I've Got A Theory. (It's A Demon.)

All right, Havenites. Gather ye round the campfire (and you better believe in this weather we have one) where we speculate wildly and with frothing glee on just what the shit is going on in our small town in Maine. By the time we'd finished the full recapalypse for the finale, the word count stood at about 15k, at the lower edge of our larger recaplyses, it was dinner time and we'd started at breakfast, and we knew that we were going to end up with at least a small shitpile of wild notions. So! Separate post it was. We are sorry that it took this long to get the post finished up. We're not sorry that we're posting it on the heels of the best news ever, aka 26-ep pickup for the next two years. So we'll be sticking around awhile longer, looks like. We do currently plan to work our way through the s2 episodes, probably aiming for posting during the summer again; a longer state of the blog will go up tomorrow once we've exhausted ourselves from squee. (K: That's not quite as dirty as it sounds.) (A: Speak for yourself.)

Let's start at the root of Haven, as we now know it to be: Mara and William. On the one hand, yay, we have a root cause for the Troubles! On the other hand, eeeehhhh we have a root cause sort of. We know that the Troubles were originally caused by Mara and William. As far as we can tell they caused these Troubles by themselves and for their own amusement. We know that they are not of the Haven world, and we know that they committed crimes among their own people. I'm being very careful listing all of these because while we can infer that these crimes were for shits and giggles (certainly they enjoyed it although that has not been established as the sole driving force), and that they involved giving Troubles to Havenite humans, we don't know that this was the case. Not for a fact. Given the parallels they've drawn to Dark Tower's world that has moved on, and the Marten Broadcloak/Gabrielle Deschain/Steven Deschain relationship (though Mara's no Gabrielle, for sure), it's possible their crimes may have started with the existence of a romance, but obviously we have no proof of that as yet. Other possibilities for rules they broke: going to other worlds, bringing other people to another world (against their will?), basically anything that involves misuse of magical powers. Almost certainly whatever they did to become physically connected to the point of injury to one is injury to both falls under this category. (Unless they come from a unified species all of whose members are so bound, but we consider that vanishingly unlikely.) I will also note here, so that you can all need steel wool as bad as we do right now, that on a Watsonian level this was probably done so that neither of them could leave the other, probably instigated by Mara. On a Doylist level, I have the unnerving suspicion the writers are showing us the seedy underbelly of the "let's get telempathically linked and have sex on a constant feedback loop! it'll be GREAT!" trope. Which: ew ew ew ew oh god ew. You're welcome.

We don't have a lot of information about their relationship, as noted, but we can infer some things based on how they treated each other in the flashbacks and what Audrey said about Mara in the present. Even taking into account the fact that Audrey fears loss of identity more than just about anything at this point, it's safe to say she's telling the truth in her descriptions of Mara. (Which indicates that this turnaround has been a long time coming and a long time of many different memories over Mara's self, not that we didn't know that, but still.) Not only that, her description to William of how Mara's memories felt involved happiness and a sense of power or safety, but with the clear inference that it was a power-drunk form of safety. Probably accurate, in that they were probably the most powerful beings around during the swimming hole flashback, but also indicative that the swimming hole and by extension Haven proper (assuming that was the future town of Haven) were and are beyond the reach of the people Mara and William were running from. Still notable that feeling powerful and safe are the aspects of being happy that Audrey pulled out of Mara's memories - which may nonetheless mean as much or more about what would have made Audrey happy at the time. After all, she spent most of the season figuring out that she has far less power and security than she thought, and she didn't think she had much of it in by the end of s3. This combined with the way Mara treats William in the forest scene, however, suggests that Mara may be at least as emotionally stunted and skewed as William is. Though, here's an interesting twist on the story possibilities, what if William's the Gabrielle figure and Mara was always intended as the Rule 63 Flagg? Also based on how Mara treats William and in some respects how William treats Mara, and you're welcome. I hope you're having as many nightmares as we are right now. Particularly with the Mara-Marten closeness in names.

Speaking of other worlds, let's talk about Jennifer and Dave, the only other two we know for sure aren't residents of this world and were sent here by Howard. (We'll get to him in a moment.) Do they come from the same other world? Is it the same other world that Mara and William came from? Is the door they just opened to either of those places? We don't have a lot to go on here - I'm actually not even sure Dunsworth knew all the details of who he was before this season at the earliest. (Pretty sure there's been an interview somewhere that says he didn't, though if someone wanted to back me up on that with a source that'd be lovely.) Dave and Jennifer are neither of them immune to the Troubles the way Audrey and William are, but they've shown some degree of resistance to them. I'm thinking particularly of the deep sea pressure Trouble from Crush this season (though that could've been Vince acting as protector for himself and his brother, we still don't know the full story with the Teagues Trouble) and of the way in which pre-book Jennifer was scripted that avoided most direct contact with various Troubles. In fact that led to us thinking for a few episodes that Jennifer might be another Audrey, but obviously no go on that. However, we still don't know that she's not immune for other otherworldly reasons because none of the Troubles have ever directly affected her except the death truffle, which is a bit of a different thing regardless. That suggests they may be of a related species of paranatural human to Mara and William, or they may even be the same species but their powers have diverged over the centuries. One of the more prominent King themes is The World Has Moved On, and Dave and Jennifer being weaker, younger versions of Mara and William (though not like that oh god steel wool ew) would fit that theme very neatly. Of course that would require that Jennifer be subject to the Troubles too, because Dave's been subject to at least the fear and deep-sea pressure Trouble just off the top of our heads. The allegory doesn't, however, answer how Jennifer is the Child of Ruin and what that means. Is she Mara and William's descendant? The book plus being, essentially, a key (yes, go on, make the Dawn Summers comparisons, god knows we have including in the fandom reactions to her), plus the title, would tend to imply that she is. But we can't rule out that she's the child/descendant of some other fated pair on the other side of the thinny, Mara and William's opposing number. The real question is, what or who does Ruin refer to? What object is the implied verb acting upon, in other words. For all we know she's out of Dave's line, whatever line that belongs to, and that would make just as much sense. In which case maybe Dave was hearing the barn the whole time, and fuck you Dave for not telling anyone if you could. Maybe Dave was the last Child of Ruin but chickened out of it, since we not only saw him trying as hard as he could to stay out of that ritual, we also heard him talk about being pulled towards the door and how horrible it is on the other side. If that's the case, maybe his immunity and barn-hearing abilities faded? Always assuming, of course, that our otherworldly foursome that stood on the Heart of Haven aren't all related by blood - which they may be. We don't know! Isn't it great? (Yeah, you're going to want to drink every time you read that this post.) (Maybe I should start drinking whenever I type it. That'll make this post real rambly real fast.)

Actually, we have sweet fuckall data about Dave that can be reliably tied into any particular pieces of data from previous seasons, at least that I can think of offhand. Him being from another world and knowing that since sometime prior to s4? sometime prior to this most recent cycle of Troubles? (we have six months unaccounted for I HATE INCOMPLETE DATA ahem) would explain a great deal of his behavior. Given his s3 behavior, I'm pretty sure he's known since at least prior to this cycle of Troubles. Given the absolute dearth of information we still have about Lucy Ripley and the 1980s, Vince's sudden talkativeness notwithstanding, I'm inclined to say that all the shit people keep referencing as having happened during their lifetimes that we haven't seen play out on screen probably happened in the '80s. Mainly because it's been stated that Vince and Dave tried to make AudSarLuLex remember being Sarah, which would have to be Lucy, which would, as we've said in prior recaplyses, account for a lot of the shame and hiding the details of that cycle from everyone. What I want to know (so say we all, say thankya) is how much Lucy remembered and knew at the time. We know she claimed to know how the Troubles started and how to stop them for good - does that mean William, and is that how Dave found out what was on other side of that door, by going with Lucy to the dimension door under the Lighthouse? For that matter, would a trip like that have been Dave's way of apologizing for trying to make her be Sarah again? Or does that mean the information Howard was giving out, same as at the end of s3? Again, no clue, though I'd lean more toward the latter than the former. On the other hand, we have Sarah (was it Sarah? or was it Mara?) as Dave's greatest fear (cf. Fear & Loathing), greater even than the evil dark lightning place. Unless it was less Sarah/Mara and more what Sarah/Mara represent, which is also possible. We still have Dave going through the door to another world (maybe maybe not where he originates from, depending on what he was told, what he believes, what he's willing to share, all the usual Teagues-brother caveats) at some point prior to the s4 finale and, presumably, prior to the entirety of this cycle of Troubles. I'm mostly presuming this because I suspect Dave's secrecy and paranoia, which we see as early as s1, was exacerbated if not directly caused by his trip to another world. And speaking of that other trip, if they needed four specific people - and bearing in mind we have no idea of the exact wording in the Magic Book o' Portals - to open the door, though Jennifer could open a door to the bar/n, how the fuck did Dave get through? Maybe he has magic door opening properties like Jennifer! Maybe there used to be more of Agent Fuck You's foundlings in Haven and Dave was the only one to make it back through? Maybe Lucy or Sarah sent him through as some form of punishment for fucking with her. Honestly, I demand the Vince and Dave confrontation scene next season in which at least some of these burning questions are answered, because not only do we have no idea how or why or when Dave went through, we have no answers on any of those as to his return trip.

If I keep this up I'm just going to froth to no good end, so let's move to someone we can froth over. Hello, Byron Howard! A kind commenter pointed out that with his first name he's now named "Barn Guardian," which is entirely apropos. Still like barnvatar better. Because we're snarky fuckers. Aside from, as I cheerfully phrased it in chat a couple days ago, being the Antubis of Haven (for those of you unfamiliar with Kingdom Hospital, he's a psychopomp, a guide/conduit between worlds), what is he? Who is he? What world was he from? Is he really dead? Was he ever alive to begin with in the sense of being an organism from or analogous to Earth organisms? Did he die when he was shot and is that why the barn died or did he die when the barn finished imploding on itself? Many, many questions to cover here, all of which lead into the question of the barn and its system of de-Troubling, which we'll hit next. We know that he was at least capable of passing for a human being for short periods of time, even if not necessarily capable of passing for an FBI agent. But it's doubtful that Garland or even the Teagues knew much about his non-human status, so we can assume that if he's something more significantly alien than that, he didn't show it. Then again, it's possible Dave knew more than Garland or Vince, because Dave being from another world and not sharing any of the data on that with Vince basically fucks our theory that the Teagues know roughly the same things. (Yes, we're still frothing over that.) As far as we've been able to tell, immortality and knowledge are the extent of the barnvatar's powers, that and popping in and out of existence, but that doesn't discount the possibility that the Byron Howard figure has the same mind-wiping memory-reinstalling abilities that the barn itself has. In fact, let's tackle what Howard was (is? will be? your daily dose of blasphemy free of charge, we're here all week) from the angle of how the barn came into existence. For which we still have no fucking data rarr. It's heavily implied that someone made the barn as (part of) Mara's punishment for the assortment of crimes she and William committed, and that her rehabilitation? restitution? whatever they were aiming for, it boils down to Now Fix This Mess Young Lady. Given what little we know of the early Troubles versus William and Mara, we're leaning toward the barn therefore being created by, or instigated by, the people who were hunting them on the other side of the thinny. (Speaking of which, is there a difference between the barn versus the thinny? I'd assume so, given that they went and made another thinny over in the lighthouse. SPEAKING OF WHICH, was the lighthouse built at the same time as the barn, as the backup plan? Or at least the underground cave and portal combination. We'll come back to that in a second.) The only Troubled bloodline I can think of offhand that could have participated in the creation of the barn as a battery/alarm clock for the Troubles is the Carver line, which has of course died out and therefore we can't hope that they'll go ask them next season. The Crocker line seems too much like a failsafe for me to be confident in asserting they contributed their Trouble to the barn, though maybe their ideas and voices? Possibly the Teagues line, since they're guardians, but we still don't know what that entails in the supernatural power sense. Apart from a compass birthmark. Tattoo. Thing. We have to assume there's more to it than that and a sense of duty, however twisted it's become, but we don't know. Isn't it great. C'mere, Vince, lemme bite the answers out of you. It is interesting that this is the solution they came up with however many centuries (millennia?) ago, as it suggests a large degree of compromise. Maybe they were unable to remove the Troubles entirely, for whatever value of they you care to name. Maybe they were but some of the Troubled didn't want to give up their power, which would be an entirely human response. A 27-year cycle doesn't seem like the best of all possible worlds, but it does seem like the kind of thing that relies on oral history and the willingness of one generation to teach the next - something we've seen break down multiple times over the course of Haven, because that, too, is entirely human. Oral histories get distorted, memories fade, one generation ends up not speaking to another (Dwight's father I am looking at you), magical thinking of the kind that doesn't actually work (if I don't think about this it can't hurt me or anyone else), all of that. (Which makes Haven an amazingly layered world, but doesn't help us solve the puzzles any. Can has the Teagues murderbunker? Do want.) So, someone starts that, probably either William and Mara's people who were looking to bring them in for their crimes or them plus a handful of the oldest Troubled lines. What we don't know is if Byron Howard was created to serve the barn in tandem with this plan or if he existed prior to that. It's possible that he did and that he took on this role out of a sense of duty or guilt; I'm sure current pop culture trends are affecting my theories but he could have played a Heimdall-esque role in the other world and stepped down to be the barnvatar as a result of failing in his duty. Or some other guardian-like role. Whatever he is, I very much doubt he began as human in the sense we're familiar with it, human and unpowered. And then there's the Heart of Haven underneath the lighthouse (which explains why it could be destroyed however many times it has been; I think we've all lost count), which I certainly hope that spit of land is granite or something equally capable of withstanding centuries of erosion. Was it created by William and Mara? William and Mara's people? Was it how they originally came through, in which case did they create it or did someone else? Or did they accidentally fall through a thinny and then create a more permanent portal between their world and ours? See the Turtle, ain't he keen, all I got's nursery rhymes and more fucking questions, you guys. Based on the sense of permanence associated with the Heart of Haven, I'm going to take a wild stab and say that it existed prior to the barn, but may have been repurposed and/or buried under layers and layers of riddles and stories after the cycle of Troubles was established. How long after, that's another very good question, and presupposes that I'm right.

Let us also, before we forget about it having pretty much come true (prophecy is just a metaphor that comes true, and all), dig into the things that Audrey learned about killing people to end the Troubles. Or, well, person. At least in theory. More specifically, let's go back to the exact wording in the s3 finale and in Crush, the two places we can be reasonably certain reference each other. The exact wording in the s3 finale, excluding the portions where James is ranting about how Lucy killed him to save herself, is: "Why would killing you, why would that end the Troubles?" "Because you loved me. Lucy said that killing someone she loved was the only way to end the Troubles. Not - not just for 27 years, but forever. Haven would be a true Haven again. But we just met, so you don't love me. Who do you love, Audrey?" And that's Audrey and James. Audrey and Howard is a whole 'nother story. "Then why do I need to kill the man I love in order to end the Troubles? Am I being punished?" "It does seem that way." "There's gotta be another way." "I'm sorry. There's only two ways this ends. One stops the Troubles for 27 years, the other forever." Note that in none of that is a direct confirmation of what Audrey believes to be true. Note furthermore that James is making a deathbed confession, that he got knocked on the skull, that the barn is known to fuck with memories, and that the information he knows is secondhand at best, therefore we have no idea how much of what he said is accurate. So while the characters merrily went about their way taking these things as true, the real drama was unfolding elsewhere, and Howard was busy giving mathematician's answers about everything. He only appeared to confirm that Audrey needed to kill "the man [she] love[d]," not that that person was Nathan, nor yet that that would end the Troubles and not create an even worse problem. With that in mind, let's move onto the end of Crush (4x08) and the Teagues explaining the details of the Cabot journal to Duke and Jennifer. I'm not actually going to quote anything that's not directly from the journal, because Vince and Dave have a bad habit of summarizing what they think is most relevant and not rules-lawyering at the semantics of the language on the page. Which is, as anyone genre-savvy will tell you, damn well necessary with mystic prophecies and garbled riddles. "That's all it says. Big suffering, agony, evil." [...] "What was once your Salvation is now your Doom." In retrospect? That's got not a damn fucking thing to do with who gets killed to end the Troubles. That's about AudSarLuLex, because it means that opening the portal brings William through causes their connection to snap back into place brings out Mara. How to fix that? Well, nobody's got any good answers as yet, since Mara's fully back, William's on the other side of the portal, and we have no idea what that means for the ability to break the connection and bring some portion of her other lifetimes back to the forefront. Would the book help? If Jennifer's not dead, could she manage to be the anti-Mara as well as the anti-William/death truffles? We still don't know! Isn't it great. Interestingly, one of the things that is implicit in this is that trying to kill William hastened the process, because it strengthened their physical connection out of necessity (there is no way William was staying in that hospital bed, after all, and I'm not sure he could have healed himself without also healing Audrey) and thereby gave Mara's memories and personality a way through whatever blocks the barn had placed on AudSarLuLex. So we have two interpretations of the Cabot riddle which back each other up: posit that William is the person Mara love[d/s] most and he's the one who needs to die to end the Troubles, then letting him through was the worst idea ever. It does raise an interesting question of, if that's the case, then where the fuck was he hanging out all these years? 'cause it doesn't seem to have been in the barn, so how was AudSarLuLex supposed to get to him to kill him? Assuming that even works, since we have skewed-at-best data on that. Assuming that he didn't show up in the bar/n because Howard wasn't there to keep him away from AudSarLuLex/Mara, and not because he wasn't there in the first place.  Even without that, though, it definitely means that Audrey is now Mara is now their doom.

Meanwhile, firmly on the other side of this whole portal thing. (Now you're thinking with portals!) Well, as firmly as you can get where thinnies are involved. There's a back-and-forth going on within and without chat over whether or not four is analogous to the Dark Tower specific ka-tet (Roland, Susannah, Jake, Eddie Dean. Which might make Nathan Oy. Enjoy that one.) or whether or it's simply that four is a magical number half the time anyway. Four corners or quarters corresponding to, four seasons, four elements in Western tradition. Four points on the compass, four humors. The problem with that latter theory is that there's been no hammering on any of the most common magical fours up to this point and after four seasons (heh heh. heh heh heh. heh heh heh heh.) one would think there would be some degree of more blatant elemental association if there was one. So, ka-tet it is. For those of you who are staring at us in confusion and irritation as we start babbling about a book series you may not have read, a ka-tet is a group brought together by fate, destiny, or some other external living force that confers a duty or obligation. Other terms might include ka-mai (ka's fool, let's go with Duke for this one, he's the most Cuthbertesque), kas-ka, a prophet (Howard I see you very well, you and your book), and ka-me (a wise person, we could go with the Teagues but I'm thinking this would more be Audrey's bailiwick). Ka itself certainly seems to be guiding the people of Haven, or at least something is. The four we saw at the corners of the circle in the lighthouse weren't the four we expected, but that number repeats itself on nearly every significant configuration of people short of the various love triangles we've had (and that's a whole other issue). Let's see, we can start at the front and work our way back with Jennifer and Duke and Audrey and Nathan. Duke and Dwight and Vince and Dave. Vince and Dave and Garland and Lucy might have been a ka-tet at the start and then fractured because the Teagues are manipulative fuckers. Can we add Roy, Nathan, Sarah, and Duke? Sure, why not. Oh, while we're on the subject of the Crockers, given what we know how about Vince and Dave and Garland and Simon? There's no consistency to the natures of the people involved in the foursome but there is to some extent the common thread of that damned compass tattoo, in that either Vince is involved or someone affected by the tattoo in some way. Which is about as annoying as the goddamn rose in Dark Tower at this point, because the tattoo really does seem to be a fixed point in the universe. Maybe not a singular point, but a fixed one nonetheless. That does, I will grant, make it ideal for ka-tets forming around it at the drop of a Trouble.

No, okay, let's back off of ka-tet for a second and go over to ka itself. Audrey's fate, to a much greater extent than we supposed in the first couple seasons, is directed by purposeful agents acting for their own motivations (or motivations imbued upon them by their creators), so that leaves her out as directed by ka. But Duke? For the better part of third and fourth season Duke spent a good portion of his screen time attempting to fight both the pattern that says he'll become a psychopathic killer and the vision Vanessa Stanley had about his dying at the hand of someone with the Teagues tattoo. It didn't work. His grandfather still died by Sarah's hand, he still had to kill people and use his power to do it, and the narrative seemed to be going out out of its way to rub it in his face that he is ka's personal little slave. Um. That's fun! To make matters worse, let's all remember how entwined the Crocker bloodline is with the whole Troubles thing. Out of all the Troubles they are the only one who has a power that affects other people's Troubles in a blanket, back to the beginning fashion. Not to mention giving a (supposed) mere human the ability to undo their fun doesn't seem like a very Mara-and-William thing to do, which might mean we're back to, what, the barnvatar originally being one of Mara and William's people? Giving the Crocker Trouble as a way for them to cope with the devastation that the Troubles could create between cycles before he made himself a barn? Something gave the original Crocker the ability to end an entire Trouble bloodline thenceforth, and it wasn't the two psychos who thought gifting humans with supernatural powers was nifty fun unless someone had a massive change of heart or thought it was suitable punishment for trying to fuck with said psychos. (Remembering that it is addictive and does ruin the Crocker's grasp on reality over time.) Granted, the Teagues have a weird Trouble too, but let us also not forget the Crocker "Omnia Vincit Amor" box, which takes a whole other new and dark tone when we consider that Omnia Incipiet Amor between William and Mara. Heh. Jennifer, though new to Haven and despite being well-acted and reasonably well-developed for a plotstick, is also pretty much ka's personal toy. (Presumably this is part of why she and Duke get along so well, right down to the running from your destiny before embracing it parallel.) Vince seems to have completely embraced his ka, or at least what he claims is his ka by the Gospel According To Teagues, which is about as dubious as any oral history, as previously established. Dave seems to still be running from his ka, for whatever good that's doing, though given that his ka right now seems to be mimicking Jake hanging over the train bridge I can't exactly blame him. (His withholding information is a whole other matter.) Howard probably doesn't have ka, considering. William's ka is to be bugfuck nuts? Or is it the fact that he challenged and subverted his ka to be with Mara that drove him bugfuck nuts? That tends to fit with overall legend, the more you try to subvert your duty or fate, the more you get punished and/or driven insane. Mara's ka, as separate from AudSarLuLex's, is apparently to be subsumed by AudSarLuLex's, which is a different kind of punishment; you subvert your ka, you get erased from reality. Which is very Kingian, come to think of it.

With all of this at hand, and the impending doom/joy of a double-sized season ahead of us (our poor wrists are aching in anticipation), what can we guess at as far as the nebulous future of Haven? Well, if Mara's their doom now, and if she wants William back, I'd expect to see a lot of negotiation happening. Because it seems as though they need four people who are from another world to stand on the corners of the Heart of Haven, and one of them's gone through the door and another appears to be dead. I'd expect Dwight or Vince to handle negotiations for fixing Duke, reviving Jennifer (she could just be magic-fatigued or coma'd, which is also highly traditional), and giving Audrey back to them. If they're smart, they'll fucking gag Nathan so that they get the first two line items taken care of before he starts screaming at her to give Audrey back. (They won't be that smart. Or that lucky.) I love you, Nathan, but you're the opposite of sensible when it comes to Audrey's well-being. I think Duke, once restored, will have a lot of unforeseen consequences to deal with, both in the more common physical sense and in the mental, emotional, and Troubled sense. If Duke gets fixed to a point of coherent thought and not, you know, bleeding from his face, but Jennifer doesn't, I would not count on him being much on rational action either. (I rather expect that whether or not she does survive will depend on Emma Lahana's schedule. At least I hope so, because if not that'd be the most egregious fridging yet on Haven, and I love you, show, but you have issues with that.) There's also the all-too-likely possibility that Mara will attempt to (succeed in?) whammy Duke or Vince onto her side. We've said for a long time that the Crockers are probably closely connected, if not related to, Mara and William; it wouldn't surprise me in the least for Mara to pull out the Hi You're My Descendant I Own Your Soul card. (It would also make Colorado a very Luke-and-Leia moment. Enjoy that thought. I wouldn't put it past the writers at aaaall to include that kind of a tribute.) It also wouldn't surprise me that Mara would access Sarah's memories, discover Vince's love, and go "Ooh that's tasty I'll use that." Okay! Moving right along Let's assume everyone acts at their most emotional and irrational for at least a little while, then. Dave will attempt to keep secrets. Vince will attempt to pry them out of him and vomit forth information in the least helpful manner possible, given later trends. Whether or not what secrets he can extract fro Dave will be shared with everyone else will likely depend on what the secrets are, who the people are (Mara) and how much Vince feels he can trust anyone else. I'd expect Dwight to learn them first. Dwight is the most rational of the lot of them, being that his primary emotional bond is loyalty to Vince and a desire to protect the town, but that's a pair of bonds that can easily be warped given the right stimuli. We need to know if Howard placed any other children, and if so, if they're still alive, which I imagine will play into Mara's attempts to recover William from the other side of the thinny. We also need some more details about Lucy Ripley, about the Teagues line, about any other Teagues biological descendants, about Julia Carr, about the existence of other Crockers and what they may or may not know since if they didn't know about their Trouble they likely won't notice a difference in their lives, about the Glendower males who are now stuck underwater forever with the Troubles not cycling out again, all kinds of things. None of which we have answers for, but some of which might finally come out in s5. (More Crockers would surprise me, on a Doylist level; we just did that and it'd be a retread to do it again. Even to do it again differently and well.) I'd also love to know where the fuck James Cogan ended up, and if that's a lever that could be used against Mara, since apparently Audrey and Nathan both were so busy lurching from crisis to crisis last season (understandably) that they forgot they have? had? a son who was last seen dead in a dimensional pocket. (I hope that was intended as them not having time to deal and not the writers forgetting, is what I'm saying - I think there was one line reference though I can't place it right now. I have a good deal of faith in the writers to remember it! Eventually. When they can cram it in sideways with all the other threads they're weaving.) Jennifer, if she survives, will be something of a wild card given how little we know about her but also, hopefully, a calming/moderating influence on, oh, everyone. Especially Duke (assuming he retains control of his mind) but she has that effect on the Teagues, too, to an extent. And someone will damn well need to sit on Dave, who seems to be making up for all the freakouts the Teagues weren't having in the first three seasons. Duke and Nathan will be… fascinating. Assuming they're both alive and in their right minds, here used to mean out from under the influence of any targeted mind-whammy, we can hope that they'll moderate each other's worst impulses - Nathan's to go charging in after Audrey no matter how many times and in how many ways Mara demonstrates that Audrey's not home anymore, and Duke's to constantly subvert his own destiny to the point of monofocusing no matter how many times the narrative shoves him back in line - but this is yet again not a situation they've ever been in before. (Besides, what the fuck IS Duke's destiny if Mara twists his Trouble(s) in new and interesting ways? Or more accurately, how does the manifestation of being the last-ditch solution to a Trouble change, and thereby change him?) Instead, they may end up reinforcing each other's worst tendencies, though if we're very lucky Duke's ability to improvise will mitigate Nathan's bullheadedness, and Nathan's bullheadedness will give Duke hope, something he definitely lost last season.

But what shape all this will take in the form of plot we don't know. Because we don't know who Mara can pull to stand on the corners of the sigil and open the door (or for that matter if William could find a way to do the same on his side, though assuming that's the same place he's been the last many centuries, that's pretty unlikely), we don't know if she can create another door (or if others exist independent of her, or if that door is a one-in-one-out deal, or where the death truffles went, or what's with the tree - Yggdrasil? or similar? - on the death truffles box, or -), we don't know if Jennifer and Duke will survive, isn't it great?

On the upside, we have one extra-long season to get answers! And by answers we probably mean more questions.