This week on Haven: WELL THAT WAS A LOT OF METAPLOT. Excuse us while we do the oh-snap-vindicated dance for awhile and then settle down to unravel the threads, because everything we've been working on for this show ties in this week. My god. Also, just for the record, though my name may be on this as author, we swapped writer versus filler-in-of-details with abandon, so this is the first truly co-written recapalypse we've done. I suggest not trying to spot the author changeovers, because we'll probably have lost track by the time we finish. Also, for the record, this thing is huge. I mean it, this is nearing twice as long as most of our usual recaplyses, and you know how long those are. This is a veritable recapalypse. You have been warned.
So now that we've been reminded that the Orionids are linked to the barn is linked to Audrey's disappearance, that the Colorado Kid is James Cogan is Sarah Vernon's son, that Tommy is the BGK who did an impressive job faking his own death, that Jordan is not as nice and on Nathan's side as she appears, and that Vince Teagues still knows a fucklot more than he's telling... let's begin! We open on a rather familiar stretch of woods, or at least, it's familiar if you're us and spent awhile staring hard at Tommy while he was dumping the body to check for chameleon-like facial tics. By this, we know that there will be nothing normal about the case of the week, even for Haven. Normally we don't open in medias res on a body (unless, this season, it's related to BGK), and even with that caveat we tend to start with the Trouble of the week. Not so much. This season they've been focusing equally on the metaplot and the Troubles of the week, and we open with a major metaplotpoint. Nathan's with Audrey again instead of off doing his own thing with Jordan or working for the Guard in our very first shot, a clear indication of where his loyalties are shifting. Perceived as well as actual, because I do believe he's been trying to help Audrey, he's just a stoic moron that she needs to smack with a cluehammer a couple times. He is also, as befits his machinations this season, dressed in more layers these days than he has been in past seasons: shirt, vest, jacket, and possibly an undershirt in there too.
Once I stop being distracted by wondering how weird it must be to have to check the weather report to know how to get dressed in the morning so as not to accidentally get heatstroke or frostbite, they're coming up on the body. See, not!Tommy, this is why it's so important to do more than a shallow grave, and I know you must be from around here, or have spent enough time around Haven to know what scavengers will and won't do with potential food sources. Though I suppose it bought him (for purposes of this recapalypse I will be calling the BGK 'him' because the profile fits someone who identifies as male better) a fair amount of time to do digging with police resources. Not all bad, but I wonder if he meant them to ever be tipped off about his true nature. All the rest of our data on him suggests someone so organized he will deliberately make himself look DISorganized in order to throw people off the trail. (We would have discarded the two unsubs theory an age ago if we'd been sure about that, but we lacked proof.) Hey look, it's been burned! Like another couple bodies we're familiar with. At which point we were sure that was Tommy Bowen's body in there, but we needed to wait on the dental records, just like Audrey does. Sorry, Audrey, lab work sucks, I know. She's about as rude and terse with Lucassi as we've ever seen her, an early sign of how very, very stressed she is. Working on a deadline with only half an idea of the direction you need to go in will do that to you, I don't care how much of a patient saint you are normally. Nathan confirms that Grady being a victim of circumstance checks out, and guys, here is where you should be really sure you've got a skinwalker/chameleon type on your hands. I'm just saying. And maybe they have a clue, but they haven't had time to breathe and for damn sure they don't have all the data we do. Grumble mutter.
For all that, it's a good leap that Audrey makes, the two unsub theory, although for different reasons than we did. She's also either forgetting or discarding the idea that the Bolt Gun unsub is looking for the Colorado Kid because of some love attachment, which is a bit odd given how much impact the statement in the basement had on her. At a guess it's more discarding based on BGK's subsequent actions; she's still working off the theory that the unsub who interrogated her was different from Tommy Bowen, Bolt Gun Killer. Nathan's gentler with her than we've seen him before, I think partly because he feels like the necessity of distancing himself for the sake of the Guard is coming to a close but more because having met Sarah, he's been reminded of how they used to be. Seeking to get back to something nearer that, in his own understated way, before Audrey vanishes into the barn. Oh Nathan honey, you couldn't have gone for that a couple weeks back? Sigh. I'm also intrigued, in this scene, by how firmly and thoroughly Audrey's adopted the stance that James Cogan is her son, no matter that he'd be older than her apparent age by now if he's really still alive. No matter that she has no idea who the father is, no matter that she has next to no memories of him, or even any idea if he is her biological son given that all she knows is she presented the Cogans with a baby she called hers. He's her son and she is going to find him. It's a deeply personal maternal instinct we haven't seen a lot of from Audrey before now; she tends to a more detached motherly attitude when she's maternal at all.
Hey, look, a car! ...hey, wait a sec, isn't that a familiar car that the Guard uses? What the fuck is it doing driving onto the grass. Well, that'll be our Trouble of the week! Excellent. So whoever's in that car, based on the matching looks of fear and desperation on the two men's faces, is what they're fleeing from. And since we've watched the promo clip, we can bet it's the little girl and that she was (probably) upset and told them to go away and leave her alone, or words to that effect. Cue frantic running through the woods which is almost cut to look like a chase scene only more with the running in tandem. Laverne gives the eyewitness statement to Nathan and Audrey as two men chasing each other into the woods, though, which I can't say I'm surprised by. That's how most people would report it! Even in Haven. They pull up to talk to the uniformed cops, Nathan's staring at the van and by staring I mean scowling. Because he recognizes it. Audrey gets the girl's name, Kitty and I facepalm and wonder who the fuck's been watching The Covenant on repeat before remembering that Danvers is also a King reference to Bag of Bones, plus the requisite Rebecca reference. Which is about a narrator (specifically, a novelist suffering from writer's block. We know. WE KNOW. Twenty foot neon letters) who shares a psychic connection with a little girl, among other things. Hey, speaking of twenty foot neon letters, as befitting her new maternal drive to find her son, Audrey is the one who takes the lead on dealing with the child and telling her they're going to find her father. For extra bonus parent-child points, the audio picks up the officer telling her "Come with me, sweetheart, we'll find your father." Notably, Ginger only speaks in questions for the moment, which lends credence to our belief that the girl's got a clue what she's doing to people. Nathan explains what the van is for, earning him a double-take from Audrey, as well it should, as secretive as he's been this season. I suspect he feels the pressure of the clock as much or more than she does at this point, hence finally using his goddamn words. C'mere, both of you, so I can use Audrey to hit you with some more, Nathan. His expression is much more open and closer to the not-smiling Nathan we saw towards the end of last season, too, indicating that his days of being sulky and aloof might finally be coming to a close. Or at least a middle. They speculate for a bit about whose Trouble caused this situation, since even without the weirdness of two grown men abandoning a little girl to run off into the wood, we have the Guard to back up the fact that at least one person is Troubled. I will grant, given the eyewitness report they've got, it's a good first guess even though it turns out to be wrong.
We come back after the credits (in which we make faces about what, no Dwight? but it's the Guard ep and we know he's a former member!) to a screeching halt when we hit the writer credit, because that's the guy who owns the imprint that published The Colorado Kid. Excuse us, we have to go bang our heads into a wall and cry with laughter for awhile. Hi Charles Ardai! Don't tell us, let us guess: Stephen King's patterns are engraved on your brain with forty foot neon letters, on account of actually knowing the man. This will be a fascinating ep. Like we didn't already know that. Establishing shot of the station, and then we come around to Ginger sitting with her stuffed bunny. Our first shot of Ginger is, in fact, the stuffed bunny, just in case we didn't know she was a lost little girl who essentially puppeteers people. We also have Claire being truly awful with children. I mean truly awful. Her delivery is that extra perky super crisp style of talking to children while simultaneously trying to hold them at arm's length, and she clearly is aware that she doesn't know how to open a conversation. As demonstrated by her utter lack of attaching to anything about the child and instead tangenting off into baseball, which draws a face-scrunched expression of "the fuck...?" from the girl. As well it might. Audrey probably could help, she was doing all right earlier at the scene of the van, but she's right now more interested in leaning against the desk and being amused. Not entirely sure why, but possibly she feels that since Claire started first she might as well give Claire a fair shot before taking over. (Best guess, the officer who brought Ginger back tossed Claire at her once they got settled, because all women are maternal, don'tcha know. I do like establishing that no, they're not, and no, that's not a bad thing.) Which is fine, no major harm done, the girl's capable of understanding that they're trying to help and equally capable of deciding that she's not going to talk to them until they treat her like she's older than two. Like you do when the adults around you are being dippy folk.
Duke comes in to break the tension of Claire being completely out of her depth (and admitting it! which is impressive) to ask if Audrey wants to get lunch. I will pause here to note that this is a long, long way from Duke never setting foot in a police station unless he had to and even Duke avoiding interrupting Audrey at work because Nathan would be surly in his general direction. It's likely they've been doing this off and on for a bit, but this form of introducing Duke into the scene highlights for us how close he and Audrey have gotten in the last few weeks, and it's touching and sweet. Audrey tells him no, because she's got a case and an upset child, as he can well see. Duke being Duke, he tosses off a quip to lighten the mood, but it fits so well and sounds so much more natural and friendly that when he looks up at the girls to see if he should stay or go, Claire and Audrey both give him the visual equivalent of a step back. It's all Duke on this one, as far as they're concerned, Audrey even seems amused to find out what's going to happen. We capslock all over the place about how Duke is the best as he corrects himself to Grand Theft Two-Wheeler without either input from the girl or talking down to her, and segues into a mild and adorable gangster imitation complete with, you got the wrong guy, copper. It's also a very good opening for Audrey to reiterate/reassure Ginger that they're not here because she did anything wrong. Not that they have reason to know it now, but she's feeling deeply abandoned and probably unwanted and unloved, and looking for reasons why, and the sideways reassurances that she is a good kid will be good for her. Duke initiates some bonding via shared experience, followed by more hilarity about where are his client's video games and where is his client's phone call with Justin Bieber and she has rights, you know. One day this will seem dated, but it's good generic "teenage girls like this kind of stuff right?" and a reasonable guess as far as probabilities go. And if not, it'll at least provoke her into talking if only to deny the fact that she likes Justin Bieber. Everyone but Duke is trying not to laugh in this sequence, Audrey and Claire because they're playing the part of Stern Authority Figures, the girl because she's still trying to be unhappy only it's hard to be unhappy when Duke's being, well. Duke. Audrey throws up her hands in a very "you caught us" gesture.
Ginger's "I do?" about having rights is all kinds of depressing, especially drawing in the fact that for the past several weeks she most likely hasn't been given many choices about or much control over her life at all. The idea that she has rights to assert and choices to make has become foreign to her. But Duke's all about the rights of the prisoner, as we already know, and he'll be on her side. Which is part of why this works as well as it does; anyone associated with the police station directly trying this tactic wouldn't get such good results, but the lovable scoundrel friend to the cops? Oh yes. Imagining the cops in their underwear probably isn't what he would say to an adult, but it's the kid-friendly version and it makes her laugh. We stop to note the black and white colors they've got on Claire and Audrey respectively in this scene, and facepalm at the symbolism. Yes, we know, we still don't trust Claire either, thanks. Lucassi comes in with news on Tommy's body, Claire points out that if Audrey wants her to work up a profile she needs to be there which is both a valid excuse and a total excuse to escape her inability to connect with kids. It's okay, Claire, I feel your pain. Audrey leaves Ginger with Duke, who looks like he wants to object but doesn't know how without either making the poor girl feel more abandoned or hurting Audrey's chances of finding out more about the BGK. You can see the calculation passing over his face even as he looks mock-wounded at Audrey's teasing, and once again I say: goddamn, Eric Balfour. Now he's pouting and it gives Ginger a chance to return the favor of cheering him up, which would be less poignant if we didn't suspect she was doing it because she's afraid he'll leave if he's unhappy. He makes her work for it, giving a completely serious to the point of being V. Srs delivery of "Yes! I am funny," but it gives her something to work for that's both easy and distracting. Note, again, though, that she sticks to carefully worded sentences and statements. "You look like" rather than any form of command, "mmhm," and questions the rest of the time. She knows, or has a damn good idea, even if she doesn't want to admit it to herself.
We leave them making terrible pirate jokes and cut over to the Gun and Rose, where Jordan's taking off her gloves. I am duly amazed by the amount of body language Kate Kelton conveys with that close-up on her hands: she's not taking them off as a threat but with a sigh of relief, which we get only at the end of the removal process. Which means Nathan must be here! Hi Nathan. Apparently we're at the point that Jordan's comfortable taking her gloves off in public, despite the risks, just so she can touch and be touched. Honey, you are fucked up, have I mentioned that lately? There's something both childlike and... delicate? Almost a dancer's grace, to the way she's using her hands in this scene. Dancer's control imitating a childish joy/wonder, actually. Particularly when she gestures at the tattoo and the shield, asking which badge he's working under. It's a distraction, and not a subtle one, waving the power he holds over her like a red flag. Because, of course, she already knows why he's here, and she needs to know what he knows, and everyone's knowledgeable here. That's not even a good lie when she says she's not in the loop on this one, shifting her head and looking sad rather than matter of fact. Elevated blink rate and leaning her head to the right to avoid blatantly looking left, for physical tells. From what we've seen before, if she wanted to help Nathan out, she'd say she's not in the loop but she'll get back to him with something in an hour or two. Something, anything. And then she's way too curious/concerned about the daughter. Her head leans forward for interest, though her voice lilts up at the end to make a question of the noun phrase. But that's a very definite oh-shit look, and now neither we nor Nathan buy the "let me make some calls." Uh-huh. Suuuure. With the eyebrows raised and the half-smile it gives the impression more that she's pretending to be eager to help without the underlying signs of the bellying down and tail wagging that would normally accompany that flavor of eagerness. And finally we get a nice BIG lampshade on the main reveal of this episode when Nathan asks if the Guard knows anything more about Audrey going away, which is the first clear indication we've gotten that he's asked them to look into that, too. This is very, very slightly less of a lie than the other parts of this conversation, a lie of omission rather than a direct lie. It's a rather elephantine lie of omission, though, and Nathan gives her a pat to the hands as he gets up that's just about a physical yeah-right as you can get. It goes with her absolutely fake half-smile of apology! In case we didn't get it, he follows it up with that sort of smirk he gets when he knows he's being lied to and doesn't take his eyes off Jordan for a second, until he turns to the door. The sad look that follows him is, at least, genuine, though not about what the surface conversation is about. It's likely that she knows everything will come crashing down on her head with this one, but she feels obligated to try to fulfill her duty as she sees it regardless. Because the Guard Knows Best. Yay for cults! Which we're increasingly convinced this is; whether or not it started out that way is another matter. It does, however, seem that all factions connected with that tattoo have ended up as a cult, for whatever reasons (see: Glendowers). Jordan grabs her gloves but doesn't put them on again, either because she doesn't trust Lance not to touch her or because the Guard encourages its members to be less restrained about their Troubles, or both. Is now a good time to remind everyone that she's always dressed predominantly if not entirely in black, and works in a diner with a cowboy theme? Because really. It's not just her, either, Lance uses the phrase "that cat" when referring to Nathan, which, while still used, has been out of the general population of slang terms for a while. She apologizes, Lance says it's supposed to be a safehouse, I dig out the jar for that bit of confirmation. Standard back-and-forth for a pair of cult members about Nathan, and then we would love to know what she means by "bigger things to be pissed about." Grady? The fact that Audrey-Duke-Nathan are tracking down more of her origins and maybe more about the barn? The fact that Audrey might run, as Lucy Ripley did before her? WHO KNOWS ISN'T IT GREAT. I assume part of it is Grady and the BGK, but there's more there, and whatever it is Jordan thinks it's worth more focus than her questionable loyalties. Which is exactly what someone with questionable loyalties would say, so I don't know how much I believe her.
Back at the station, they've borrowed Nathan's office to have this little meeting about initial lab results. Tommy's body has been buried about 5-8 weeks, which fits neatly with our timeline while not actually clarifying any of it, thanks for that, guys. I have to admire the order in which Lucassi presents the facts, here. Starting with when the body was buried and going back to his identity, rather than the other way around, which primes Audrey to realize and accept that the Tommy Bowen she knew was never the real one but an imposter. Especially with her leaping on the fact that the dental records came back so fast, and I am so, so glad that with Nathan and Duke both back at her side Audrey is far more of the hyper-competent and intelligent cop we know her as. Even as I look around for the pull cord on this lampshade about having people, partners, you can rely on. (Also, we have Suspicions about Lucassi being something of a Stephen King surrogate within the show. Certainly this season. It's a nice, steady job that ties him back to the metaplot, the actor doesn't look too dissimilar from the writer at least in a Hollywood-ized way, and he tends to get to give the characters the reveals that lead them down the merry garden path.) Claire calls it out as technically impossible, which to me say she's not familiar with the chameleon Trouble (not that that's surprising) and we both fall over laughing at Lucassi's response. Yes, probably she is from Haven, but some things take some getting used to, even so. Something in Claire's expression as she asks about DNA testing makes me wonder what she knows and isn't telling, because I don't think the anger over a) being teased and b) having had someone lying about who he is under her nose for weeks is all that's going on under there. And no, the teeth don't lie. Lucassi delivers another of those pithy one-liners about worm food that make us side-eye between him and King, and we close the scene on a shot of Audrey's Very Upset And Trying To Hide It face.
After the break we get another panover of Haven, another establishing shot of the police station, and the kind of happy-go-lucky twangy guitar that usually accompanies Duke and his boat. Though in this case it's more Duke talking about his boat than Duke on his boat. Ship. As Duke corrects Ginger about the terminology, complete with expansive gesture because he's proud of that thing. Ginger thinks this is awesome for about a second or two, before asking Duke if he's on that boat all alone with no wife and kids. Awww. It's sweet that you think he's family material, kiddo, but Duke's got all kinds of family related issues that aren't safe for him to talk about with strangers, let alone children who shouldn't be burdened with that kind of thing just yet (I'm looking at you, Simon Crocker.) Duke distills it down to no Mrs. Pirate for him and he doesn't think he was meant to have a family, and for some reason we couldn't come up with immediately he brings up his daughter. Remember her, from back in season one? In retrospect, he probably brings this up because his mind is much on family, this season in general and after last week in particular. Thinking about the daughter who's the only family we know of left to him, and wondering how she's doing. She'd be maybe six months old, if that. Explaining that she'll age him to death in a day if he sees her again is also on the Do Not Talk About list, and besides, Ginger empathizing with Duke's not thinking he was meant to have a family is a much more immediate problem. That she has no intention of talking about, to judge by the rapid subject change. Duke might be more able to come up with something to pull the conversation back there if he didn't have his mind on his aforementioned family issues, but he does, so he doesn't. It doesn't help that Ginger, triggered by the discussion of family and specifically by Duke's comment introducing her to the concept of not being meant to have a family, is putting the whammy on him. Her Trouble doesn't quite have the literal compulsion of command-voice until she uses it deliberately later on; at the moment it's most likely manifesting as a sort of projected empathy. She's hungry, Duke gets kind of hungry (he did come in for lunch in the first place, and the clock in Nathan's office backs up that it's after 11), but points out that Audrey probably wants them to stay there. Then she uses a statement sentence about getting some ice cream that works as a soft command, and her needs override his common sense and awareness of Audrey's unstated intentions for him and Ginger. Granted, Duke can easily justify this because he's still not inclined to follow orders, even if he makes exceptions for Audrey and very sometimes Nathan, and out loud he justifies it because of the initial conversation where he's now a pirate. So, okay, why not. Again, it's very subtle, and if we didn't know from the previews that Ginger has a compelling voice type Trouble (assisted by the Something Hinky Is Going On Riff) we might think that Duke was trying to bond with the girl over ice cream and defying the authority figures. If she hadn't gone missing it's entirely possible Audrey would have gotten back, called Duke, and only sighed and rolled her eyes at the two of them eating ice cream at the stand or the Gull or some place. Though, come to think of it, if Duke had done that of his own volition he probably would have taken her back to the Gull for ice cream, to keep her in a safe place he could control.
Further evidence that Duke is under whammy, we have Duke arguing over the quality of the ice cream and using it as a demonstration of why he doesn't "trust the Man." Which is much, much less explicable by Duke's normal behavior patterns. The poor vendor is pretty confused, too, because "fun uncle" really doesn't cut it for this behavior, but you get all types. Especially in Haven. (Big Benjy is, by the way, the same brand of ice cream as the bars from Consumed, 1x04. Nice bit of continuity there.) In the foreground as we're panning across on the long shot we see Ginger's attention caught by something, but then we focus up on Duke expounding on ice cream and miss what happens next until the ice cream vendor points out that Ginger is gone. Poor Duke. Since he has no Ginger with him Audrey is understandably much more upset that he took her out of the police station but no, Nathan, coffee and Slim Jims do not cut it as food. Not for a growing girl, not even for an adult. Though I appreciate the not bringing up the donuts joke again. Duke's scrunched up face while describing his thought process that led them to wandering off for ice cream indicates that he's aware something hinky went on, but I think he also doesn't want to believe that a) he got out-manipulated by a little girl and b) that Ginger would drag him out for ice cream and ditch him maliciously. Dragging him out for ice cream so she could run off with her father is a much more acceptable reason. But since no one can give a description of either the father or the man Ginger went off with (I assume, or they would have the ice cream guy giving a description and possibly Vince with his sketchpad) it's off to search for the two of them. On foot, as the child and adult are, and while I agree that if they're on foot they can't have gotten far, Audrey, you don't know that the man didn't have a car stashed around the corner. Making a walking search is all well and good, but could you put out an APB on the kid, too, while you're at it? No? At least it interrupts the boys in their attempts to bicker rather than solve the case.
Duke goes one way, Nathan and Audrey go another, and we switch focus to Audrey berating herself for leaving the kid alone with Duke. It was a good idea, Audrey, don't kid yourself, and Nathan's there-there of choice is that she has a lot on her mind, which she does. This also serves to remind her that Lucassi gave her the dismaying identification of the body being Tommy Bowen. The real Tommy Bowen. Nathan's 'what?' is much less "that's impossible' than Claire's and more 'oh you have got to be shitting me,' which is exactly what I would expect from a Havenite who was there for one of the chameleon debacles. Audrey gives the time of death as around five weeks ago, when Tommy Bowen first came to Haven, which is a good solid time marker there and yet eliminates considering the possibility that they never met the real Tommy Bowen. Of course, we saw someone jiggling the door handle of Tommy Bowen's motel room door, so we know that they did and her assumption is accurate. But still, Audrey, remember what you can do with assumptions? Nathan sounds more pissed off than anything else, and more pissed off than we've seen him get for a while, at least without direct stimulus at the time. But yes, guys, you've been working with the Bolt Gun Killer. Again I say get thee to a proper BAU or at least a good Criminal Minds fan. (This has nothing to do with any desire to see the look on Reid's face if he were confronted by the supernatural. We would never.) Injecting themselves into the investigation is textbook serial killer behavior. I'm just saying. I doubt it enters into Nathan's mind to pull Audrey off looking for Ginger until she mentions that BGK is also looking for her son, but the second she does he tells her to go deal with that case, he'll find the kid. Awww, Nathan. And awww, Audrey, who is up front and tabling the more nebulous threat for the more immediate danger to the child who they know is alive and in a vulnerable state. For all anyone knows, remember, the Colorado Kid could still actually be dead, just buried in a different place. Unlikely, given the givens, but also possible. Currently he's Schroedinger's Cogan. Nathan looks after her, concerned but unable to do anything other than close the immediate case so they can get back to working on figuring out the mysteries of Audrey's past and future.
We have yet another panover shot, this time of the streets nearby the harbor where Ginger was taken, and then Lance turns up running as best he can with an armful of very pissed off child in his arms. She's not, to her credit, struggling in such a way that she'll get hurt if he loses his grip on her, but she is Not Happy. And with the duct tape on her mouth, which he presumably slapped on first thing he got her in private, she's got maybe some idea of what they're afraid of, by now. But she, herself, is also terrified. Like you are when a man you thought was a friend is abducting you for reasons and to places unknown. Guys, if you want to use her as a weapon, this is the exact opposite of how to go about it. I mean, I assume they were going to threaten to harm her father if she didn't say exactly what she was supposed to, on similar grounds that the unnamed Guard member uses near the end of this case? But in this instance honey would work so very, very much better than vinegar. As Lance finds out to his detriment. Jordan's car pulls up, we all facepalm about how she's not in the loop on this, of course she isn't. Somehow Ginger gets the tape off her mouth and screams to let her go, which he does because he can't do anything else, and then she turns around to scream at him more. Which is not necessarily something a kid would do, compelling voice Trouble or no, but it's not counterindicated, either. That kind of stress creates a wide range of behaviors, and since Lance isn't running after her she feels safe to yell and have a minor tantrum in his general direction. I think, in retrospect, this scene is meant to show us the way Ginger would/could have gone had she been brought up by the Guard, used as their tool and broken to sociopathy. I'm not entirely sold on the idea that this is an accident, but it's definitely not premeditated, either. Based on what we've seen from Ginger over the course of the episode, this is a manifestation of projected empathy more than command voice, which suggests that when she's upset and lashing out she ends up having less control over her Trouble. Which fits neatly with all the other Troubles we've seen like this one! Jordan starts to run after Ginger, realizes that she's whammied Lance, and tries too late to stop him from stabbing himself in the guts. Much to nobody's surprise, Lance carries a boot knife. Easier to conceal than a gun, good for close range work, and we have no idea what his Trouble is, it's possible that that accounts for long range fighting in some way. Jordan, honey, gut wounds aren't always immediately fatal. You could work on keeping him alive until the paramedics get there. But keeping her involvement in this case secret from Nathan is more important than trying to save her friend. SIGH. That's some hefty brainwashing there.
When Audrey and Nathan come on the body, we get a nice sinister juxtaposition of knife handle and stuffed bunny rabbit. Remember how we were mentioning the puppeteering earlier? Well, now she's lost the outward symbol, a nice visual touch that Ginger's internalizing her ability. Plus, you know, it's a creepy shot, with the superimposition of bloody violence over symbols of childhood innocence. Audrey, in her maternal role, is the one to crouch down by the toy and wonder what the hell happened here. Nathan offers a plausible explanation, since everyone's still hoping the father is around and healthy and able to/wants to look for his daughter. It's a nice thought, Nathan, but the evidence doesn't support it. And now we get one of those brilliant moments of rapport Audrey and Nathan have had fewer of this season, where he suggests a possible Trouble type and she builds on that to point out that we have nothing to show the father was even there this time. More to the point, she immediately realizes that Duke was whammied, back at the station, which just makes us glee over how much he's changed and how much she trusts him. Because actually, awhile back, that does sound like something Duke might do, if he thought it was safe. (For all his criminal behavior, he hasn't put a kid in physical harm on purpose, oh, ever. And has in fact gone out of his way to protect children, cf. Friend or Faux.) Now? Knowing that Audrey wants them to stay in the station, knowing something about the various factions at work, no, he wouldn't have. Nathan doesn't question that, either, except to confirm that she thinks it's Ginger who's Troubled, not her father. Audrey gets an oh-shit look and pulls out her phone to call Duke, because the kid's attached to him and might, if she's aware of her Trouble, be off to whammy him more. Unfortunately, she's already there. And whammying away, and now Ginger knows what she can do. She's probably somewhat in denial about it, because normal people can't do these things (and she's old enough to know the difference between fantasy and reality, or reality as she knew it in Atlanta), and also because she's scared and hurting and just wants this one person who seems to like her and be willing to spend time around her not to go away. Which in no way makes this phone call or what follows it any less creeptastic. Duke's body language throughout is very childish, all awkward limbs and angles, and even if part of what Audrey's saying about Ginger sinks in, there's nothing he can do to fight it. Since Duke's pretty high threshold (though he makes a good job of pretending otherwise normally), this is even more disturbing.
And you know what else is disturbing? Duke being fun and adorable and awesome while we know it's all a puppeted act. While we can be pretty sure he'd do something like this even without the girl's Trouble, the fact that he has no choice in the matter robs it of anything more than surface cute and, in fact, makes it deeply disturbing. In a very King-style surface-looks-fine-but-the-meat-is-rotten way, and did we mention the twenty foot neon letters? Establishing shot of the Gull, followed by a character shot of Duke-the-Pirate. Eric Balfour acts the SHIT out of this scene, you guys, and I have no idea what the initial conversation was that led them to this point but within the first minute we get a clear picture of what they're playing at: She's the damsel in distress, Duke is the dashing pirate rescuer. And while Duke's running around playing pirate, I'd like us all to remember that Skinwalker Tommy was the last person to call Duke pirate via the nickname of Jack Sparrow. In case this wasn't unnerving enough. It's all fun and games until Duke walks over a chair, trips, falls, and impales his hand on a shard of glass. His dominant hand, no less. In this case the glass in the hand is meant to establish the control the girl has over him, where he prioritizes the fantasy fun over everyone's health and safety (she's too far away to see it with his back to her concealing the injury, so she gets a pass on that), but I can't help but twitch over Duke with Troubled blood on his hands. Even if his own blood is unlikely to make him go silver-eyed, since, you know, it's his blood.
She keeps on driving the action with her narration, which underscores the fact that by now she at least subconsciously knows what she's doing. She's making choices to keep driving Duke, even though by now he's clambering around the Gull in a very unsafe way, with no regard for his safety. It's all about the game and the fantasy diversion. Which is both a sign of how scared she is underneath it all, scared of being unwanted and in some way wrong or bad, of losing her father as well as her mother and being in a strange town where she has no friends, but also a sign of what she could turn into, a sociopathic puppetmistress who manipulates people for her own entertainment. I keep wanting to tie this into a character this should reflect on, but one of many annoying things about Haven is there doesn't seem to be a puppetmaster behind all of this, or if there is we haven't met him or her yet. There's certainly a recurring candidate from the Stephen King Stable of Sickos, but we haven't seen him yet either apart from the opening credits name-drop. The closest possibility would be AudSarLu, even. And moving on from that tangent, hey, look, it's Audrey! Here she comes to save the day! Wait, no, that's Nathan running up to grab Duke from off the railing, and again for a second I expect Nathan to grab Duke around the waist or chest and pull him off the railing, thereby giving us all another reason to bring out our trollfaces. I would also like to point out here that now that Nathan's pulled his head out of his sulk he goes charging up those steps incredibly fast, two at a time, no hesitation. His Duke is in trouble and he must save him! But, no. He doesn't get there in time, and Duke falls. Ow. At least he didn't fall onto the narrow ends of any furniture. Or the rest of the glass.
Audrey goes to the kid, which is a good division of labor since she's immune to the compelling voice, and Nathan hops on down to take care of Duke. Again, we have the two of them (Audrey and Nathan, in this case) working in tandem on instinct, and smoothly, and it's a welcome sight with things being back the way they should be, how we've come to think of them on Haven. Nathan runs back down the steps to Duke while Audrey tries to make Ginger confront what she's doing more directly. Not that Ginger wants to believe it, because at first she denies that she did anything, claims they were just playing, she doesn't want to connect her actions with the consequence of Duke getting seriously injured despite the fact that she clearly does care about Duke. Not in her words, but in her knock-kneed flaily body language. And then in the next breath she does use her Trouble, commanding Duke to be fine, for the first time openly portrayed as deliberate. We've been guessing that she's been using her power deliberately at the very least since she was kidnapped, but this is the first time it's scripted and directed so that we're intended to see it clear. Duke lurches to his feet trying to brush off the fall he just took but, no, sadly, her power doesn't work that way (although it wouldn't be the first reality warping Trouble!) and Duke is most definitely not fine. Nathan tries to keep him from hurting himself further, but Duke collapses on a chair instead. Because the directors or actors hate us and don't want to see Duke fainting into Nathan's arms was that my outside voice? Oops.
Some unknown number of minutes later Audrey seems to have gotten Ginger calmed down; at least, they're both sitting in chairs and while Ginger's posture is leaned back and slouched, her head is up and she's listening rather than hunched over and guarding herself or blocking Audrey out. Now that they have some idea of how her Trouble works Audrey just needs one last detail for confirmation, which is, what happened in the van before the two men came pelting out of it. Ginger's description of events is about what we expected, but her delivery is calm, clear, and matter-of-fact. It is, in fact, the delivery of a kid who's recently been through interviews with police officers or psychologists. Which I would guess that she has been, and she might even have told those exact same events to Officer Colin as he took her back to the station, or at the station. Audrey just comes right out and says it, because there's no point in trying to deny that the Trouble exists: people do what she tells them to. Ginger points out the hole in this logic, which is that Audrey doesn't, and I'm not sure if that's denial of her own Trouble or just wondering why it doesn't work on Audrey. It doesn't sound like she's upset or angry that it doesn't work on Audrey, though, just confused. Yes, Audrey's special too. Really special. But it also gives Ginger some sense of solidarity, she's not the only different one here. Audrey then asks about Ginger's family, and we get more of what we already suspected, that she thinks her father doesn't want her around because he started treating her differently recently, moving them to Haven, which she sees as an effort to get rid of her. With our greater base of information we can make a really good guess that the mother was the Troubled one, the father knew it, and therefore knew that when the mother died the Trouble stood a good chance of triggering in the daughter and he should shuffle his butt over to Haven post-haste. Ginger, sadly, doesn't know any of this. All she knows is that her mother died, her father changed, and then her father ran off. Interestingly, she also doesn't seem ready to accept just yet that the father ran off because she told him to with her Trouble, despite by now knowing and being told what she can do. In her mind it's still because her father doesn't want her. Her statement that her father doesn't like her anymore holds matter-of-fact conviction. Which, oh honey, between that and her delivery still being that of a young girl trying to be an adult. And pulling it off better than most young girls do, too. Well, Audrey has convictions too, one being that in the absence of proof otherwise parents who have raised their children, who wanted their children, presumably want to be with their children even after a moment of being psychically commanded to go away and leave said child alone. You can almost see the theories clicking away in her head as to why the father hasn't shown up yet. Nathan's arrival gives her at least an oblique example, so that Ginger can hear the truth when Audrey says sometimes people have to go away even when they don't want to. All together now, oh Audrey. She's not looking at Nathan, either. Anticipating how much it's going to hurt when she disappears.
Nathan's not going near the compelling voice child, so Audrey gives her a bit of a be right back pat and goes over to find out what he has to say, since the conversation seems to have stalled out. Ginger could use some time to contemplate that anyway, all that coming as it was from an authority figure adult who has no reason to lie to her and clearly believes what she's saying. Nathan's report is that Duke's feeling better and has stopped thinking he's an enemy pirate, given with Nathan's typical dry/resigned amusement over the wackiness of Haven. Because fucking Haven. Audrey can now articulate the question of why hasn't the father appeared, bouncing theories off of Nathan as they used to (I cannot squee enough over this) and going through maybe the father's injured or can't find her yet (and if the latter why hasn't he filed a police report?) to Audrey's theory that the girl's Trouble started when the mother died. Briefly tangenting here, this is why we think it's the mother who was Troubled and not the father, because while the father clearly knows the Trouble exists, if there was a time for it to be triggered it probably would have been when the mother died, but it triggered in the daughter and not the father. Which is good because that could have been a horrific recursion of commanding until something terrible happened. Audrey speculates, reasonably, that it's the child's feeling of abandonment and loss that triggered the Trouble and maybe reuniting her with her father and reassuring her that she is loved and wanted will make it go away or at least mitigate her inclination to use it. Sure, why not. Back to the child to try and find out if there's anything else to work with here in Haven, asking questions about the Guard member(s) who brought them here. Which leads directly to "which person in the alley, the man or the woman?" Oops. Ginger's description, again sounding like someone talking to a police officer and now I wonder if she's been exposed to too many cop dramas, matches Jordan's. Audrey looks over at Nathan with dismay, Nathan doesn't even look surprised. More grim than anything else, I think. Excuse him, Audrey, he has to go see a woman about a lie.
Our next establishing panover is that of the coastal cemetery! Because that has no significance, either in terms of the Guard section of the cemetery, or the people who have died that had a huge effect on the town, or the BGK, or the empty Colorado Kid grave, would you like me to go on? No? Alright then. Nathan's head is bowed as Jordan walks up, a little bit in defeat and a lot bit because he's struggling to keep his expression under control. Jordan sounds a bit wistful, a bit resigned when she talks about their last meeting at the cemetery, which was back in Real Estate just prior to Holloway luring Nathan to the house. (And then again at the end of the ep, which was probably the fun she's talking about.) By the slowly ebbing lightness in her face when she turns to look at him she knows she's about to burn all her bridges, hey look, episode title, but she believes she's doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. Because, once again, she is fucked in the head. Nathan's diction is crisp and instead of the flat affect we get when he's relaxed and not showing much emotion, we get the tension of holding his fury in check instead. It's a subtle, nuanced difference, and it's damn impressive acting work. Jordan spends this entire scene lying; they know where the father is, they don't want to help Ginger (unless help equates to use suddenly), and she may care about Nathan but she's got a damn funny way of showing it. She's grieving in this scene, not over her friend and not over the loss of life in general (though we know she doesn't favor brutal methods the same way the Guard does unless it's unavoidable/she's ordered to use her Trouble), and she doesn't understand the depth of feeling between Nathan and Duke. Because half of that anger at least is over Duke getting injured, but even if she can accept that Duke isn't like the other Crockers, the Guard refuses to acknowledge that they're anything but bad people who should be avoided at least and killed at most. And that's a lot of indoctrination to fight against. Another lie! They don't want the father to stop her Trouble, they want him as a method of control. Jordan spends a lot of time with her jaw clenched, lips trembling, fighting back tears, various other physical signs of distress. Her loyalties, such as they are to Nathan, are being severely tested, but the long term groupthink one is going to win out over the brand-new one based on hormones. Which is a nice reversal from standard tropes, but also means Nathan is never going to trust her again. Not to mention, Jordan gives us no indication at any point that she knows what a healthy relationship looks like, either romantic or platonic; her model for how romantic partners interact allows for manipulative behavior and lies in order to preserve the relationship, whereas Nathan at least has some clue as to how normal people conduct a relationship. And that, too, points up how hard this whole charade has been for him, getting into the Guard and distancing himself from the woman he loves in order to help her. I do think that as a result his relationship with Jordan turned into something more real than he expected. I also think that Nathan's not as completely fucked in the head, and thus more capable of looking at her actions and deciding that he's been deluding himself that she would ever help him and it's time to cut ties.
Continuing on, then, Nathan tries to get back to a point where he can trust anything Jordan says by demanding straight answers, not letting her have time to weasel out with talk of how the Guard does things. She gives him an answer to where Ginger and her father were going to stay when they arrived in Haven, but it's not a straight one. "She has an uncle in town" is not actually stating that that's where they were going to live. At all. But it's worth checking out even so, and Nathan's the kind of good cop who follows up all the leads even if he thinks they might be dead ends. We next get a right-to-left panover of the "look someone is traveling" variety, and indeed, we get Nathan heading up the porch to the uncle's house. Who, if he's the father's brother, would be named Henry Danvers, leading to the inevitable headdesking and flailing. I'm sure it's just a throwaway reference, but seriously, you guys, with the random English history already. (A brief Twitter conversation with Charles Ardai indicates that Mrs. Danvers died in a house fire and yes, that might be Henry Danvers. I will be over here cackling.) We briefly discuss the merits of there being a deaf caretaker somewhere, because if the Guard was being smart that would be a brilliant solution to Ginger's Trouble. Alas, the Guard is not that smart, or they don't have anyone fitting that description. I'm game for calling it either. Nathan's checking in with Audrey before he heads in, not just because it's good cop procedure but because he needs to let Audrey know that Jordan's back to being untrustworthy. Still untrustworthy. You know what I mean. This phone call also highlights that Audrey's slowly giving up on her original tactic of "push him away to keep him safe," lampshaded for us by the woman in question when she says "you were trying to help me." Thankfully, the father's first name isn't Charles, it's Morton, so I don't have to go smack anyone with a fish. (We'll ignore the name of a certain episode writer so my head doesn't explode.) The uncle clearly is not with the Guard, delineating between himself and "them," though he just as clearly seems to be a Haven native. Or maybe he was one of the Haven residents who watched the Guard recruitment videos they put out this fall, assuming those are intended as in-universe as well as bonus clips for the audience. Regardless, he's not here to tell us how the Guard works, he's here to confirm to Nathan that Jordan lied again and the Guard's already been to his house looking for Morton Danvers. With his customary pissed off taciturn look, Nathan stalks off without another word so he can go be Audrey's backup before anything terrible can happen. GOOD Nathan. You may have a pancake.
Back at the Gull, Ginger's playing a pirate-based flash game on someone's laptop and Audrey's keeping eyes on her. Say it with me, folks, it's not paranoia if they're really after you. But then what's this? Lucassi has more data! This both a lot of Lucassi and a lot of morgue tech presence in general, where previously we had little to none. Right about now I took a moment to wonder if he was the skinwalker, because a more "step into my parlor" phrasing and lighting I couldn't have come up with when he asks her down to the morgue to show her what he found. She takes the call and moves away from the door for a few seconds, judging it to be safe for now and further judging that she may need to ask questions that a little girl shouldn't be hearing. Some medicobabble and then, okay, so real!Tommy had some kind of cellulose in his lungs, plant-based, from some kind of rope right before he died. The glory of smartphones allows Audrey to take a look at the factories in the area that produce it, while Jordan sneaks around to try and manipulate Ginger. It's a shitty job of it, too, simple bait-and-switch of telling her that Audrey's going to do what the Guard plans to do instead. And Jordan's way overselling it, and probably has little to no experience with kids herself, going by the small and simple words she chooses to try and persuade Ginger to come willingly, the utterly fake wide-eyed smile. It's as good a trap as any they have, trying to lure her in using her father as bait, but everyone's so deathly afraid of Ginger's Trouble that the poor kid isn't going to believe anyone's acting in her own best interests anytime soon. Especially when Jordan offers no bona fides or explanations why her father isn't there himself. Jordan's expressions are very exaggerated through this whole conversation, as though she thinks Ginger won't be convinced without a bunch of pantomime. Indeed, Ginger looks thoroughly unconvinced as she looks back toward the camera, just about breaking the fourth wall with an expression of "really? this is the crap you expect me to believe?".
After the break, we re-establish the Gull and Audrey comes back from reading through her email to find Ginger gone. This is, by the way, a very neat use of both the upsides and downsides of modern technology in the same scene. She takes a second to glance around the room, but there's not too many places a kid could've gone in the time Audrey was gone, and the Gull's layout is very open. Plus, pirates. Why would Ginger abandon pirates? Why indeed. Now Jordan's gone and pissed Audrey off, and that is to nobody's benefit. Definitely not the Guard's, at all, ever. Up until now they appeared as a group that was working at parallel if not convergent purposes, but now, with this? They're proper fucked. Audrey echos our thoughts but keeps her gun pointing down, uncertain of a shot that won't hit Ginger. We learn, sort of, that Jordan believes what she's doing will make the Troubles go away - and indeed, in a roundabout sort of way, that's her goal. I can even understand why she does it, given soon-to-come data, but I can't manage to countenance her continuing the cycle she's been subjected to. Nathan arrives in plenty of time, and Jordan at this point completely loses whatever grasp on reality she had, seeing all her careful plans crumble around her. Ginger runs to Audrey, just in case we hadn't had the maternal theme hammered into our skulls enough this ep, and like a good cop she holds onto the kid with one hand and keeps the gun slightly out from her side with the other. Ginger's in no mood to let go, either. Nathan cuffs Jordan while she sobs that she did it for them, more hinting at all the myriad revelations to come. It's at this point that we get another really good look at how unhealthy her idea of a romantic relationship is, because she's genuinely distressed that this didn't work. That Nathan isn't understanding how she's doing this to benefit them.
And now we begin the interrogation scene by catching Duke up on all the things that they learned while he was either whammied or busy recovering from toppling onto the patio. He obviously empathizes with the feeling of being abandoned by one's father, as we'd expect, and doubly so having just met his grandfather. Ginger looks a little guilty and uncomfortable when he admits to feeling woozy, which helps us believe that she doesn't want to become a sociopath. Unfortunately, isolating and controlling a child the way the Guard wants to is a great way to set that up! We're still deciding whether or not that's on purpose, by the way. Nathan begins the interrogation, and this is as angry as I think we've ever seen him since his father died. Rightly so, too: he's been lied to, set up, and is now confronting the ugly truth that a group he hoped really wanted to help people like him is far more interested in controlling them. That a woman he could have had a relationship with, one that would last longer than the few days Audrey supposedly has left, has no idea what a loving, trusting relationship looks like. And though that might not have been at the forefront of his mind, it certainly was a motivating factor. Jordan looks shattered throughout this tirade, and it's this reaction as much as anything else this season that convinces me that she's been in/around an abusive relationship, not just with the Guard but in her personal life. (Which may be nothing but the Guard, given how controlling they are.) She can't differentiate between someone being furious with her because of her abusive actions, and fear for her physical safety/resignation to being physically abused, which is what Kate Kelton's body language is screaming here.
And then Ginger gets scary. That cold, cold look of a kid who's realizing how much power she has, and exactly who the bad guy in the room is. Jordan is even more terrified of this, in some ways, than of physical violence. As well she might be, both on the level of personal violation and because she's probably been brainwashed to believe all Troubled people are on the same side and nobody should use their Troubles against each other except in dire circumstances. Which, for Ginger, these are. She wants her father back, and Nathan's rant about the Guard holding him so they can't get to him made all the cylinders fire in her head - that, combined with the Guard's caution about her talking to them ever (see: Jordan telling her to just listen followed by a hand over her mouth, and the more blatant duct tape over the mouth from Lance), combined with the fact that none of our three protags have ever laid a hand on her in violence, means that she's decided who the bad guys are. And it's not Nathan or Audrey or Duke. Note, though, that she phrases it all in the conditional or interrogative. She could do this. This is how her power works, right? So if this then that. Nothing that forces anyone into action. Audrey's quick to say no, not so much because she's afraid of the power but because she's afraid what deliberate and prolonged use of it would do to Ginger. Duke argues on her behalf, though, because he knows too well what it's like to have a father go off and abandon you and keep secrets from you and every other damn thing. Plus, and though this probably isn't deliberate on their part, Duke being the one to do the talking means he can use her guilt over having hurt him to get her to agree to his terms of engagement. That's not what he's using as a primary tactic, though; he uses the fact that he still likes her even after that, the belief that two people can be friends despite an accident like that, and more subtly and with great finesse, asks for her promise. For a girl whose word binds others to do as she says, who wants to atone for what her conscious words did before, this is a powerful thing, asking for her to bind herself with words. Not that her power works that way, but extending both that trust that she'll defer to his judgment and that control of deciding whether or not to give her word to Duke is a very delicate way of showing her that he does care about her, and is paying attention to her and how all of this is affecting her. Trust, control, and power balances all having suddenly become very fragile things in her world, he's laying things out in simple terms and putting them on about as much equal footing as she can expect, and only inequal inasmuch as she's a child and him an adult.
Having negotiated the terms of the interrogation, Ginger gets no less scary. Jordan starts to say, at a guess, that she doesn't know, and before she can get more than a word into it the girl realizes her mistake and clarifies the order to require a truthful and immediate answer. This whole scene, in structure, reminds me a great deal of making bargains with the Fae: you have to be very specific in your wording or they'll screw you over. The 'now' is a nice addition, making Jordan cough up the information before she can come up with a way to lie with the truth, as we are both far too aware is very possible. Jordan gives probably more information than the compulsion requires of her, since she still doesn't want to see Nathan get killed. Which I suppose is a small point in her favor. She still sees this as an us-and-them situation, though, where "us" is all the Guard and the Troubled people, excluding the Crocker line, and "them" is everyone else including Audrey. Jordan also keeps her eyes on Nathan, whether because she thinks he's most sympathetic to her over the creepy compelling-voiced child, the Crocker, or Audrey, or because she's trying to make him understand that she's doing this for the good of the two of them. Or both. The next excellent question is why the Guard wanted Ginger, which is something that, though it makes everyone and especially Duke uncomfortable, she has the right to hear the answer to. Hey, look, this is about Audrey being "difficult"! Where's that jar with the surprised face. We've been saying for a while that season three is about the choices people make, and Audrey's choices have been vehemently her own. The Guard, it seems, would prefer that not be the case.
At this point Nathan takes over the investigation, and again it's a sign of how much trust Jordan has shattered that Ginger just turns it over to Nathan with barely a blink. How Jordan ever thought Ginger would be kind or nice to her or the Guard when the Guard has treated her as nothing but a hostage or a victim is beyond normal reasoning, and while Nathan hasn't been prominent in her experience thus far, Audrey and Duke who have both been kind to her and trusted her, they clearly trust Nathan. So it's Nathan over Jordan, and Audrey nudges Ginger upstairs. Followed by Duke's assist, but all three of the adults clearly want to stick around to hear this, so she's on her own upstairs. And clearly more angry about being sent away than sad or scared. Duke doesn't like any of this, Audrey's still coping with the fact that Jordan's indicated she knows more about Audrey than Audrey does (and given that this is the second person she doesn't know who does, she's deeply fed up with that). Nathan, however, is still furious. Clack goes the chair against the table and the floor, Nathan leans in with his forearms on the table and his hands within reach of Jordan. Or they would be if she weren't handcuffed. It's a nice callback to their several conversations in the Gun and Rose (heh) and while I doubt it was deliberate on Nathan's part, I'm pretty sure it was deliberate on Lucas Bryant and/or TW Peacocke (the director)'s part(s). Nathan starts out with pointing out what we were wondering about a moment ago, how Audrey is immune to the Troubles and the compelling voice won't work. And as we were wondering, they intended to use the compelling voice on Audrey's nearest and dearest, and by nearest and dearest she means Nathan because god forbid anyone care about a Crocker. I'd give a lot to be able to see Audrey and Duke's expressions at that point, but we get the next best thing by switching shots to their faces after Jordan gives the long version. If they have Ginger, they have Nathan, if they have Nathan, they have Audrey. Entertainingly, Audrey looks as though things are falling into place for her. Duke, however, just looks pissed off. Dismayed and pissed off.
And now Jordan takes the momentary lack of questions to protest that she really cared about Nathan, because that is what's important to her. That he knows she cares, and she does love him, not whether or not he feels he can trust her. In her mind, apparently, love takes precedence over trust, whereas for Nathan trust comes first and love follows slowly. We can take the full rambly analysis of his relationship with Audrey by way of example as a given, yes? Yes. Jordan could benefit from being beaten with said ramble, but Jordan doesn't understand how Nathan works. Either because she hasn't known him that long or because she isn't paying attention or because she doesn't care to, because this is the way the world works for her, love and feelings first, trust and honesty ... whenever there's time. Nathan's not a bit interested in hearing her protestations of love, he wants to know why they wanted to control his friend. Well, apparently because last time when she was Lucy Ripley she refused to go into the barn, and now we start having flashbacks going off like fireworks behind our eyeballs. Remember back in Business as Usual at the end of season two? When we met the original Lucy Ripley, who said that AudSarLu had come to her saying that they were after her? And Simon followed after, so we made the assumption that Simon and the Rev's crew were after her, but now it seems like it was the Guard instead. Audrey's getting more and more irritated that everyone seems to know what's going on but no one's telling her. Duke is startled, and I think Duke here is grasping onto the hope that he's not going to lose his friend. Because with that information and what follows, Jordan outright states that what sends Lucy away is her going into the mysterious appearing disappearing barn, and implies that this is what causes the memory reset as well. That is, at least, a tangible cause for her disappearance which none of them have had before; it's also a significant indication that she can resist it, not go away, given that they're afraid she won't. They want her to go into the barn because once she does, apparently, the Troubles... stop is the word that Jordan uses, but what she seems to mean is that they go away. Not only do they stop manifesting, those who were Troubled to begin with become ordinary again. This starts percolating in everyone's mind. Audrey most likely starts wondering if it might be worth it to end the Troubles, Nathan takes a second off of interrogating Jordan to wonder what Audrey's thinking, and Jordan takes the silence to go back to the you-and-me approach to Nathan. Only Nathan isn't listening. He just wants to know how she knows, if her information is reliable (it is, the Guard's been around long enough to know how this goes, though Jordan's narration of it is presumably all hearsay since she's no older than the boys), and why she didn't tell him before. Because she knew he'd try to stop it, which of course he would, which, again. Her wishes above his, and love above trust, which is not how Nathan Wuornos operates. He looks up and over at Duke and Audrey as he confirms he's going to try and stop it, Duke affirms that Audrey going into the barn and disappearing isn't going to happen while looking directly at her and causing another spontaneous eruption of trollfaces, and Audrey just turns away, trying to process everything she's just learned. We know how you feel, Audrey. And while she does that, Nathan will get one last piece of information.
Which we then find out is the phone number of the guy holding Morton Danvers! Yay! Another hint as to how Ginger's power works, unlike with Chris Brody or Jackie's power, eye contact isn't necessary and she can do it by phone. As demonstrated when she tells the goon, er, Guard holding her father to drop his gun and go to sleep. It's awesome, too, because he smashes the phone in an attempt to keep her from giving him any more commands, but, damage done. Another second or two and he's on the floor, asleep. Nathan goes cuffs him while Audrey goes and finds her father, announce first and then entering the room where he's kept, good Audrey! There's a moment where she makes sure Morton Danvers knows his daughter's Troubled, but apparently she needn't worry about that. He knows, he's worried about her, of course he loves her she's his daughter she's all he has left, and Audrey gives him the very abridged version of what he needs to do before calling Duke to bring Ginger in. Because Duke's been lurking outside with Ginger because the three of them make an awesome team. Cue heartwarming father-daughter reunion, complete with deliberate phrasing about how no one will ever take him away from her again. Reinforcing that it wasn't that he wanted to leave her, it was that the Guard took him away. Good dad. Can has cookie.
Of course it's too early in the episode for a happy ending, so cue second Guard goon coming in behind Audrey! Duke catches him coming in but not in time to keep the goon from getting Audrey at gunpoint, alas. He then transfers his focus to Pa Danvers, threatening Ginger with shooting her father if she opens her mouth just in case she didn't get it. Of course that only works as long as his focus and aim are on Pa Danvers, so when Duke goes for the dropped gun from earlier and the goon shifts his aim to shoot by Duke's fingers (followed by "Next one kills you, Crocker," just in case we didn't know the Guard sees Duke as less than them) Ginger takes the opportunity to tell the gunman to go away. He does twitch, too, as anyone might when being given orders by a girl with a compelling voice problem, but he doesn't seem to feel the need to listen to her, and hands us a pretty lampshade with Her Powers Don't Work Anymore written all over it. (Edit 12/2, we've seen some people commenting that this doesn't make much sense, since Audrey's supposed to be the one directly able to temporarily alleviate Troubles. Except she's a very adult kid, and her Trouble is triggered specifically by feeling abandoned, not by general stress or trauma. Once her dad's right there, there's no reason for her Trouble to be active anymore.) Nathan tries to negotiate for the Danvers' freedom, but the goon's hopeful that the girl's powers will come back and make her of use to the Guard again. Which is the point where Nathan offers to trade up Jordan for the father and daughter, and all I can think is damn I wish Jordan had heard that. The goon will take that, an apparently valuable Guard operative for a recalcitrant contingency plan (a nice test on Nathan's part, too), and he doesn't actually sound that betrayed when he asks Nathan if that symbol on his arm doesn't mean anything to him anymore. Which just goes to show that Jordan probably was the only one in the Guard who trusted Nathan more than a little bit. Why no, no it doesn't, not anymore. Nathan was, indeed, all about the Guard when he thought it meant an organization dedicated to helping the Troubled and doing the right thing, but the qualifiers in there of helping some of the Troubled and doing the right thing when it was convenient kind of put a damper on his enthusiasm. So, no. Goon 2 will take Goon 1 and get out, and presumably some kind of violence will be involved if Nathan doesn't let Jordan out in a timely fashion. Yay! No one gets everything they want!
Before we let Jordan out, we have to get the Danvers family on the road again, and although in previous episodes this was Dwight's job, this time it falls to Duke, as the person Ginger trusts and likes most out of the three of them. He's got his old truck and knows places the Guard will never find them, and while I might normally question that, he hasn't been out of the smuggling business that long, so I bet he does. We return to capslocking about how Duke is the best and he would make such an excellent father at this point, a point of some hilarity considering the most recent Haven post, as he says goodbye and tells her the next place will be safer. The word 'promise' gets thrown around a lot this ep, but in this case it's the promise that there will be other people wherever she's going, and she'll find new friends. Both child and adult, in all likelihood; her Trouble aside Ginger strikes me as the sort of child who makes friends with adults easier than with her age peers. Certainly now that she's been through these events, she'll have a harder time connecting with other kids. But Duke gives her his eyepatch, cue melting into puddles of goo, and then Ginger asks if he can stay with them. Oh honey. I bet her mom was the fun one, or there was a fun uncle back in Atlanta that she's missing a lot lately. This allows us to see just how thoroughly Duke's priorities have changed in the last few months, from the carefree smuggler who probably would have gone with them, had he gotten so involved at all, to someone who places other people's needs above his admitted desire to get the hell away from all the crap going down in Haven. Just to twist the knife some more, Ginger says he should come with his daughter (who she seems to assume is close to her own age, which, not so much) and a Mrs. Pirate, and Duke can't keep from looking back toward Audrey. Not only for the obvious reasons, but given the recent talk of the Troubles all going away it's entirely likely he's wondering if he could see his daughter if they did. For 27 years. Oh Duke. (Drink!) He is, as usual, so in love with Audrey it hurts. Redirecting and giving a noncommittal answer, as only one can when being stabbed straight in all the soft spots at once, they head out while Audrey finishes her phone call. Which is, naturally, about the BGK, but the information's on her desk instead of on her phone this time. Nathan nods and lets her head up to the car so he can stop to check on Duke, and we have our THIRD go-round of trollfacing this episode. Nathan's hand on Duke's shoulder/chest indicates to us that he's using the lesson from Jordan that even if he can't feel other people, they can feel him for comfort rather than manipulation. My god, you two could not get closer to kissing and making up in two seconds if you tried. Legions of fangirls are muttering dire imprecations at the lack of kissing. (Look, we never pretended not to also be shallow.)
Nathan and Audrey head back to the station, where Audrey immediately dives headfirst into the paperwork on her desk. Mm, paperwork, a true cop's method for uncovering the things people don't want you to find! (Or in skinwalker!Tommy's case, a fake cop's method for doing the same to the Teagues. Ahem.) She's bouncing her ideas off Claire, and I really am not fond of the way Claire's hovering over this case by now. It makes me wonder if the skinwalker's got a Claire skin somewhere (doubtful) and failing that, what the hell her game is (still unknown, isn't it great?). (Edit 12/30 Now that we're finally looking back on this OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.) Okay, so the trace evidence leads to the factories leads to one abandoned factory from back in '08 (which, by the way, seems to be right around the time the Troubles started up in earnest again) and has had an electric meter spike in recent months. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you catch a killer. Long, tedious, annoying paperwork.
Meanwhile in the jail cells, Jordan looks broken and tired. She picks up her head when footsteps approach, takes in a breath when she sees that it's Nathan. Who isn't looking her way. He unlocks the door, opens it, and it isn't until he leans up against the wall and starts talking that he looks at her, which clearly isn't the response she was hoping for. But she's had time in the cell to put her armor back on. Nathan gives her the rundown on the deal he struck with the Guard, or at least, that representative of it. Which either says interesting things about their hierarchy that someone who can make that kind of deal was just sent into an unsecured, uncertain situation, or says interesting things about how far Nathan trusts them given that he left it to Duke, who is unlikely to come to Guard attention as far as information gathering goes (not because they're not interested but because Duke's that good, mind you), to make sure the Danvers were safe. Or both at once, really. He says this in his usual taciturn sotto voce and all Jordan can say in return is "Thanks," short and clipped, as though she doesn't want to let the conversation go on longer and betray herself. She does so in the next moment, anyway, the attempt to return to her old self not lasting, which is some interesting foreshadowing for later in the season, we suspect. Holding on to one of the door bars, she asks him if he believes she really did care about him. Past tense, did, which I think is less truthful than she'd like it to be. But once more and for all we have her here prioritizing affection and feelings over trust. Yes, Nathan believes she cared. No, Jordan, it doesn't make a difference. But then she adds that it's always been about that partner of his, and I think we can take it as given that 'partner' substitutes for another less polite word. And there's so many things wrong with that sentence I hardly know where to begin. First of all, she's completely ignoring that Jordan herself is the one who's lied, betrayed, and been untrustworthy. She implies Nathan was less than forthright about his actions or his intentions, that he was using her to help Audrey in some way, and that this is somehow different from how she intended to use Ginger and how she was not at all forthright about her actions. She implies that they would have been happy together if Audrey weren't in the picture, and that in and of itself is a rant probably the size of this recapalypse which I will distill down into: one of the most common delusions of the fixated unstable person is that the object of their affections would return that affection if it weren't for this other person. The other person doesn't even need to be a romantic interest, he or she could be a friend or a co-worker (all of which happen to be true in this instance, for bonus points), all that matters is that the fixated person has a target that is not him- or herself for the blame of failure. In this case, Audrey. It's not Jordan's fault, it's not Nathan's because that would mean that Nathan on his own might not be fully committed to the relationship, which she needs him to be. It's Audrey's fault for distracting Nathan from them. And the fact that Audrey will always be there in Nathan's life is what she's trying to accept, not that she fucked up by lying constantly and straight to Nathan's face. If she accepted that latter fact, she'd have to fix it, and she's not even in the same solar system as there yet. Getting there would involve admitting that her entire worldview is skewed off even Haven-normal, emotionally unstable and unhealthy, and there just isn't time for that, let alone enough therapy. Even when she says that she did it to end the Troubles, the follow up of "I did it for us" is more emphatic and clearly more important to her. (She'd like us to believe that "us" is all Troubled people, but, uh, no. I have a bridge to sell you that's more believable.) Nathan tells her that there is no "us," because of course. He has enough trust and communication issues on his own. And then she looks over and Audrey's in the doorway, hard to say how much of that she heard but the look on Jordan's face is reminiscent of some of the other looks she's given when supposedly no one's watching. The really furious ones way back when she was first introduced, where we were all screaming that Nathan better watch it or she was going to rip him to bits? The look she gives Audrey is a look of deep, cold dislike and possibly hatred. Hard to say how far she'll take it, but I wouldn't sleep too well if I were Audrey right about now.
So, Nathan tries to reassure Audrey by pointing out that Jordan might not know what she's talking about, which is true. Or she could be lying. Again. In either case, Audrey's taking it as plausible without latching onto it as gospel and she's got a break in the Bolt Gun Killer case, so let's go over there! We pan over the abandoned factory/warehouse setting, catching a glimpse of the sign as we come around to Nathan's truck, and then we have to stop and bash our heads into our desks for awhile. King Bros.? Seriously? Really? Not you're not even trying to make us work for the references. They get out their guns and Audrey delivers a couple of pissy one-liners about the state of the place, but then we pause to have a quiet and heartfelt conversation about just what it is Audrey's supposed to do. She's willing to go into the barn and end the Troubles, but Nathan, now that he knows it's something that can be fought, is just as immediate as Duke was in his assertion that they'll find another way. It's so good to have real Nathan back, instead of closed-off jackass Nathan who's not telling Audrey anything and blames Duke for everything! Audrey agrees, albeit tentatively, to finding another way; she doesn't seem too hopeful, and I can't blame her. If at least two prior incarnations of her have gone in despite (plausibly) knowing about the barn's purpose by the end, then what's going to make this time any different? Plus she's fixated on digging around in the BGK's lair and hopefully finding the skinwalker himself, which is both true and a useful diversion. Even though that's a conversation they need to have, standing around a Troubled serial killer's nest having it is not the best of plans. Particularly when, as we creep in, said nest seems to still be occupied. We go through a series of set and soundtrack tropes of This Is A Creepy Gross Serial Killer Nest (green/blue lighting, obscure red fluids, rundown mechanical equipment, obscured lines of sight, tremolo strings, minor key, ooh hey look there's some creepy tanks with unknown fluids and body parts!) and the upshot of all of this is you don't want to watch Haven and eat dinner at the same time. Er, I mean, the unsub has been storing the skins so that he can interchange them as necessary. Well, that answers one question and brings up several more. Like, you know what I'm not seeing around this creepy warehouse? A serger or a frankenAudrey! The bodies of those other victims that weren't killed for Audrey parts were, as Audrey says, burned so that no one could tell they'd been skinned first. Nathan gives us the rundown on how and why the Trouble works, the killer uses a bolt gun to conceal the hole in the skin and then wears various people's skins to get close to the investigation (Tommy), to get close to Audrey while being kidnapped (Roslyn), and to be an anonymous attacker and throw everyone off (Grady). He also provides us with the obligatory Native American Legend reference (that's actually a real legend in many cultures about changing your skin for someone else's) and speculates that this was a Trouble. I suspend my anthropology rant along with my disbelief just in time for Audrey and Nathan to have the last bit of dialogue about how the last tank held the skin of someone they don't know and now BGK could be anyone. Dun dun DUNNNNNNN.
But before we get to the next week on Haven and speculation parts we would like to take this moment to do our victory lap around the blog. Most of these theories you've seen us discuss here, some of them we might have only talked about to each other, the functional equivalent of being sure you told someone something out loud but you only said it in your head.
Firstly, Jordan. Jordan's profile. What was that we were saying about Jordan becoming addicted to Nathan? About her capability of holding grudges? About her being retraumatized on a regular basis? Then there's the fact that we were sure from early after The Farmer that Tommy was not, in fact, Tommy, but we couldn't make that correlate with the little we knew about the chameleon Trouble (cf. As You Were). So we started calling it a chameleon Trouble, mostly because in many of the legends about skinwalkers they have to discard a skin once it's used, and that didn't fit the data either. (Then we got sidetracked onto maybe there are two unsubs, because for a single unsub to devolve this fast is highly unusual. Which turned out to be a red herring. So we CAN be wrong.) The Guard being highly structured and abusively cultlike, though we don't have 100% confirmation on the former and the latter was something of a gimme, along with the Guard being concerned with no one but itself. Audrey and the barn and the correlation between the ending of the Troubles, which admittedly is also a gimme but we're going to take it anyway because it goes so well with everything else. Roslyn being a tactic to get Audrey to open up about what she knew, we discussed that that was Interrogation 101 way back in that episode recaplysis. Because it is a basic interrogation tactic. For our parts, we took it as given that this was confirmed when we found out at the end of the episode that the body had been burning for four hours, while "Roslyn" was talking to Audrey, but now we have proof incontrovertible. We've got the Bolt Gun Killer's profile. All of it. Okay, not all of it, which, we knew some of it was going to be contravened as more murders popped up, but the underlying psychological profile that doesn't rely on data that was later revealed to be misleading or untruthful? Mostly revolving around words like "organized" and "methodical" and "plans" and "fixated," yeah, that was right.
Okay, we're done gloating. Mostly. And you can expect a round of profile updates in the next week, along with the usual show page updates. Now we get to the best part, where we get to speculate about what's coming up and thereby acquire more bragging rights. (What.) So, the barn doesn't actually end the Troubles. It's the metaphysical equivalent of hitting the snooze button for 27 years, and that's no way to run a railroad. We know that Lucy Ripley knew how to end the Troubles, knew what was causing them, or at least claimed so to her woman whose memories she had, to whom she had no reason to lie. Jordan referred to it as Haven becoming a haven "again." Vince and Dave know about the barn; at the very least they know as much as Jordan told Nathan (as differentiated from everything she/the Guard knows about it) and we'd lay good odds that one or both of them watched Sarah walk into it. From these pieces of data, we can extrapolate a few things! Whatever the cause of the Troubles is, someone, probably the Guard, has reason to want it not to happen. That may just be because the Guard doesn't want to lose their stranglehold on a large percentage of superpowered people, or there may be additional motives. The Teagues seem to be a truly neutral force at work for the moment, though we expect that to change rapidly and conclusively in the next few episodes. Now, as to the "again" part of that, let's go waaaay back and remember that the original name of the town is, translated from the Native language, Haven For God's Orphans. So every 27 years Haven isn't actually a haven, it's a place where everything goes wrong and things are topsy-turvy. But we know, based on the people coming to Haven at the Guard's behest this season, that the outside world isn't any different as far as Troubles waking up. Does that, then, mean that once AudSarLu goes into the barn, the Troubles only turn off in Haven? That the rest of the world is fucked? Because that would be a good reason for people to want to come to Haven. Insufficient data to call it a theory, we'll call it a supposition for right now instead. Edit 12/2: Lending credence to the notion that this is just a snooze button, we have no idea what triggers AudSarLu (and the barn's?) return. Therefore it's not something AudSarLu controls, therefore someone else controls it, and presumably doesn't want it stopped. Also, can we just note quick the Rule of Three Threes involved in 27 years, in case anyone missed it? Because really, writers, you're not supposed to be able to do math. TVTropes says, she types around the tongue firmly in her cheek.
Speaking of that Native language, hey, you know what we don't have, despite the preponderance of talk of native legends and languages and the one person smudging some sage? Any signs of a Native tribe still in existence in Haven, aside from Jess Minion's brief appearance in season one. Any history that dates pre-colonial instead of colonial or later. Any anything to indicate that there were people here before Europeans landed in the early 1600s (at least, going by when Maine in general saw white settlement). We don't know what that means, if that means that there's a Native-originating curse on the town or what, but we're leaning toward 'or what' at the moment. Something happened around that time, something bad, but we don't think it was anything quite that overdone. Still, the appearance of the skinwalker puts us on high alert, since that runs to being a Native myth, at least in this variation on it.
We still don't know how the fuck Agent Howard ties in, and believe us, we would really REALLY like to. He doesn't age, he's been around since at least 1955 and probably before, and he's AudSarLu's handler in some way. Whether or not he wants her to go into the barn we don't know. Whether or not he has a stake in keeping the cycle of Troubles going, we also don't know. IT IS VERY ANNOYING AND WE WOULD LIKE MURDERBOARDS NOW. Ahem. Sorry, was that my outside voice? Sam Ernst has promised us all the answers by the end of the season, but neither of us trust that his idea of "answers" isn't pronounced "more questions." Still, we're waiting on those alleged answers to update Howard's profile, especially now that a season four has been confirmed. Edit 12/2: One of the things that's been bugging us about Howard as a historic figure is, quite frankly, the demographics of Maine and the fact that Sarah's incarnation is on the leading edge of the civil rights movement, following over 50 years in which racism in the US was at its apex. This would make doing Howard's job really damn difficult, if he's been at it with no bodyswap since prior to Sarah. BUT. The US military integrated as a direct result of the Korean War, in practice rather than in theory. (Truman's executive order came in 1948, for all the good it didn't do.) So what we might be seeing here is a Howard who's brand new to his job. Hard to say for sure, but an intriguing possibility.
The barn! We have oh so many theories about that fucking barn, starting with who or what controls it. The last time we saw it, Audrey was wondering about her purpose for being here and what she could do in the time she had left. Which led to it appearing behind her and promptly disappearing when she turned around again. (Barn, you are a snarky useless barn, stop that.) Vince says "only one person ever goes to the barn, and it comes for her," not that that's much help. Especially since Audrey II did go into the barn and it promptly spat her back out with near-total amnesia; our best theory on this is that the process of memory copying leaves traces of AudSarLu on whoever's memories she's getting this time around oh fuck. She said, as clarity hit. Audrey II was a duplicate key, wasn't she, only without another set of memories to implant into the alleged blank the barn spat her back out again as a blank. Well, nobody said it was a very intelligent barn. Or did they? Because while Vince said the barn comes for Audrey, he failed to clarify whether "it comes for her" means "it comes when she calls it" (whether inadvertently or advertently) or whether "it comes for her" means "it comes to eat her suck out her soul and leave her with someone else's memories." If the latter, wiping the memories of the intruding person who fooled it into thinking AudSarLu was coming to it seems like a pretty vindictive but not unlikely punishment. There's also the aspect of how the hell the memories get picked up in the first place, because they clearly get pulled from shortly before if not the day before AudSarLu wakes up for the first time on the next incarnation. And yet Audrey II never mentioned anything hinky happening to her before, so by whatever process it goes on, either the memory of being copied is wiped out from the original or it's done so quietly the original never notices in the first place. Being dragged into a barn would be kind of memorable. Odds are good that the memories are stored and brought to the barn, or wherever AudSarLu and the barn end up after it disappears. Only Vince and Audrey II have even seen the barn, either, giving us all kinds of questions about when and why the barn appears. Is it bloodline related? Is it only Troubled people? Audrey II was an orphan, going by the memories she gave to AudSarLu, so who the hell knows there? (Picking a Troubled bloodline for AudSarLu's artificial memories would make sense, because you'd want someone's memories who's accustomed to weird shit.) Vince swears he's not Troubled but we're not buying it. One final note about the barn, though, is that there are several doors on the side of that barn, one small, one large full-wall double door, and one small again. This might just be an architectural feature of the barn the show staff chose to represent Creepyass Malevolent Barn, but it might also be significant to the triumvirate AudSarLu often finds herself in.
Last but not least, BGK. While we have a skinwalker on our hands, and we know that he's taken at least one female skin in order to complete an interrogation, that was a) short term and b) extremely goal-oriented. Therefore, we expect that he's most comfortable in a male body, hence the "he" throughout. We now know that there was only one unsub the whole time, lending some extra gruesomeness to not!Tommy being set on the case of the scalped woman while he watches his own work on the ATM camera. That was definitely satisfaction lurking under there, in retrospect. Smug little shit. Now, we've got a lot of brain-breaking theories about just who the fuck he is, and first on that list is "one of the Cogans." Either Arla or perhaps a child of theirs (in the book, they have a son Michael, though we have no evidence either way on his existence in Haven-verse). Or James' father. Current leaning is toward Sarah's grandchild, assuming that James Cogan was her biological son, because skinwalker would be awfully apropos for someone biologically related to AudSarLu. Considering that it's a safe bet her Trouble can't actually be inherited, if she had a Troubled child the Trouble would have to morph in some way. Then again, if the father was a skinwalker (and wasn't Nathan, yes, we know, we know, we have heard that theory), I'd expect that to be... genetically dominant. As much as genetics makes any goddamn sense in Haven. And finally, we need to address the Frankenaudrey in light of BGK being a skinwalker. Loving James Cogan fits in here somehow, too. This lends credence to a couple of theories, and while it's always possible that our supposition about there being a (grand)son is correct, let's back up a bit. What if BGK is James Cogan? "You think you're the only one who loved the Colorado Kid" could refer to Arla and his adoptive parents. "Where is the Colorado Kid" could, sick as it is, refer to his original body and therefore his original skin. And he could be building himself a mother figure to replace the one he lost. And that message on his supposed coffin isn't a message, it's a warning: find your batshit son before he turns Haven into a hunting ground. But this is really thin ice we're skating on, with absolutely no proof either way. Except that it would be a very nice, tidy narrative package, wouldn't it.
Next week on Haven: everyone goes to sleep! Except Audrey and possibly the BGK. Well this should be fascinating. Our profiler trigger fingers are itching already.
Was "recapalypse" a deliberate spelling or a typo? Because I kind of like the apocalyptic implications ;)
ReplyDeleteTotally deliberate. And, well, deliberate on the implications too. XD
ReplyDeleteWhat a great post! I really like watching the interactions between Duke and Ginger. His character has grown so much from the first season when he was mostly out for himself. And just when they give us some answers they leave us with more questions about the whole barn/BGK situation. I also wonder if there is a Claire skin in one of those tanks as it looks like there were several more in the background in that warehouse.
ReplyDeleteThank you! One of these days we'll get an analysis of Duke's character posted. I think that Duke was always there, but he'd never had a reason to settle down, and especially never had reason to trust other people. Between his father's actions and, presumably, his father's words, he would've had that lack of trust instilled at a really young age, and I find it both telling and impressive that he's matured as much and as fast as he has.
DeletePretty sure their job is to make the answers give us more questions! Still want to see their murderboards.
It's entirely possible, but I'd think... well, either she's been the skinwalker this whole time or they haven't given us enough change in personality to realize it. And everything else we've seen out of the skinwalker is that he really prefers men for long-term ops, as it were, and uses women's skins either to build a Frankenaudrey or for short-term gain (Roslyn Toomey). Which says something about standard serial killer misogyny, possibly, but needs more data. Grumble.
Great recap! I love reading these kinds of things, but I've never found one that offers such an inteliigent analysis. This is xactly the kind of thing I'd do over tea and lunch, if I knew anyone who watched Haven. You guys read into the dialogue like I do but you catch way more than me. Keep it up!
ReplyDelete-Emmy
P.S. Did you notice the #EscapeToHaven hashtag scribbled on Jordan's cell wall?
Aw, thank you! This is pretty much why we started tossing it up in a more formal format, so that we could condense our flailing rather than rushing back to the computer every time we made a new connection. And we plan to!
DeleteWe did; that's why I grabbed that cap in the first place. ;)
I don't know how elite the Guard is supposed to be but the amateurish way they handled bringing in Ginger boggles the mind. They could have sedated or muzzled her or at least utilized a member of their group with child caring skills. Jordan and the other guy botched things so badly, it was embarassing. I wonder if Vince told Nathan about Jordan coz he knew she was weak link. Nathan will have more headaches with the Guard though, they have dirt on him and will use it.
ReplyDeleteI would say your guess about Vince is entirely accurate, though his motivations are, as always, what intrigue me most. But yes, the Guard is going to be fascinating in the next couple eps at a minimum, I would guess. And I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn they're mostly a front for something else...
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