Teen Wolf: 5 Things to Know Before The New Beast Gets to Beacon Hills

Things look pretty bleak for the McCall pack going into the Teen Wolf winter premiere. They don't trust each other; the Dread Doctors are still at large and there's a terrifying hell beast on its way to town.

To help prepare fans for "the fight of their lives," TVGuide.com paid a visit to the Teen Wolfset and caught up with the cast to find out what's in store for the second half of Season 5. Here are the tips they gave us.

1. On the bright side, Mason and Liam are having fun: Showrunner Jeff Davis has teased that the upcoming episodes will return to a Season 1 vibe. Dylan Sprayberry informs us that will in large part be with Liam and Mason (Khylin Rhambo) reincarnating the earlier, goofier relationship between Scott (Tyler Posey) and Stiles (Dylan O'Brien).

"Our characters get to play that young, excited thing that Dylan and Tyler had in Season 1. It wasn't all serious yet," Sprayberry said. "Part of it was really exciting that they got to do all this crazy stuff. It feels like you're part of something much bigger and that's what Mason and Liam get to play off of this season."

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2. The bloodlust is just starting for Malia: To kill or not to kill became a central part of Season 5, with the answer tearing Scott and Stiles apart, and causing Stiles to breakup with Malia (Shelley Hennig). Malia still has a hard time grasping what's wrong with killing bad people. She's gung-ho about taking out the Desert Wolf for good when we meet her again.

"She wants revenge. Malia has had enough and no one can really stop her at this point," Hennig explained. "I feel like the Desert Wolf wants to mess with her a little more but Malia's intention is to straight up kill her. This woman has essentially messed up her life and her family. Everything in Malia's life has been shaped by what the Desert Wolf has done to her and Malia has nothing to lose."

3. The new beast is unlike anything Teen Wolf has seen before: All sorts of monsters have made their way to Beacon Hills with varying degrees of claws and fangs, but Holland Roden teases that the new monster has a very different aesthetic to what we've seen in the past.

"There is a special effect [for this new creature] that has never been seen on Teen Wolfbefore," she said. "We've had a lot of creatures, a lot of ears, blood, teeth and fur. We've had straps, leather, metal and bones, but this is different. You have not seen this effect yet."

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4. Trust exercises are very much in order: Theo (Cody Christian) did a number on the unity of the McCall pack in the first half of the season. To be face their new enemy there's going to have to be some damage control and healing if the pack wants to live to see graduation.

"Everyone is sort of in the same position at this point. There's a weirdness between everyone," Hennig explained. "Even if you makeup after a fight, things are not the same for a while. I think it's going to take a lot for the trust to build between the pack and that's a lot of what this season is about, getting the pack back together."

5. Lydia is the key to winning, and she's not having fun with it: Poor Lydia never gets to have fun with her powers, and that will continue as she's stuck in Eichen House discovering the limits of her banshee abilities.

"Amplified [powers] in Lydia's case means she has to go through a lot of pain. She doesn't get to have fun with her powers," Roden teased. "The more she gets grounded the more they have to contain her in some small, cold, often not very clean room. She's constantly sweating and crying and trying to figure out why she's locked in this room, [but] she's very much the central piece of the puzzle."

Teen Wolf returns Jan. 5 at 9/8c on MTV.