In Teen Wolf What Does Blue Eyes Red Eyes and Yellow Eyes Mean

I'm fairly certain someone has pointed this out before, but the season 5 premier strengthened said argument. There are spoilers beneath the cut:

We have this promo for season 3A. We know that gold is the default color of werewolves, blue is for those who have taken the life of an innocent, while red is for alphas. We still don't know what black, shown in this promo, could entail.

What's also interesting is that the order they show these eye colors is:

normal > gold > red > blue > black.

Some have speculated this was to show Derek's eye color progression, but his really went like this: gold > blue > red > blue > gold > normal > blue.

I don't think this is to symbolize Derek, but it's still odd they go gold > red > blue instead of gold > blue > red like we would expect. (Unless this is supposed to symbolize Scott, which I get to later)

What I'm speculating is that there's a hierarchy of power behind the colors. And I think in order of power it goes gold, blue, red.

Blue symbolizes those who have "taken the life of an innocent" - as described by many different sources. I speculate this doesn't equal killing someone, and that if someone like Liam killed someone out of self-defense, his eyes would remain gold. Or even if he killed someone who was intending harm on another, I believe his eyes would still stay gold. A werewolf's eyes only change from gold to blue when they kill someone who did not deserve to die, who was innocent.

And I think those with blue eyes are stronger than those with gold.

Derek: In the case of Paige, Derek certainly didn't want to kill her, yet he still took the life of an innocent, even if it was a mercy-killing. And so his eyes turned blue.

Derek, while not necessarily stronger in a physical sense, has a hell of a lot of resilience. He has survived too many injuries to count, the main one coming to my mind is when Kali put a pole through his chest and he somehow lived. He also turned out fine when Lydia used his power to resurrect Peter from the dead.

Jackson: As for Jackson, he was clearly controlled during his time being the Kanima. Yet, his eyes were still blue in the end. Unless Jackson killed someone before becoming the Kanima, we can assume that a werewolf's eyes will change if they take the life of an innocent, regardless of whether or not they had the intent to kill.

Stiles: Which means if Stiles becomes a werewolf, his eyes would be blue. I would also argue that Stiles has become a lot stronger ever since the Nogitsune, so regardless of whether he's supernatural or not, killing innocents somehow made him unnaturally stronger.

Malia: This is also shown with Malia, who killed her family when she went out of control. This also proves that the car crash didn't kill her family, and that her claws or teeth were the cause of the death of her sister or mother, or both.

I have actually been surprised at Malia's strength. I understand that werewolves are strong and all, but Malia is a strange anomaly. She can break doors and handcuffs and safes and now she can lift trees (one handed, might I add). She also took on a lot of berserkers without much injury.

Peter: For Peter it's uncertain whether his eyes turned blue from killing Laura, or someone before her. And again, regardless of whether he meant to kill Laura or not (since he was in a very damaged psychological state at the time it's up for debate), his eyes still turned blue. There's still a lot we don't know about Peter, so it's harder to pinpoint with him.

As for Peter and his strength, I could write a whole meta on that. His power seems relatively unmatched on the show. He was able to come back from the dead, arguably twice with his comatose state after the fire. And he can shatter cement walls like it's paper? Let's also not forget his monstrous alpha wolf form, which seemed more powerful than any normal alpha wolf form just from sheer size alone.

Red is self explanatory, belonging to the most powerful of wolves, the alphas. A werewolf can only gain red eyes by stealing an alpha's power (by means of killing them), or by force of will to become a True Alpha.

When Derek gave up his alpha status to save Cora's life, Cora obviously did not become an alpha, but Derek still lost that power. Where that power went is still up for debate, but Scott becomes a True Alpha shortly after this - did he get that alpha power from Derek giving it up?

Scott: The increase in strength is rather obvious with Scott, in the fact that he can break through mountain ash with mere willpower, force Malia out of her coyote form with a howl, and overcome the energy-sucking talons of the werewolf experiment guy in 5x01.

Which brings me to the next part:

Blue eyes indicate greater power than golden eyes.

This guy's eyes were gold before he attacked Parrish.

Angry Parrish.

To which this werewolf guy says:

"Not a werewolf, but you're something. Now, you're no ordinary creature, Deputy. But then, neither am I. Not tonight."

And then he releases Parrish and we see this:

And then not only do his claws/talons glow blue, but now so does his eyes.

This guy never killed Parrish, but he gained blue eyes. Parrish says later on in this episode to Sheriff:

Parrish: It's worse. [The claws] did something to me. I don't know how to describe it other than it felt as if the life was being drawn out of me through them. Through the claws.
Melissa: And now he's looking for Scott?
Parrish: Which got me thinking about what this guy can do. The rule is you have to kill an Alpha to steal their power, right?
Melissa: I'll bet it's different for Scott.
Sheriff: You can't steal a True Alpha's power.
Parrish: I think this guy can.

It's been established this guy steals power, and after he stole more power from Parrish, his eyes went from gold to blue.

This is also slightly hinted at with Derek:

When he loses his powers his eyes fade back to gold. This is not because he was de-aged to be an age younger than when he killed Paige, it's because he lost power. After he became completely "human" and "died," not only do his eyes become blue again,

Now he has the power to fully shift into a wolf. Achievement unlocked. Derek also showed the ability to completely destroy a berserker, something that's never been done before. Needless to say, Derek became a hell of a lot more powerful at this point.

Now I want to talk about the black eyes shown in the promo. If you look closely, the eyes turn black and you can still see the iris markings (the little lines that come out from the pupil) but as the scene progresses, the eyes harden into complete blackness:

If you watch the video you can see this more noticeably and there's a sound that goes along with the transformation.

This is making me think of experiments and bad blood.

There's also this frightening promo of Scott with black eyes.

The whites of his eyes turning black is throwing me off a bit, but I think they did that to emphasize that his eyes were actually black, since Posey has naturally dark eyes.

I'm wondering if the black eyes are even more powerful than red eyes.

Deaton says in 5x02 Parasomnia:

"I would normally say no… …but I'm starting to wonder if the rules to our supernatural world aren't as rigid as I once thought. Or maybe someone's trying to change those rules."

The experiment werewolf guy seemed to break a lot of rules, and now Tracey as well. I think it was Jeff who said the Doctors were fascinated by the supernatural, so we know they're not trying to kill them - what if they're trying to make something stronger than a True Alpha? And maybe this bad blood is exactly what will make Scott stronger.

Shoutout to this moment in Monstrous. The whites of Scott's eyes are black here as well, similar to Deucalion's demon wolf form.

If Scott's eyes do reach this black stage in season 5, then I wonder if the eye color promo is supposed to symbolize the progression of Scott's power. If so, it fits him perfectly save for a color that foreshadows something dark.

normal > gold > red > blue > black

Which, as you can figure out, means Scott is going to take an innocent life this season. It certainly doesn't help when Scott says stuff like this:

"Something's changed. With me and my friends. I don't want to fix it. And I think it's because of me."

I'm slightly worried.

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Source: https://anchoredtether.tumblr.com/post/122984042432/eye-color-and-power