: The Movie broke Paramount+ records as the most watched original film on its debut that was not a big achievement, given scarcity of competition. Critics blasted it, but the fans seem to tentatively like it.
However, even the movie's fans harshly criticize some aspects of its plot. Such as the decision to leave Kira Yukimura (played by Arden Cho ) out of said plot entirely.
Sure, a number of fans did not like either the character (whom they deemed useless for 90% of her screentime in the TV series) or the actress.
But the thing was, the movie re-used the Nogitsune as the main villain.
Even those who did not like adding the Japanese mythology to Teen Wolf on principle had to admit that the Nogitsune storyline was the biggest, and probably the most popular one, in the entire TV series.
So, returning to it for the revival movie made sense.
What made no sense was leaving out the character who was involved with that storyline in so many ways back then. In fact, Kira, as you might guess from her name alone, was created specifically for it.
So, her absence from the movie made no sense, in-setting or out of it.
Whether Kira Yukimura was underused back in the series is arguable. But not integrating Kira to the plot of the movie was an obvious big blunder on the part of Jeff Davis, the franchise's creator.
It also might be symptomatic of overarching problems with the movie's writing, which resulted in the poor critical reception.
On the other hand, it is possible that Davis is not to blame, as the decision to leave Kira out might have been caused by failed negotiations with Arden Cho.
There are rumors on the net that Cho was not satisfied with her pay for the TV show (see) and the conflict might have impacted any attempt to recruit her for the movie.