Hail to the King: Haven References

Most of you are probably fully aware by now that we're a) Stephen King dorks on here (though far from the biggest ones in Haven fandom) and b) we are ALL ABOUT the themes. SyFy has kindly created an entire page of the Stephen King references that they consider prominently featured in Haven, and because I am nothing if not a glutton for punishment I thought it would be a great idea to see what those choices say about the themes inherent to each episode.

We are, sadly, missing several eps from this page: the first two, along with most of s3. I think we've called out a lot of King references in s3 eps in the recaplyses anyway, but if/when the SyFy page gets updated I'll come back here and put the rest in. Again, this is because I'm curious what themes the writers are trying to throw at us like large cartoon anvils, as opposed to the ones they're hoping to sneak by. Not that I would suspect the writers' room of such ninja tactics. Of course not.

Consider this fair warning: below the fold you will find spoilers for any and all King novels, novellas, short stories, mini-series, movies, and any other form of media the Haven staff have referenced. If you don't want spoilers, don't yell at us for putting them in. Also, while we're King fans around here, there's likely to be gaps in our repertoire because the man is fucking prolific - feel free to fill in in the comments.


1x03 Harmony The SyFy site doesn't actually have the first two eps up there, presumably because they didn't realize that doing the King references would be a thing until then? Or something. At any rate, we start with Harmony and the first reference they list is the folded paper boats at the asylum, complete with a brief description of the opening scene of IT for those of you who failed to imprint on it as a child. (Seriously, I don't know how, I imprinted on it from pop culture osmosis.) Between that and the second theme of sane people going insane (and the reverse), which shows up fucking everywhere in Kingverse (if it were more common to Haven we'd add it to the tropes page), we can safely say that they're starting us out by demonstrating some generalized worst fears, using King-specific imagery to heighten the tension. Honestly, I didn't even notice the damn boats until I went looking for this information; it's the scene in 2x01 that stuck with me as a paper-boats-and-IT reference. But the pile of them on the table adds to the uneasiness of the scene without being blatant, and even without knowing any of King's themes the idea of losing your self-control and mental functionality suddenly while knowing all the while that you were behaving strangely is a common horror schtick. With knowing King, we can safely guess that this will become a running theme of identity and sanity and where the boundaries are, exactly. Not to mention all of the themes surrounding fear and actions taken out of fear rather than love, but I get a little bit ahead of myself.

1x04 Consumed 1) The McShaw affliction riffs on a Bachman novel, Thinner 2) Duke gets the Second Chance Bistro, which he renames to the Gull which is the name of the restaurant/bar in the original TCK novella 3) Vomiting at the farmer's market alludes to The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan, which is in turn told in The Body, which was made into Stand By me. And if you followed all that you get a cookie. Not one touched by Bill McShaw.

The food-related Trouble in this episode apparently riffs on Thinner, which I have not read but SyFy assures me is about a man cursed to get thinner and thinner no matter what or how much he eats. Both of these things are pretty standard body horror tropes, though in the case of Haven the body horror and poisoning is inflicted on others without Bill McShaw's knowledge, making it doubly horrific. (They're good at that on Haven, such that when we get someone who is aware of their Trouble and uses it to hurt others on purpose we're more shocked and appalled than we might otherwise be.) Secondly, Duke renames Second Chance Bistro to the Grey Gull, which is the name of the bar/restaurant in The Colorado Kid novella. I'd pass this over without much comment, except this is a Crocker acting on things in Haven to bring them more in line with Stephen King's universe. You'll see in next season's collection of references why this is a Thing, but suffice it to say that I'm not sure this is a net positive. And the third reference is apparently from a short story (The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan) which is told in The Body; specifically, vomiting at the farmer's market. I don't think there's much thematic significance to this one, actually, though if people more familiar with the text(s) in question want to weigh in, please do.

1x05 Ball and Chain Okay, we all know The Stand, right? At least in general? Hello not!Mother Abagail, who is also from Nebraska and who takes Duke's daughter back there to be placed with a family. (Kitty informs me that Abby even looks a fair bit like the actress from the original miniseries of The Stand.) I'm actually going to take this in the direction of Mother Abagail as savior, which Abby is in this ep, saving Duke by taking his daughter away so she can't feed on his energy. Given the number of quiet little hints we keep getting that the Crockers might be a tool of Flagg-like villains, this is entirely appropriate. MOTHER ABAGAIL COME BACK. Dammit, woman, at least make some cryptic prophecies. The second and much less flail-inducing reference is confirmation that this is really Kingverse, because oh hey there, Derry. Good to know you exist. Now fuck back off and stop sending evil shit our way. No? No, of course not, this is Derry we're talking about. Neither the SyFy people nor I could give you a complete list of all the places Derry shows up, on account of it's fucking everywhere. By now it's even in people who have no connection to King, except that they know that saying 'something happened in Derry' is only slightly below 'something is rotten in Denmark.'

1x06 Fur Our list of references for this ep is a bit thin on actual content; we start off with a couple references to Derry and Derry Road, yeah, we got it, Bad Things Happen In Derry and isn't it good that Jess got out of there. (Well, no. Not with where she wound up. But.) Then we get a 'Salem's Lot reference with the Haven Hunt Club manager's family name of Gillespie, which I keep wanting to make something more out of than it probably is. Though I guess creepy self-perpetuating family curses like the one in this ep are a bit on the order of vampirism. The last reference they list is to Cycle of the Werewolf and the manhunt that occurs near the end of that collection; as with 'Salem's Lot the character most known is a man of the cloth. HMM. Could you guys be foreshadowing the Rev? No, surely not.

1x07 Sketchy Given the utter lack of a last name for Vicky, I really, really wonder if she's a Danville but we're just supposed to assume that. And indeed, that's the first reference for this sort of Trouble they list. It's also the only reference for this ep, and an incredibly common one in Kingverse, writing or drawing etc. as magic influence and compulsion over the world. More generally, it's at this point a pretty common use of horror tropes, usually played for body horror but also good for cataclysmic events. This is also, notably, one of the first Troubled people who knows what she's doing but can't/won't stop; within the ep that's justified due to blackmail, but I would be surprised if Vicky managed to give it up entirely. Drawing, much like writing or music, is one of those bugs that once bit doesn't let go. So there's that element to consider as well, art as a driving force without actually using the oh-so-common King trope of writers being supernaturally driven insane.

1x08 Ain't No Sunshine Aheh. Aheh heh heh. Our very first reference in this is the Dark Man, aka one of Randall Flagg's epithets, aka fuck this I'm going to the bunker until Flagg goes the fuck away. Specifically, Arrons' Trouble and how they all call him the Dark Man, though I severely doubt Arrons is supposed to be Flagg. Too mundane a Trouble. Influenced by I would believe, though! And the Flagg ability of using his shadow/dimmed self independently is of course relevant. They will take this opportunity to remind us of the Revered Flagg in the credits, too! THANKS. I'm still in the bunker. I will, however, venture out with the next couple references, which involve King and blind people with psychic abilities of varying kinds. Yeah, that's one we're awful used to, it falls under the Magic Disability trope. Speaking of IT, apparently the cops Stan and Beverly are named for two of the Losers Club from that novel. I'm honestly less interested in the tidbits of IT references they keep giving us than I am in the dates on the two sets of events in the novel: '57-58 and '84-85. I mean really you guys. I'm about to descend into Monty Python levels of gibbering frothing demands for MOAR MURDERBOARDS, here.

1x09 As You Were We'll preempt my desire to prod answers out of the writers' room with my desire to take a chunk out of Vince. Really, Misery Unchained? Really? Complete with feet being cut off? I cannot even. I can't actually manage to give you guys any thematic analysis on this one; I think it's just there for Vince to be creepy and as a sideways nod to the various author tropes King uses. Our next stop, though, is a reminder that the island the hotel is on is Little Tall Island, which is the small town setting for both Storm of the Century and Dolores Claiborne. (The SyFy page insists it's also the original TCK setting, but this is incorrect; that would be Moose-Lookit Island.) This resonates, especially the latter, both with the theme from Storm of the Century of a bunch of people locked in with a monster in a small area by a storm, and given that Vaughn Carpenter's wife must have had one hell of a time adjusting in the early days to having a chameleon for a husband who was identical to the man she fell in love with. Can we say Stockholm Syndrome? Or any number of other codependent issues, because wow.  Third up! The hotel itself deliberately references that ever-so-wonderfully-creepy locale, The Overlook Hotel, and while it draws some of its set design from the movie, I think the overall feel of it is closer to the book. More claustrophobic. I'm just glad we didn't have any creepy little girls, and I think you could argue that most of the characters in this ep escaped the hotel with their minds as intact as ever they were previously. Except Eleanor. Dammit. And, lastly, they state that the chameleon itself is a reference to IT, Desperation, and Dreamcatcher, which... well, yeah. There's a lot of possession of humans by other forces, there. Interesting that they point at those options, though, given that all signs so far point to the Troubled being human-plus, not completely alien beings or possessed by same. Sadly, we can't say the same for the barnvatar.

1x10 The Hand You're Dealt Our only two given references this ep come from the two Troubles active during it. First is Vanessa Stanley, whose psychometric precognition is very similar to Johnny Smith's in The Dead Zone. I'm honestly surprised, given the Haven staff's prior writing credits, that this is the first time TDZ has shown up. Given that this is Haven, the events Vanessa is trying to prevent are on a smaller scale than that of Stillson's nuclear holocaust, but also given that Matt West seems like the kind of person who could have decided to try and kill everyone, it's not much of a stretch to make the comparison narratively as well. However, they took out the magical disability/coma portion for Vanessa's Trouble, thank FUCK. I love you, Stephen King, but sometimes I question your use of disability as a trope. Ahem. And then, of course, we've got Matt West and Firestarter, up to and including the direct reference to it in the reports Audrey and Nathan look over. On the other hand, Charlie and Andy are the nominal protagonists of Firestarter and thus at least not the bad guys - that'd be the Shop, which we're still eying Agent Fuck You for connections to - whereas Matt West is both Troubled and troubled. Which is polite shrinkspeak for "a dangerous asshole."

1x11 Trial of Audrey Parker First reference! Little Tall Island again, tossed out as the reference point for coordinates a couple times during the ep. And then Children of the Corn, given to us by Agent Fuck You Howard himself. I would actually point to this as evidence of Howard being a meta-something more than a thematic element, except insofar as the meta is a thematic element. Which it fucking well is both with Haven and with King and his recursive self-insertion and repeated authors going insane bullshit, so never mind. And lastly, Ezra's precog Trouble, which is another of those ubiquitous King themes. Whoever put this together specifically references Hearts in Atlantis, but I remember it from Dark Tower as a thing, and generally speaking the cost involved with such powers, especially when given to adults, will lead them to mental instability of some kind. As Ezra says, it's loud.

1x12 Resurfacing Well, in the order they give them to us which is not in chronological order for the ep (it often isn't, I have yet to figure out a rhyme or reason to it), we've got the car on the desk in the final confrontation, which is a replica of the car from Christine. I kind of wonder if this is supposed to be some kind of reference to the villains' past, but alas, we'll never know. I also have to take a second to snicker over their ruse of a gas leak to hide the bodies in their villainous monologue because oh Haven. Worst infrastructure ever. Earlier, we have the poltergeists discussion with Mrs. Garrick, which serves as a Carrie reference and indeed, we have the Trouble passed father-son in the episode as opposed to father-daughter in Carrie. At least it's less destructive to others in Haven, but oh the poor Garricks. All of them. Their Trouble is essentially uncontrollable "dimming," an ability commonly found in King and usually specific to Randall Flagg and his students. Because I needed more proof that Flagg is at fault for everything going wrong in this fucking town. Thematically, that's a lot of loss of control issues y'all are hauling out and waving around, along with separation between, to lean on Freud, what the ego wants and what the id wants. We don't get any reasons that either Garrick should secretly want to disappear/dim, though, just a lot of thematic resonance with that concept.

1x13 Spiral Two major themes here! Shawshank (and its parole hearings) and The Stand/Randall Flagg. Just in case there wasn't ENOUGH fucking Flagg in this season already. Grumble grump. It's implied that Max Hansen went to jail for crimes he didn't commit, though given his attitude with Garland and his threats to Vince  we can be forgiven for assuming there are other crimes he did commit that he was never charged for. Or he's just surly about getting caught. Hard to say, and with his presumed ties to the Guard it's even harder to say if he legitimately left Shawshank or if he escaped in a manner similar to Dufresne. To add to the whole ominous overtones, Hansen shows up in Haven looking like he escaped from The Stand miniseries with Randall Flagg's wardrobe. Um. Can I go back to the damn bunker now? This set of references serves a couple purposes thematically, though they're not so much directed at Max as allowing him to stand as a foil for everyone else. First off we've got the issue of mistaken/unproven guilt, which is something Garland hauls around with him goddamn everywhere as he tries to hold Haven together. Oh Garland. Not to mention the ways in which everyone has/does/will blame AudSarLu for not helping them with their Troubles, or not helping enough: this isn't always something she has control over, guys. And Nathan has his own heaping helping of guilt issues. I think he's gotten them leather-bound by now. The Stand reference gives us a couple things in this metaplot-heavy ep: it suggests that the Troubles aren't limited to Haven, since The Stand is worldwide in scope, and it links the Troubles yet again with a form of disease or contamination. Still want to know what the fuck that's all about. And of course, bringing up Flagg visually solidifies that aura of foreboding surrounding the town. Max Hansen ends up being an agent of all kinds of change, some blatant and some subtle, and so our wariness is ultimately justified.

2x01 Tale of Two Audreys So with that season done, we move on to the Exodus ep. Why they saved the reference about the Colorado Kid murder for this episode rather than bringing it up ANY OTHER TIME, up to and including any of the relevant s3 eps, I can only guess. Though my best guess is this is some really long-term foreshadowing for the reveal of James in s3, and some short-term foreshadowing/discussion points about the reveal that Audrey is Lucy, rather than being her daughter. Which frankly, if you were paying any attention to the early s1 stuff was pretty obvious, but hey. Foreshadowing, they can has. They also mention that Constable Wuornos shows up in the article, and since he did just die that's a good time to remind us that he was active in handling the Troubles last go-round too. The second reference is a prolonged near-copy of the opening scene of IT, only instead of getting killed by Pennywise the poor kid goes elbows-deep in water that's turned to blood. The fact that this is such a blatant homage ratchets up the tension level for the viewers who knows what's up, though, on account of normally you don't see children die violently on TV, and we have a moment of wondering if they got it past the censors. But no! That said, it further ratchets the tension level with what the actual Bad Thing turns out to be, because we know about water turning to blood, and we know about the plagues, and narrative causality says they're going to get awful close to that last one before anyone saves the day. As they do. The third and fourth references have me shaking my fists and swearing at the air. You see, the Good Shepherd Church is on fucking Witcham Street, which according to whoever put this together in Haven-verse runs south from Derry straight into Haven. No, sorry, done. I require booze to get through these now. Or more bricks to beat my head against. (Hey Kitty, send me some spares. >.>) And the last one is more street names; the locust-oriented car accident takes place at Poplar and McCausland, which references on the one hand the setting of The Regulators and on the other hand Ruth Merrill McCausland, Haven chief of police in Tommyknockers. So now we've had references to the mirror novels of Desperation and The Regulators, one in s1 and the other in s2, and somehow I don't quite think that's an accident. I swear I'm going to read Tommyknockers soon, but let me just add in here that I'm not sure how much the in memoriam of Ruth that they mention in the title cards is Doylist and how much is Watsonian. I has a suspicious. Can't think why, they just bring that out in me. On a thematic level these references serve to hammer on the writers' room favorite three sources: IT, Tommyknockers, and The Colorado Kid. Appropriate for a major arc ep, getting back to their roots. Witcham and Derry are just there. Being ominous. Like they do.

2x02 Fear and Loathing Because we haven't had enough of IT yet, we're going to hammer on that EVEN HARDER with this next ep. This actually makes a decent amount of sense as a follow-up to the ep that opened with such an iconic scene; it allows thematic throughlines to happen and to carry the momentum from last ep along with them. Once I recover from facedesking over fucking Pennywise again and of COURSE Audrey's scariest implanted memory involves a clown OF FUCKING COURSE IT DOES excuse me I have to go have a word or three with the Crimson King. Ahem. After that, we've got the reference to The Mist, which takes place in a small town grocery store much like the one this week's Trouble starts off in. Now, the biggest thing here is the IT theme, and at this rate I'm going to go back and see if IT references have their own damn riff in the soundtrack. They should if they don't. Someone get on that. (I call not it, I have filk to work on.) But, okay, so if IT is about fears and fear of the unknown and trying to confront It only to be horribly, permanently scarred either psychically or physically? Then in many respects this ep turns It on its head. Audrey can see past the fear to what's underneath: a scared young woman. And this, in turn, allows Jackie the control to keep from hurting others, and others to see her as she is - which leads Nathan to forego a chance to end his Trouble to save her quality of life if not life itself. Because that is an untenable Trouble, and would result in isolation similar to that of Arrons and his shadow. I'd like to know what triggered her Trouble, since that seems like the kind of supernatural defense mechanism an abuse victim might develop, but we're never told. Essentially, this ep offers Nathan a chance to be like Audrey, self-sacrificing generosity and love, and instead of giving into his own worst fear (whatever that is and wouldn't we like to know even now) he takes that chance with both hands. I can't even call it a chance for redemption, because as far as we know he's done nothing that would require this level of sacrifice. But certainly a chance to do something bigger and better than what he usually gets to; as a cop he tends to have to clean up messes and it's a good day when none of the good guys end up worse off than they started.

2x03 Love Machine Inanimate objects coming to life is another pretty prominent King trope, and in this instance they've broken it into two references. The first is to Trucks/Maximum Overdrive, which film notably involves a comet as somehow responsible for the machines' animation. Aheh. I'd mutter about that more except King's fond of his celestial omens too. The title cards also say, and I haven't seen Maximum Overdrive to confirm this, that the island someone suggests escaping from the machines to is called Haven Island. I wouldn't be surprised, though. On account of why come up with new proper nouns when you have so many! Ahem. Of course, in our Haven there are plenty of machines. There's also the Christine reference to consider, since this was clearly a case of the machines attempting to do things they thought were good for their owners/their owners secretly wanted. Again with the id/ego split, again with the self control issues and whether or not it's healthy to put so much of your being into something outside yourself. Look, all I'm saying is my violin better not come to life and start Doing Things without my say-so.

2x04 Sparks and Recreation The first reference this ep is a helluva lot more meta than our other references, though considering King wrote himself into Dark Tower I suppose we can't be surprised that something like this showed up eventually. The whole baseball game setting is in there because King loves the game and in fact apparently coached one of his son's Little League teams to a state championship. Awww. The second reference re-grounds us in the original novella with a reference to the coast lights discussed as evidence of supernatural activity in The Colorado Kid. And finally, apparently the Sea Dogs' team name comes from a character by the same name in Under the Dome. We haven't had a reference solely based on this novel yet, and it's one of the more recent ones so unfortunately neither of us has read it. (I can't even find a citation to back up the reference, I assume it's a minor character?) But just staring at the Wiki article leads me to several facedesking moments, beginning with the survivors of the novel all hiding out in a fucking barn and ending with the isolation aspect which despite our occasional references to other towns and season 3's jaunt to Nederland, CO, Haven suffers severely from. I'm just going to leave that there for y'all to parse and hope that someone's read the novel and can toss us some further thematic resonances. See also two below for Audrey Parker's Day Off.

2x05 Roots The Trouble in this ep is a Weeds reference, which became a segment of King & Romero's Creepshow, in which a plant-like virus comes to life and kills a hick by turning him into a plant-man. (He actually commits suicide, but we can argue for death of the self prior to that.) Bonus points for the alien plant thing arriving via meteorite. And for the true aficionados, there's apparently an unfinished King serial novel called The Plant in which an author uses a mysterious plant as a weapon of revenge against a publishing house, similar to the anger component of the Novelli-Keegan Trouble. Roots is a weird ep, being the only example we have in canon of a Trouble splitting so that it's only effective when two families are in the same vicinity. Again we have the self-control issues and the emotional component, but in this case the references mostly seem to be there to pull on our body horror strings. We also have the standard Haven riff about love conquering, if not all, at least hate and fear. Or being given as the flip side. There's a lot of that in Haven, especially with the Crocker box coming up this ep too, but there's also a ton of love/friendship defeating evil within King (specifically, the ka-tet variety that we've got with Audrey-Nathan-Duke), and again I'm drawn back to IT even without the explicitly stated reference. Then again, this is King, so nobody gets a truly happy ending. We'll hope for better, for our protags here.

2x06 Audrey Parker's Day Off Anson was named after Julia Shumway in Under the Dome, where she, too, plays a crucial role in resolving the plot. In this instance it looks less like suicide and more like self-abasement and/or humiliation in the hopes of making the aliens stoppit already, but that's not got much to recommend it either. As with Sparks 'n Rec, I'm hoping someone can fill in here on the themes, though I would note the Haven relevance to doing the same thing over and over again until you get it right. And dying a lot. Really, in a lot of ways this should have been our first clue as to just how incredibly cyclical the damn Troubles are.

2x07 The Tides That Bind Our first reference here is also from Creepshow, specifically to Something to Tide You Over. While the writers call those mermen more deadly I dunno how much I buy that. Because fucking Glendowers. In the short film, a man punishes his philandering wife by burying her and her lover up to their necks on a beach below tide-line. Naturally, they don't die and become Lovecraftian creatures of the deep who take revenge on the husband instead, because THIS IS STEPHEN KING. And the second reference comes with the depiction of a wife fleeing her abusive husband, which references most strongly Rose Madder and then, of course, IT. Domestic violence is another semi-common King theme, usually one that's very conscious of the lasting emotional and physical consequences even if the victim manages to leave. Interesting, that they took a novel with Greek mythology and tossed it into the ep with more blatant mythological references as compared to many of the other Troubles. I doubt that was an accident. And I still wanna know where the fuck the fucking Glendowers fit into the history of Haven. Oddly, the theme of families being split in two this way - Glendower men and women, Keegans and Novellis, possibly the Teagues if that comment from Dave about always knowing where his brother is in the s3 finale is anything to go by - this seems to be a Haven theme, not a King one. At least in the direction they're taking it. People split in two is much more of a King thing, but it's somewhat more difficult to keep up a running theme on that in a TV show as compared to family and blood ties and so on, which also lets you get into all kinds of questions about legacy and if your nature determines your destiny. Digression over, but this episode is FULL of these fucking little sidebars.

2x08 Friend or Faux O hai there The Dark Half how you doin. Author, accountant, to-may-to, to-mah-to. 'nuff said? Unlike the Bag of Bones reveal that Thad committed suicide out of horror at what his shadow self had done, in this case we have the copy killing the original so that he can do one thing against his creator's wishes. Oh honey. They could possibly be hammering the id/ego split harder in this ep and/or with these references, but I'm not sure how. Maybe they could have named him Bachman.

2x09 Lockdown We start out this list of references with the Merrill family, who play villainous characters in King works ranging from The Body to Sun Dog! And that last reference they list is Chief Ruth Merrill McCausland, again, from Tommyknockers. That reads like a maiden name to me, and without reading I can't actually tell you what I think of how thoroughly she's cut her connections to the Merrills though supposedly she turns out more heroic. At any rate, they live in Castle Rock, and the title cards helpfully inform us that a cut line referenced the new!evil!dead!Chief's transfer from that town. Aheh. It, from IT, trails black blood when wounded and leads the Losers Club to its lair under Derry; do I need to explain how the plague Trouble leads them to a metaphorical lair of truly unpleasant history? 'cause it does. Not to mention the blood leading to discovery of the Trouble and thus the plot for the ep. We're apparently not going to directly mention the abusive husband theme in this set of references, instead skipping over to guest starring character names! Hugh Underwood is a reference to The Stand's Larry Underwood, and Paul Stark (the officer who takes Dwight's crossbow away and gets dead in the bathroom) is a Dark Half reference to George Stark. I'm not seeing a lot in the latter of these references other than that the police department is engaging in some Dark Half-esque behavior with the Rev trying to take it over and kill off the afflicted. And arguably Hugh is Larry's own dark half, though with the police brutality/abuse themes running through he becomes an authority figure rather than a washed-up musician. There's also the themes running through The Stand of sexuality/sexual relations as a form of control, one which Larry avoids but Hugh takes to an abusive and violent extreme.

2x10 Who, What, Where, Wendigo? Alas and dismay, this one refuses to load for me, saying the content isn't available. Bugger. I was hoping for some Dwight. Obvious biases are obvious. Also I'm deeply curious what King references do involve our dear mysterious cleaner.

2x11 Business As Usual Nathan sends the files off to a coroner in Cleaves Mills, which is Dead Zone's setting, which we've covered before as that place where you try to prevent all kinds of things from happening to little or no avail. Much, MUCH more important and I can't believe we missed this before but we were focused on who the fuck is Sal to Simon? Duke won the Cape Rouge a) in Castle Rock and b) from fucking Ray Fiegler fucking FUCK. Which is one of Flagg's aliases. Basically, when it comes to Stephen King, beware of any man with the initials RF. In conclusion, you remember how I was swearing about Flagg putting his fingers in the Crocker family tree way back and how we keep getting hints that there's something very Flagg-like about having a Trouble that ends other Troubles? Well, um. ABOUT THAT. I'm not sure I can squeeze more coherence out of this, Duke won his boat from fucking Randall Flagg. Duke, please get rid of your boat soon, I think it might be evil.

There is no listing for Sins of the Fathers, not even a video that won't play. I don't know why.

3x01 301 We only get two references in this ep, the first to Tommyknockers with the Altair Bay Inn; the aliens in the novel come from a planet called Altair IV. Heh. Which is apparently a junkyard for the galaxy, much like poor Wesley Toomey's living quarters. I don't know if I can call that a home, it looks like the love child of the junk pile from Labyrinth and an X-Files murderboard. The inn itself is at least clean, and we've gone over how they always bring up Tommyknockers when they want to bring us back into the metaplot arc? Yep. Toomey himself is a Langoliers reference to Craig Toomey, who is also highly insecure, paranoid, and ends up dying so that everyone else can live. Though in Craig's case that's a lot less voluntary beam-me-up-Scotty and a lot more taken by the titular monsters of the novel. There's a lot of that in Haven, turning the themes of a novel on their head for purposes of the ep - often lightening them to be about self sacrifice or at least learning from one's mistakes, but not always, as we saw in Lockdown.

Alas, the rest of the season 3 videos won't load for me in Firefox or IE, so I can only conclude that SyFy hates life and needs better programmers. That said, I will tell you right now that the references that started smacking us in the face this season were largely Dark Tower references. The ones that weren't overt references/puzzle pieces from the original Colorado Kid novella, that is. (Yes, Arla, we're calling you a jigsaw again. What.) I am frankly not inclined to go digging through our posts and/or the episodes again to look for them, but no doubt there are smaller one-off references to other stories (and I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if they leaned on Tommyknockers harder) but overall, this season was about re-establishing the basis for Haven in the first place, and also describing AudSarLu's arc. Which isn't so much an arc as a spiral that goes around and around until she, or her loved ones, or both, get it right. I'm voting for both, personally, but we'll have to wait and see until fall.