Who bit Victoria Argent?
Because it wasn’t Derek Hale.
Image heavy behind the cut.
Derek enters the room where Victoria is poisoning Scott (in 208 - Raving).
This scene is lit by a strobe light to make it difficult to see what’s happening. However, the totally dark moments are not long enough, and don’t show enough change in Derek and Victoria’s positions, for the bite to have happened in one of them.
He’s visibly overcome by the poison fumes. Victoria attacks him from behind with a knife.
They tussle and he fights her off until she drops the knife.
Note that she’s not bitten on the right shoulder.
She kicks his ass.
No bite on her shoulder.
Her shoulder is still not bitten as she knocks Derek down.
Down he goes, and rolls over to where Scott is. This is the last we see of Victoria, still unbitten.
Several scenes pass, including Derek getting Scott to Deaton for treatment before we see Victoria again.
Here she is, everyone seems to have left the rave, and only the Argents are still there. It seems some time really has passed.
The bite is very obvious, even without moving her clothing.
That’s a really solid chomp. In fact, it looks like two bites. Derek’s teeth were never near Victoria’s shoulder. He could have bitten her on the arm, but not here.
So, either this is a major error in continuity, and the strobe lighting was added to hide she wasn’t bitten, or this is a deliberate bait and switch.
I’m sure you can guess which I think it is.
ETA to add in a point I made over here, about the aftermath of this.
Here’s the dialogue from 302, after Allison breaks the ash line in the vault:
Derek: What were you thinking?
Allison: That I had to do something.
Scott: She saved our lives.
Derek: Yeah, and what you do think they’re going to do out there? Do you have any idea what we just set free?
Allison: You want to blame me? Well I’m not the one turning teenagers into killers.
Derek: No, no that’s just the rest of your family.
Allison: I’ve made mistakes. Gerard is not my fault.
Derek: And what about your mother?
Allison: What do you mean?
Derek: Tell her Scott.
Allison: What does he mean, Scott? What does me mean?
Derek brings Victoria up as though he has no reason to feel any guilt. He never says anything to indicate he bit her. We just read it in because we think we saw him do it.
Then the flashback Allison has in 303. Derek has already left when it begins.
Allison: She tried killing you?
Scott: Uh, yeah.
Allison: Why didn’t you tell me?
Scott: I’ll tell you everything, okay. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But right now-
Allison: Just tell me why.
Scott: I couldn’t. Allison, I couldn’t let that be the last memory you had of her.
Derek returns carrying Erica, and the flashback ends.
See? Scott also doesn’t say Derek bit her either, just that Victoria was trying to kill him. It’s very, very carefully constructed so that it only seems like Derek acknowledges the bite. He doesn’t. He brings Victoria up in a way you wouldn’t expect him to if he’d bitten her. In fact, he’s the most reasonable of them in this scene - he acknowledges that Allison is not like the rest of her family, but points out that she probably did unwittingly provoke her mother to attack Scott by dating him in secret. In other words, Allison is not to blame for Gerard, but shares some blame for setting Victoria off, without actually being responsible for her mother’s actions. He also shames Scott into telling the truth, because he’s fed up with being blamed for stuff he hasn’t done. Derek demonstrates a level of ethical comprehension neither Allison nor Scott do in this scene. It’s not how he’d act if he felt guilty, and you know Derek would if he’d bitten her. Because for him, the bite is a gift.
So yeah. I think Victoria is alive and a werewolf, and she and Chris covered it up by faking her death.