No Greater Love Haven S4E08 Crush

Previously, on Haven:  Wade was an addicted psychopath. And then he was a dead psychopath. So much for the Crocker Trouble, for the moment. Also, the Troubles are escalating, on purpose. And Nathan and Audrey done did it, and the whole fandom shouted ABOUT TIME. That's it, that's pretty much the sum total of the previouslies, and isn't that enough?

No, no it isn't. Because for your viewing displeasure today we will open on a completely wrecked Duke burying his brother, along with what looks like Simon Crocker's diary, which would make sense if he's trying to bury their Trouble as well. Eric Balfour, you're killing me here. More metaphorically than Wade would. Apparently Wade's middle name is Osbourne, which will cause us to give some sideways looks and ponder the incessant teasing in school. That field where Duke's burying his brother looks awfully familiar, but given the lack of immediately identifying markers or good long-shots as best we can put it it's either the field where Simon Crocker told Duke about Mrs. Holloway's class or the field where That Darn Barn was last seen. Sort of. The door was seen, anyway. I think the former, judging by the plethora of purple flowers, but we don't have random useful Syfy Sync tidbits from that far back, so we can't say for sure. Duke makes a couple starts at a eulogy but either can't find the words or can't say them, so into the grave goes Wade's black-wrapped body, and then it's filling the hole again. Dig a hole, fill it up. Oh Duke. He really did love his brother, as hard a time as they both had dealing with each other when Wade was alive.

To distract us from our hearts breaking with Duke's we have INFORMATION. BLESSED INFORMATION. BLESS YOU VINCE FOR HAVING NEAT HANDWRITING. Agent Howard is boxed in at the top, with an arrow leading down to "car plates traced to 6 months in Haven," which would be Audrey's time in Haven, leading to "FBI records found 06/07" I'm assuming that's the 6th of July? Haven premiered on the 9th of July, so that might be the best bet. There's an interesting but already noted as relevant previously, at least here on the blog, emphasis to the side on Jennifer being born in 1984, yes, we get it, she could be a child of Lucy's. The FBI records notation is followed by "no link to families." While that could be the founding families of Haven, given the context I'm assuming that means the families with which Jennifer's adoption was discussed. Split off from car plates we also have "worked at Dept. of Hrcshg." Which I'm assuming is CFS or Hatch/Match/Dispatch. Another arrow pointing to "contact with 6 families re: adoption" leading to an adoption case file number (H06171593 for the really attentive among you) and with that leading to a "Brooks family." As we scroll down we get H06171503 leading to the "Lewis" family, and H061815?67 leading to the "Pearsons" or "Peters" family? Stupid Syfy Logo. Anyway, Vince was up all night (and now you know how we feel, you toothy bastard) tracing the adoption records back to six families, one of whom is Jennifer's birth family. And on another page we have the family names! YAY. Lewis, Justin and Maria. Stevens, John and Nancy. Peters, Ryan and Alexis. Phillips, Bill and Mary Ellen. Simmons, Matthew and Roslyn. And Brooks, Steve and Anne. With a variety of addresses, west Haven, central and downtown, east Haven, none of those look significant right now but you bet we're saving that screencap in case it's useful later. Vince doesn't sound either surprised or cheerful to find out that Jennifer's from Haven, in fact he sounds on the verge of being distressed, especially with the inflection when he asks if Jennifer's ready to meet them on purpose, trying for the genial uncle act and not hitting it. Of note is the fact that despite the relatively common names both here and of previous Troubled people, none of these names have appeared connected to a Trouble before, either married into or originating. Never mind all that, Dave is in and he and his hat want a word! And is calling Vince brother, which he seems to only do when he wants something or wants to make a point of their roles as self-appointed documentarians? Record keepers and guardians? There's going to be a lot of muttering about the genius loci theory in this recapalypse, but for now Dave has a journal. With a name attached to it! It's like Christmas, some fucking information at last! The journal belongs to someone named Cabot, which we sadly don't have an original reference for yet. Vince doesn't want to read it, though, causing no end of screaming at the television, because he wants to go find Nathan who isn't answering his phone. Fuck Nathan (well, which is why he's not answering his phone), LOOK IN THE JOURNAL. GIVE US THE CONTENTS. No, Vince has to snap at his brother and dismiss the fact that Carrie Benson's Trouble went viral when the Benson line previously had several generations and several hundred years' worth of Benson-women-only Troubles. With some return to his Flagg-esque mannerisms, including the teeth. Um. Vince? That's a deviation, you might want to be concerned with that. Especially since there are some really nasty Troubles in Haven. No, Vince is off to track down Nathan, leaving Dave to discuss whatever he's going to discuss with Jennifer.

Over at the Gull and Audrey's apartment within Audrey and Nathan are fully in the throes of newly-consummated-relationship bliss. (Also, the signal flags out back of the Gull seem to have disappeared, which really makes me think that was a Wade affectation, either Watsonian or Doylist.) Awww! There's a naked but unpointed (what? whaaaat.) reference to Nathan only being able to feel Audrey, which, let's face it, is probably brought up because of all the skin to skin contact. Of which there is a lot, on camera, despite the noted difficulties of blocking this scene to avoid having to put on scar makeup for continuity's sake. There's also a brief but touching conversation about how it took them so long because fucking Haven, no, it is not an easy place to live. In fact lately it seems to be doing its damnedest to kill everyone in Haven. Audrey also brings up her karmic inheritance of protecting the people in Haven, which gives an opening to discuss Nathan's preferences of AudSarLuLex. In that order, too, apparently! Except less so, now, as Nathan confesses that he's starting to appreciate Lexie more. We may even take from his lack of tonal and facial tics that he's starting to differentiate between incarnations of AudSarLuLex less, which would be good. Not that she's going to reincarnate any more as far as we can tell. And then, the knock on the door! Which leaves Audrey going "um" and Nathan running for his clothes. Oh you guys. You're adorable. It's Vince, of course. Who's still calling her Lexie and assuming she knows where Nathan is, which means we're assuming he knows she's Audrey. Or Laudrey, depending. Audrey is pretending ignorance while Nathan sneaks out the back way (there's a back way?) and pulls on his clothes, getting dressed in mid-escape. You guys are hilarious, I have to say. And that's a remarkable feat of coordination for Lucas Bryant, pulling on his shoes while hopping down the stairs. And running into Vince! Hi Vince. Nathan will now pretend he was looking for Duke despite looking like he actually did just get dressed five minutes ago. Vince, please to be more perceptive now, thank you. Though I could make all kinds of jokes and trollfaces about Nathan looking for Duke in that state of semi-dress. Vince kind of sounds like he's making those cracks, too, given that he's pointing out Laudrey being upstairs all alone. Vince, you are not subtle. In fact, you're barely being couth right now. Though couth will take a backseat to practical as he refers to it next as 'execute a plan,' which is a damn cold-blooded way to talk about getting someone to fall in love with you so they can kill you. Vince doesn't even seem to be thinking of it that way, or at least he's not talking about it that way, he's discussing it with Nathan as though the hard part is convincing Nathan he needs to die. Interesting focus coming from someone who claimed to love Sarah, or maybe AudSarLuLex. (Or maybe SarAudLuLex?) Also he's right, it's not necessarily that simple, though we're being all knowledgeable here without outright saying that it's Audrey. Mostly Audrey, enough so that she's still in love with Nathan, and to be trying to push this in a matter of days, weeks at the most, would be harder than it looks if they were all telling the truth. Or reading all the data, dammit, Vince. Vince does have two very good points to make, though, the better of the two being that the Troubles are getting worse and tearing Haven apart. And the less good being that the Guard is getting restless. The Guard, as far as I can tell, is always restless, they live in a constant state of restless, and fuck them for that anyways.

One flyover later (focusing those Damn Church Steeples in the center of the frame, let's note) we're back to the Herald offices and Duke coming in as Jennifer looks over Vince's findings. He's on the phone with something called Driscoll's Scoop and Salvage, Driscoll? Really? So many words do I have for that name, few of them polite. Though since this is both a living Driscoll and a not-clergy one, he might be of a different type than the Rev. We shall see. At any rate, Duke seems to be on first name terms with him, and he needs his bilge pump soonest. I stomp on all the jokes about sewage or bilge evacuation so I can properly admire Emma Lahana's performance of Jennifer's quiet sympathy for what Duke did. Especially considering Wade was trying to kill her and Duke's the one who brought her to this town where her life has been imperiled at least two, three times. Four times. Probably more than that but I'm going to stop thinking of specific instances right there, and it's still all within a very short span of time. Duke can barely look at her as he tells her to get her stuff off the Rouge, and it's not quite that abrupt or demanding but almost. With the focus on I need, I am, and the avoidance of looking directly at her, instead looking to the side or downward, he's clearly focusing on himself more than on her for the first time almost since they met, and clearly ashamed of it. Contrast this instance of Duke needing something from her that he has to persuade her to give with the first time we saw this, when they were in the hospital and he had just met her; then, he was still focused entirely on her. Now, he's avoiding her gaze which is a physical indicator that he's avoiding thinking about her responses or interests. He needs her stuff off the Rouge because he's leaving town and not coming back. Going along with how Jennifer's possibly the most stable person in Haven right now (and, interestingly, picking up some indications that she's going to take on the new albeit informal role of therapist to the Troubled in a more clinical form than Audrey) she starts to wonder aloud if he's in the best emotional state to be making a decision like that right now. I can only agree. You can borrow our cluebats if you want to smack him a few times around the head! Duke doesn't let her bring up perfectly reasonable arguments that he'll then have to refute with likely increasingly unreasonable assertions, he interrupts with a short speech about how he's a fucking scoundrel smuggler who only looks out for number one, and somehow he's drifted away from that. I could explain, but that would take a while. The short version being that while previously he had no emotional investments in Haven and some good reasons (Evi, Simon) to be invested outside of Haven, that's since changed, and his priorities have shifted. But all Duke is seeing or admitting to right now is that he used to look out for number one, now he's not doing that so much anymore, and he's getting hurt as a result. It's entirely understandable, even if it's less stable or sensible an attitude than Duke's taken up till now, but then again Duke hasn't had quite the emotional shock that he's had before now. Again understandably, he's going a little off his own rails. Shutting everyone out and physically removing himself from the situation is a blatant attempt at pulling away from what hurts him, which works when what's hurting you is a stove burner coil on full. Not so much when it's the loss of a loved one or the impending loss of another, or two others being in physical danger pretty well constantly. Jennifer gives Duke a look that seems to say she understands why he's being an asshole but she doesn't approve of it, and away she goes to pack. While Duke manfully holds back tears. You didn't expect that to be easy, did you? Well, no, but he probably hoped.

I have no idea why Duke's walking along this street in the next scene, but, sure, he is. I mean, I know why he's walking in the street, because that street doesn't appear to have sidewalks and I've done the same thing around here where some streets don't, but why he's in this neighborhood I don't know. Later information will indicate that he's trying to find Jack Driscoll for his bilge pump. In a further display of emphasis on how much the Troubles are destroying Haven, all of this is shot in bright daylight, with clear colors and a fucking white picket fence. Everything's green and pretty but tidy in that way that well-manicured neighborhoods are, and it's all about to go sideways. Starting with a bang and then a whimper! As Duke's ears pop. Ow. As Duke gets closer we see a light go out, something happening to the car furthest in front of the camera, a guy comes out of a car and drops to the ground as all his groceries compress themselves, well, this doesn't look good! He's probably dead by now. Everything's compressing, car windows blowing in, oh look it's a child about to walk into danger. Which Duke will helpfully lampshade for us, not directly but with some eyerolling resignation about not being able to just leave, he has to get involved first. Because even when he was a bad boy smuggler he wasn't the kind of guy who just left kids to die. Into the pressure zone he goes, scoops her up as his ears pop moreharder, and carries her out while her ball deflates just so we know how close it was, balls of various kinds bouncing out of frame being the universal sign for Something Bad Happened To The Child Who Was Playing With This. And since it doesn't seem to be expanding, a few feet will do it, which is where Duke stops and looks back. Really, I'd've kept running a-ways, though I suspect he might not be physically able to. Let's all look back now at the destruction that Trouble has wreaked and hope to god that girl's parents weren't in the pressure zone. Roll credits!

Which do not, by the way, have Heckle and Jekyll in them, so thank god for small favors. (In case you were wondering which is which, we have decided that Heckle is the big guy.) No, today's credits apart from the usual suspects and Gloria, whom we adore, we also have a couple of Nordic guys. Apparently one of them (Darri Ingolfsson/Jack Driscoll) is the Tom Cruise of Iceland, which either means everyone knows his name and he's considered one of the epitomes of sexy, or he's a couch-jumping lunatic. I'm actually not sure which considering the implications of Tom Cruise have changed over the years. We'll go with the first, since both us and the writers are old enough to remember Tom Cruise the sex symbol from our formative years. Anyway. I digress, stop letting me ramble. Duke will call 911 now, because he's avoiding emotional connections and while his first instinct might be to call the police, when he's avoiding emotional connections the police then translates to 911 rather than Nathan's personal phone. Or even Dwight's, apparently, though arguably there's both less history there and Guard complications. The guy who dropped with his groceries is confirmed as dead, and if Duke incorrectly took his pulse chances are he'll be dead before emergency services gets to him anyway. He's also very calm over the phone, or maybe calm isn't quite the right word but he's very clear and precise even in the face of ho shit weird lethal Trouble just happened, which further showcases how valuable he is to the town. Not that we didn't know this already, but Duke taking charge and reporting the situation in a crisis is important as one of the types of things Haven sorely needs. Oddly, between this and the next segment we get a flyover with no real change of location or scenery and a very small lapse in time. Not entirely sure what the editor was doing there or what that cut is meant to delineate. Duke comes around a corner and now more people are coming out of their houses, indicating that the Trouble didn't reach into the houses or if it did, didn't cause too much human damage. So there's that at least. Oh, hey, it's Jack Driscoll! Introducing himself not by name but by concluding the initial conversation about the bilge pump. We'll go ahead and assume he's being flippant about Duke destroying the place because everyone in this damn town knows what the Crocker Trouble is. Duke's first words to the guy are to ask him if he's all right, another of those little telling moments that say Duke is a good person who is needed badly in Haven. Well, Jack's all right, but the guy in the car next to them is dead, so, two fatalities so far. And a busted watch that's pressure-rated for 300 feet, which is about 130 psi (give or take a bit). By way of an example, a cork in a champagne bottle rates at about 60-90 psi, so while what happens to the human body in higher pressures is a bit more complicated than that, let's say everything around the dead people is getting crushed with at least twice the force it takes to pop a cork. (And if any physicists/oceanologists reading this are better able to explain that in layperson, preferably visual terms, please have at!) The car glass is also more complicated, but simpler than the human body, because it would depend on what type of glass is in the car. The upshot is, lots of pressure. Impact pressure? Well, no, both because of the ear-popping and as confirmed by the Teagues who are wandering up with a bad case of the bends! Or decompression sickness, as it's more technically known. It happens when you change pressures too rapidly, though lacking space or aircraft, around Haven it would probably happen when you rise from the depth of the whatever too quickly. The Glendowers come to mind. It happens because gases in your blood and tissues form bubbles rather than remaining in their natural state, and although it's best known for making humans floppy and hallucinate it also causes a whole range of symptoms. Some of which are described here! Duke's pronouncement that they need to get the Teagues into a decompression chamber before they die is a bit dire, given that Haven is a seaside place with a fair degree of marine-based commerce. They probably have decompression chambers pretty close. Now, if this were a landlocked area? Yeah, they'd be fucked.

Now the commercial break and more understandable scene change, the one in which the crew resets for cop business. Gloria pronounces death by crushing, then deliberately mispronounces Lexie's last name, most likely by way of going "You're hiding something, dearie, I know you are and I'm onto you." Anyway, she also says that the pressure formed in the shape of a bubble, which explains how Duke and the girl were able to withstand some of it; they were on the outside of the bubble. The inside she describes as being several thousand psi. By way of an example, the Mariana Trench, which is about as deep as we've been able to explore in the ocean, is 15k plus PSI, which is not very many thousands. That's a really freaking deep bubble. She also emphasizes, when Nathan talks about cars exploding, that the pressure causes things and specifically any closed system to implode, not explode. Think this unusually long explanation will be important later? Yeah, so do I. Death came by lung collapse, which is unrelated as far as death goes to the blood leaking out of the ears, even though blood leaking out of the ears is a nice visual symbol for "this person is fucked and probably dead." And as we all know, the Teagues are lucky death-defying bastards, they just came out of it with a case of the bends. Which is only marginally weird, since we don't know where in the bubble they were. Decompression sickness, as Duke said, caused by changing pressures too quickly, etc. It's not quite a repetition because the only repeated information is the decompression chamber, but I seem to have jumped the gun in blithering at you about the causes and symptoms of decompression sickness. C'est la vie. Laudrey's lack of knowledge about this is also perfectly in keeping with both of their knowledge bases, though it's reasonable to assume that Audrey might have picked up some greater knowledge of boats, sailing, etc. in her months in Haven she still never had much reason to learn about diving technique.

Jack Driscoll has a decompression chamber! Naturally he does. Duke's there too, presumably both the younger guys shepherded the Teagues on over, because they're ornery in the best of circumstances. We can't tell a ton about what they're saying through the awful audio quality on that speaker, but there's definitely something about prophesying doom and it sounds like Dave's trying very hard to think through the bends and pass information along to his brother. Oi, you two. Duke quite reasonably points out that he never knows what they're talking about, though given what they seem to know if he weren't so set on getting out of there he might be a little more concerned about the whole DOOM part of their blithering. We cut over to the Cape Rouge, where Jennifer's hauling all of one bag? I'm going to go with she had more stuff but already packed the rest in her car/it's up on deck somewhere, because she's got a fair amount of traditional femininity and there is no way she packed from Boston in ONE bag. The point here is only partially her grumbling over Duke, in the way people do when they're fond of the person who's being an asshole, understands why, and does not approve in the least. Oh Jennifer. I do hope you turn out to be more than the failsafe for AudSarLuLex. The other point is the CREEPYASS HORSESHOE CRAB. With human eyes. Yeah, I'd be making that face too. What the everloving fuck. And then of course it disappears before Duke can see it, over the side of the ship because we're not quite to the point of demonstrating that this is a mystical phenomenon that only Jennifer can see. So far. Brief freakout at Duke aside, he seems too distracted for the full force of the weird to register, and he's got the sailor's customary disdain for anything a landlubber thinks they may or may not be seeing on his boat. Jennifer, for her part, is fed the fuck up with this distant bullshit and snaps at him, again in the way that says yes, she understands and no, she doesn't like it, and as long as he's refusing to talk about it directly she's going to be snippy with him. Until he brings out the whole, I'm not leaving until Vince and Dave are okay (really? why is that necessary, Duke, they'll be fine, they're in the hyperbaric chamber), and once she gets past the initial worry and explanation it's time to interrupt Duke's apology with a massive, massive cluebat. Thank you. This takes the form of enumerating the lives Duke's saved, just the ones she knows about, that's not counting the plethora of lives saved over the last three seasons which I will not count up because it would take too long. Suffice it to say that Duke Crocker, Gentleman Rogue Who Gives No Fucks, has only ever been a useful cover for the fact that he cares readily and deeply about people. In the specific and the abstract, as witnessed by the fact that he does this for people he knows well and doesn't alike. Duke starts out trying to disparage her you're-a-hero speech with more of the me-me-me, but it rapidly devolves into something closer to the truth, which is that he's been pushing this fucking boulder up the hill a long time now and he doesn't see any way for it to end happily. Ever. That every life he saves is a person who could be Troubled and then kill other people, that no good deed goes unpunished, and shall we just paint you green and give you a broomstick, Duke? Not only that but now that he's de-powered he can't even use that as a way to help; although he never liked doing it, it was always a last-resort option. And now they don't even have that, and the Troubles are getting worse and more lethal, just look at the body count for this season alone. And that's without Arla running around killing people for their bits. Jennifer looks like she might want to suggest some more things about who Duke really is, but since he didn't hear her the first time and she's got her own bag of insecurities she goes for the indirect question of, is this because you're in love with Lexie? Yeah, maybe a little, but not in the way she means. Duke's not walking out on the potential of what he and Jennifer could be, or at least that's not his main reason for running, those reasons are bound up in everything that he and Nathan and Audrey have been to each other, and everything that's happened to him because of his family, and if he's doing anything about their not-quite-relationship it's that he's trying to protect her from himself. Which as we know always goes so well. She'd like him to stay for a bit, probably trying to get him to calm down enough to sit and think over his options rather than resorting to kneejerk reactions, emphasis on the jerk part, but she also only has so much energy to expend on Duke being a moron. And more to the point, we only have so much time in an episode.

Back over to the crime scene we go! Where we seem to have found the epicenter of the pressure Trouble, both by damage to the poor woman in the car and with Nathan now no longer quite so full of brooding (hey, dude got laid, I can't blame him) he provides an excellent bit of detective work! Namely that pressure causes glass to implode, but all the glass here is on the outside of the car, see, that didn't take long to come back around in payoff! Nice tight writing. So that means the Troubled person was in the car with her, fresh mud gives them some physical evidence that will again come around to pay off in short order, Speed Weed is damn good at the procedurals aspect of this, I will just say. And was quick to get a handle on the characters; normally we'd be a little leery of adding a new writer this far into a big arc, but he's been pretty fucking awesome. None of the witnesses saw who Jill Neues' passenger was, but she nearly ran over the Teagues right before the Trouble hit! Which is a) a good trigger for a Trouble and b) what the everloving fuck how did they survive? Genius fucking loci. I swear. They can't die until Haven does, or something, because there is no reason they should have managed that. Unfortunately we don't have time to dwell on that, we need to get the Teagues to ID the Troubled person and contain the problem before more people die. Gee! I wonder who the Troubled person is! Though it being a Driscoll is very odd, considering what we know of the Rev, I suppose it's possible that someone married unwittingly into a Troubled line. Or with intent to piss Ed Driscoll off, lord knows he was enough of a shithead people would do that. His own wife did that. But that's not what this is about, this is about the rules of Troubles changing, and hey, Duke and Jennifer are helping Jack with the Teagues. Giving Jennifer the opportunity to lampshade "why isn't anyone looking at the deep sea diver for this Trouble?" and everyone to go "oh no can't be he's a Driscoll they've never been Troubled!" Going back, Vince tells, us, to the founding, which is very interesting indeed since all previous contact with the Rev characterized him as something of an upstart. Or, at least, as someone who left Haven and then came back, and was considered something of an outsider by some of the residents who never left, and certainly an unwelcome force for evil by all the Troubled folks. Duke offers a snarky mpreg comment, thank you for that, writers, and Jennifer snarks right back at him. Seriously, Duke, either help or don't, but stop dicking around. Jennifer proceeds to point out that maybe you can pick up a new Trouble and all these lampshades are going in a pile around which we will do a desultory victory dance in the flames on the sides of our faces. Because sometimes we really don't WANT to be right about what's going on with the Troubles. This was one of those times. Jack's function as Duke goes over to talk about his bilge pump some more is to twist that knife a few more inches. Ow. Though the mention of Crockers and Driscolls "defending Haven for centuries" is fucking fascinating and says all kinds of things about the Rev and Simon, and yes, that the people Roy was working for were probably associated with a Driscoll, if you can call blackmail and coercion working together, and in short, more victory dances. Sad ones. Picture Numfar's Dance of Shame here. But that's okay, Wade will carry on the tradition and Jack will give Duke's spot at the christening of his brother Aiden's new child to Wade! Uh. Yeah. Duke keeps all of that down to minimal tells, under the circumstances, though Jack clearly knows something's up. I'd also love to know, considering the Rev, how Duke and the Driscoll nephews got to be such good friends. Childhood? At least that'd be my best guess. We also get mention of the Driscoll boys being out late last night partying because of the impending baby, which will of course be another piece of this fucked up tragic puzzle.

The case will continue in a moment! First Duke has to lash out some more, as Audrey and Nathan drive up and go to question the Teagues, punctuated by thanks that aren't actually perfunctory but probably feel that way to Duke, and Nathan's request for help from the scuba diving expert he trusts. That's a lot of Duke's old saunter and swagger back from s1, s2, even early s3 when he was hurting and furious with Audrey after The Farmer, it's his "I'm protecting myself from all my attachments and fuck everyone who tries to get past my armor" body language. Oh honey. And Duke knows where to hit Nathan hardest, starting from their history of hating each other which, let us not forget, Nathan clung to the hardest and longest in many respects, and going through to the you're a selfish asshole now implications. Which are not entirely wrong, Nathan has been an ass for a lot of reasons, some of them good and some of them less so, for quite awhile now. But the way Duke's framing it he means it to hurt enough that he doesn't feel like he's leaving behind intact relationships to come back to. DUKE. QUIT IT I WILL GET JENNIFER IN HERE TO CLUEBAT YOU SOME MORE. Jesus hitman. Audrey has what starts out as an Audrey evaluating look and then something of a Lexie quit-the-bullshit look when she asks what just happened. Followed by the one where she's worried he knows they finally slept together, fuckssake everyone, we know Duke's at least half in love with Audrey still but he's been trying to let it go and not everything is about that one thing. Not that they have the relevant data to explain that behavior, although I would like to know if Nathan ever asked about taking care of Wade and if so, what Duke said. I mean, really, even in Haven you shouldn't be able to just stab a guy and stay out of jail. Or have it never come up again. Though I'm betting it'll pay off in the next ep, judging by the promo trailer. Nathan doesn't know but he thinks Duke has a point, well, Audrey doesn't. Moreover, given the choice of phrasing, I would go so far as to say there's a secondary meaning entirely wrong in the head going on here, something's up that they don't know the extent of, in other words. Well, yes. A lot of things.

Again, no time for that, time to interrogate the Teagues. Can I interrogate the Teagues? I promise I'll leave their voiceboxes in working order. Ahem. They confirm that the passenger was Jack Driscoll and he can't be Troubled so nothing's going on! Really! They swear! Um. I'm going with lingering disorientation from the bends, because it's taking Dave an awful long time to reach the obvious conclusion. Laudrey waves him over, we get the mud on his boots payoff, this is really a fairly simple Trouble to solve at least in the sense of who it is and how you fix it. Guys, you know he's a Driscoll, you know he might somehow be Troubled, DON'T UPSET THE DRISCOLL oh for fuck's sake. Too late, but it serves to give him an immediate and visceral set of proofs that yes, in fact, he's doing this. And for those asking why it affects Audrey, it's another of those environmental Troubles as opposed to the ones that act directly on the Troubled person and/or directly impact another person's autonomy. Some nice acting/directing choices, having him take rapid, panting type breaths as his Trouble worsens, and we cut to commercial break on imploded beach balls and shattered lights. Nathan, of course, isn't affected because he can't feel the pressure, insert terrible puns here, which is why Jack has him seal the diving bubble post-ad break. Smart plan, as these things go. This works I think more because Jack's the one controlling his Trouble and less because it would be impossible for him to influence things beyond the chamber, but hey, we'll take it. We get a number, 2000 feet of pressure, which is about as deep as anyone can go outside of a submarine and, yes, about ten times as deep as a highly trained scuba diver can go. Eesh. Vince will helpfully explain to "Lexie" as well as for the benefit of the audience that physical phenomena can still hurt her, which is about a third of the Troubles we've seen thus far, based on my rough tally from our index o' Troubles. Yes, thank you, Jack, we know that your family pride is about not being Troubled, I'm still not sure how much of an ass you are other than that you grew up around the Rev and that makes you automatically suspect. Albeit it kind of (sym)pathetic now, depending on how easily your head's turned by a pretty face. Okay, so, Carrie Benson and her Trouble, then! Audrey, you're not even pretending right now, though the Teagues are distracted by their bickering. NO VINCE. NO SHUSHING. FUCKING PAY ATTENTION TO THE FUCKING DATA. I swear to god. Audrey sums up for Jack's benefit, and yes, apparently he and his brother were so drunk that he woke up in a ditch by the side of Route 4. At least he didn't say Route 19, say thankya. So yes, it's possible they were attacked and he didn't think anything of it, presumably all his stuff was still in his pockets? He didn't find that strange either? Oh, but he gets to take off his shirt! Yay! I do appreciate that Haven seems well aware that its audience is by and large women who like men. Thaaaat looks like Heckle's handprint to me, it's pretty big, whereas it was Jekyll last time. Okay! So they both can do it. No surprise there. Nathan would like to get the goddamn Teagues out of here now that they know people are wandering around creating new Troubles, yes, go be the police sketch artist, Vince. And read that fucking diary. The way he says "someone Troubled a Driscoll" makes me think there may be more to their unTroubled heritage that purity of bloodline, but given the importance of bloodlines in this town I wouldn't bet either way just yet. The other thing we have to do is get Jack out of there so he doesn't have to stay in a hyperbaric chamber the rest of his life, and hey, indeed, it's scuba breathing techniques that solved it the first time and it's scuba breathing techniques that'll solve this iteration as well. Essentially a form of meditation, just one specialized to the Driscolls' specialty. I will also take a moment to freak out about how the Driscoll nephews have significant scuba training and Penny Driscoll ran away to the Glendowers, all the male members of whom are out breathing seawater right now, I WANT ANSWERS FROM THE FUCKING GLENDOWERS. We can take them waterproof whiteboards and shit. We don't really need the precis of how the Trouble works, the calmer = less pressure, more agitated = more pressure is pretty self-explanatory, but we do get a look at Jack being absolutely wrecked. All his beliefs, whatever we may think of them, about who he is and how his world works, have just been completely upended, yeah, I'd be upset too. It's a lot of wishful thinking, and I think Jack knows that, to assume that just because he wasn't lying in the ditch with his brother means Aiden's not been Troubled, but he wants the poor kid not to have this Trouble too. Yeah, I don't blame him, that's the kind of Trouble that, if it sets in during childbirth (an admittedly traumatic experience for all parties), would result in a lot of very dead people and a baby who doesn't understand how to fix it. Not that we're going there quite yet, it's about the child not being hurt by having a Trouble, but really. I could see that happening. I will be over here in the corner wincing.

Especially as we come up on the brother in question, with a uni who's shaking the darker-haired brother (twin dark to Jack's twin light! drink!) awake on a park bench and he's duly discombobulated. Yeah. Fuck. He, by contrast, wasn't so drunk he doesn't remember being abducted last night, and the cop's not buying it, dude, woman, how long have you been in Haven? Not long enough to understand the fuckery that goes on here. I have no idea other than generally being an incompetent cop and narrative convenience why she refuses to listen to him quite that much, he's not being aggressive toward her. Agitated, yes, but not aggressive until she refuses to listen and tries to arrest him for D&D, and well, that's just automatically going bad places. Complete with a dead cop and imploding glass and an increasingly freaked out Driscoll who doesn't understand what the fuck is going on. Really, Heckle and Jekyll had to have picked them on purpose, because anyone else would have assumed they were Troubled at this point. Not to mention the symbolic value of Troubling a family who's been known to not be Troubled for generations, and who seems intrinsically linked to the defense of Haven. That's a message. That's a warning. That says we will fuck your shit up.

Anyway. By the time Laverne gets on the horn that's not just an officer down, that's at least two more bodies on this Driscoll's hands and did we mention the rapidly, exponentially increasing body count? Because it might literally be exponential at this point. Nathan and Audrey pull up with Jack in tow, but by this point they have a good eyeful of crushed things all around him and can at least somewhat see where the edge of the bubble is. Let us not go in there. The only problem with not going in there is that the bubble's coming at them, as Aiden sees his brother and naturally thinks Jack can help. Oh honey. The Rev aside, this does speak to how close at least the brothers if not this entire branch of the Driscoll family is, that Aidan would automatically seek comfort and answers from his brother like this. Sadly, being denied that aid and comfort is only going to make things worse, though they do manage to think of using their phones rather than trying to shout over the distance. And thankfully, Jack is pretty concise about explaining it! Because they don't have much time before those phones succumbed. Those two guys gave them a Trouble, and all this exploding things and people falling down is what Aidan's doing. And then the phone dies, of course, and Aidan's left on his own in the middle of an increasingly large personal bubble that's somewhat more enforced than most people's. Well, shit. This is also about the second time we get such a clear interaction between two people with the same Trouble, and Jack being unable to help his brother. No points for remembering what the first one is, also between two brothers. That one ended a lot worse than this is going to, at least for said brothers. Nathan gets on the phone and immediately orders an evacuation of the area around Founder's Square, because what else can you do, and tries to get ahold of Duke, like you do when your now suddenly estranged friend has the potential solution to a deeply dangerous problem.

While all this is going on, Jennifer's pulling up to a rather nice house that seems to be at the end of a long list. Because of course it's the last one on the list. Though the names aren't in the same order as when we first saw them, this is John and Nancy Stevens from out in West Haven. All right, then. She's about to get her stuff and go talk to them when she hears what sounds like a skittering noise in her blind spot. Followed by a moderately gratuitous advertisement for the damn vehicle, oh you guys. I mean, it sort of fits? But she could have just gone out to look at the creepy fucking horseshoe crab with human eyeballs staring at her. As a point of random interest, for two species that have little else in common horseshoe crab eyes are actually somewhat similar to human eyes, which has been useful to researchers. They don't actually have human eyeballs, though, unless they're evil magical horseshoe crabs. At least they're not lobstrosities. Jennifer will continue to prove that she belongs in Haven by only giving the place where the damn thing used to be a funny look as she gets out and heads up to the house. Instead of, you know, screaming and driving away like a normal person when confronted with magically disappearing human-eyed sea creatures.

Over at the evacuation site they keep having to move the barriers back because, well, the pressure bubble keeps building. Audrey makes mention of an old church and she really isn't trying not to be Audrey anymore, because how the hell would Lexie know that when she hasn't been in town that long? Even if nobody's around to hear but Nathan and as far as we know the Driscoll doesn't actually know anything about this method of solving the Troubles. Amusingly, considering his family's supposed position within Haven, which I'm guessing has lost a lot of its status since the Rev. Anyway, mention of an old church and then an explosion. Oh crap, it's the firehouse generator! Let's escalate this a bit by expositing what'll happen if it gets to the generator at the hospital. In the midst of all these dire pronouncements comes Jack, who says that there's only one solution. Duke has to kill him! And then the Trouble will end and all those of us who saw the last episode have to go bang our heads off the nearest hard and flat surface because well shit. Not that this is surprising?  Once the Crocker Trouble was taken out of play, narrative demands (especially as short as Haven seasons are) that this be brought to everyone's attention in the most dramatic and usually painful way possible. And what could be more dramatic than a town-ending Trouble no one can stop? Yep. Audrey is of course the first one to start saying no, no dying, no killing, which is what she's been saying all along but Jack Driscoll appears to have been raised with the full knowledge of the Crocker history instilled in him, and that's what Crockers do. Nathan brings up the very valid point, and I'll go carve this on a cluebat for later, that someone is going around giving people Troubles and exacerbating existing ones, so clearly the rules are changing and they need to consider that. Jack's willing to take the risk, though, not just for Haven but also for his nephew. He'll take that risk that his death won't do anything because everything he knows tells him Duke killing him means his nephew grows up unTroubled. And this isn't a turning things into cake Trouble or turning dogs into humans Trouble, this is a oh hey you're upset? INSTANT DEATH BUBBLE type of Trouble. That's not good. Time to call in the Crocker.

Who is back in the field which, yep, looks a lot like Simon's field of morbid storifying. What fun. Eulogizing his brother whom he killed, even more fun, and by the sound of the start of that focusing mostly on how Haven fucked up his and his brother's lives. Let's interrupt that with a phone call so he can go murder someone for everyone's good, or not. Duke doesn't feel like answering his phone right now. Duke also refers to Wade as having been the one living Crocker he could halfway stand to be with, which, really? How many living Crockers are there, that he knows about? Inquiring fucking minds, here. Duke will not elaborate for our data because Duke is still mourning the loss of his brother. Interesting, though, that he phrases this part in such a way that the implied sacrifice he intended to make was being alone in town and getting his brother away from Haven, rather than the one he did make, killing his brother. Regardless, Duke proceeds to repeat the most important lesson of Haven, which is fucking Haven. Or as he puts it, in Haven you always lose. I wish I could say he didn't have a point, but it's been heading that way for a while, and Duke's been bearing up under his load for a long time without as much reciprocity as he needed, and now he's broken under it. At least for the moment. And his phone will ring again! He still thinks it's Nathan, but now it's Jack, having borrowed Nathan's phone and needing to ask Duke to come murder him. Not that he says that immediately. He starts with saying that they found Aidan but when the first shot we get post scene change is Duke going "... No!", yeah, we have a good idea what he greeted Duke with. Even if Duke didn't hate the idea of killing people, especially people he knows and is friends with, as a solution to anything, right now he physically or psychically can't and has to hide behind his principled indignation to keep everyone else from finding out about it. Nathan makes an attempt at convincing him and will promptly get bitten for his pains, Right where Nathan lives, too, pointing out that Jack is willing to die to end his family's Trouble, but Nathan won't man up and get Audrey to kill him and end everyone's Trouble. Extra bonus stabbity points for Duke being one who knows that Audrey is Audrey, and there's no actual delay required. Not that he was willing to let Nathan try that before, he was doing everything he could to prevent it, now, well. Now his actual anger at Nathan is hard to measure underneath his need to destroy all ties to Haven so he can leave and stop being hurt. Compounded by the fact that the more he hurts his friends, the more he needs to leave to avoid the hurt, and so on. Let's take a second though for Nathan to try to talk Duke out of his tree and piss Duke off enough to punch him. Because that'll help! Well, sort of help. Duke punches Nathan, Nathan reels and steps back, Audrey gasps, I think, more at the escalation into violence where previously there was heartfelt love (yes, I used that word, it applies whether or not you add a romantic element to it). And Nathan steps back again because he touches his lip and, oh shit, he's bleeding, Duke's going to silver-eye out and go all murdery. Except, no. Duke's eyes are brown, the blood stays on his knuckles instead of being absorbed, and now the cat's well and truly out of the bag. (K: Hey!) (A: Would you like to go back in? That can be arranged.) Nathan hasn't figured out how Duke's managed to unTrouble himself yet, hopefully more because of the shock of Duke not being Troubled than because he can't figure it out. Give it a moment of calm, if those exist in Haven anymore, and he might put it together with the Crocker Trouble removing the Trouble from the bloodline of anyone they kill.

Sadly, we're not getting any moments of calm right now. The pressure bubble is still building, according to Audrey it's a quarter mile across now. That's a good chunk of downtown, at a guess. I have to wonder what the hell made Audrey think it would reach an outer limit, because what Trouble thus far has had an outer limit, given incentive to grow? Even more so now, when this is both an unprecedented Trouble and artificially (as much as any of these things are natural) inflicted. Bodies are going to start piling up? Bodies have kind of been piling up. Nathan seems to have taken Duke's speech to heart, because he brings up their final solution again, which Audrey flatly rejects. Again. Now Jake turns up saying he can't find Duke, looked everywhere for him, and can't believe Duke abandoned Haven. Hammering on that some more by adding that whatever cruel god inflicted the Troubles on Haven (there's the religious side coming out, I guess? much more benevolent of a view to take to the Troubles than the Rev's) the Crocker Trouble was there as a failsafe, for these kinds of Troubles that couldn't be stopped any other way. Nathan doesn't betray Duke's secret, because he is a good friend and has his head screwed on straight for now, all he'll say is that Duke isn't an option and give Audrey a pointed look over other solutions, which leaves deep sea pressure suits, according to Jack. But he doesn't know where to find one. How about Dominion Diving Deep Sea Equipment? Ta-da, here comes the van! Even Jack seems pleased to see it, even if what he apparently really wanted was to be murdered. I don't think I've ever typed that sentence quite so many times before.

Give it a second and Audrey and her boys are suited up and getting their helmets on and engaging in some gallows humor about how they've never done this before. But, sure, why not. Jack will monitor them from the station by the truck, and into the pressure zone they go. Oh, hey, another dead person we didn't see before. That's at least seven by now, just counting the bodies we've seen and not the people we might not have. Their gauges says they're equivalent to equivalent to about 2000 feet deep, oh yay, and getting deeper. Which is naturally when it goes all wrong. Nathan's line gets snagged on a bench and torn open, which kind of makes me wonder what they do when they have to do a walk on a section of ocean floor. Are there lines specifically for that that the truck doesn't have? Or do they run into this kind of problem a lot? If so, it's a stupid problem. Jack taps his gauge like you do when you see something that's not right in a gauge, not because you think it'll make it better but physically as a sort of "the fuck? that's not right, work properly you shit" and in visual medium as an indication that this readout which the viewers may or may not be able to interpret is giving off worrisome information. Nathan's losing oxygen, which wouldn't be a problem if he could just pop his helmet but since the pressure would collapse his lungs like popping a paper bag if he did, this is a serious problem. Worse since at this depth of pressure you need a very specific oxygen-nitrogen mix in order not to go hypoxic from it, so, FUN. Duke will haul Nathan's butt out of there in an inexplicit but still emphatic display of renewed brotherhood, while Audrey goes deals with the Trouble of the week because That's What She Does and also oh fuck it's that church. You know, the one that's on fire in the opening credits? Still kind of waiting for that to pay off, but it won't today. Nathan staggers off, gasping and supported by Duke, and Audrey is visibly worried even through her dive helmet as she keeps heading towards Aidan.

Who is pretty much just sitting there amidst dead bodies quietly freaking out. Oh honey. Audrey doesn't have time to deviate much from the textbook, establish knowledge of the Troubled person, establish rapport, remind the Troubled person of his or her capability for control, establish a reason for that control by establishing outside personal connections and the victims of the Trouble as human beings to be empathized with. We also get the traditional hammering on the anvil of the show, which is according to Audrey that we have to accept some hard truths sometimes, or risk hurting the people that we love. In this case, that the Driscolls are now Troubled, but also for her that killing Nathan may well be the solution and save a lot of lives. So, deep, calming breaths. Like deep sea diving, or like guided meditation. We'll use the deep sea diving because it's more thematically appropriate. Outside the bubble Nathan and Duke are confronting some more hard truths, that Duke's Trouble is gone which means, as Nathan has by now put together, that Duke killed Wade. Which Duke says he had to do, and Nathan doesn't question that. Hell, Nathan was there when Wade walked right in and shanked a guy, so it doesn't seem that out of the blue that Duke would have to kill Wade at some point soon. And Duke as murderer isn't what Nathan is focusing on right now, instead it seems like he's focusing on murder as a practical solution, which, only in Haven. He asks if Duke really thinks Audrey should kill him, which Duke seems to take to mean is a question about whether or not he hates Nathan as a rival? I'm really not sure where Duke's getting that. Maybe just the accusations of being selfish. At any rate, no, Duke doesn't think Audrey should kill Nathan, he's not that selfish, going along with the whole get Nathan out of the picture so he can be with Audrey thing. To which Nathan replies that Duke is one of the least selfish people he knows. Trollfaces aside (and oh yes, there are many of them coming over that hill in their little dive suits), that is a very touching moment that, in one sentence, shows that Nathan has been aware of and watching Duke's actions in Haven and taking note of how much Duke has given up and is giving up for the people of this town. It's not going to fix Haven, but it's acknowledgement and appreciation, and the way Duke's feeling lately, it really seems to help. Possibly more so coming from Nathan, who's hated him for decades. Duke deflects the gravity with a joke about how that's the second time he's heard that today, and obliquely references Jennifer. I'm not sure the fangirls would agree about Jennifer being cuter than Nathan, but we can definitely go with it. It also serves as a nice, subtle moment of realization for Duke and a transition to Jennifer!

Who is walking up and down in the stateroom bitching about Duke's erratic behavior. Which it is. Apparently he called her and told her to bring her things back and, what, he was sorry? Hard to say, but Jennifer is duly cranky. And Duke is admiring, affectionate, adorable, other words starting in A. Awkward might be one of them. Jennifer being more awkward because she hadn't meant for him to hear that, not that she's entirely sorry that he did. No, they've reached the point at this point where, the hell with words, words are always getting in my way, words like violence break the silence, take your pick of song lyrics. Consummation of finally acknowledged relationships for everyone! as Duke and Jennifer take their places of honor as the stable couple in the lead cast. Dear lord. Will the less stable couple please stand up?

Thank you, Nathan and Audrey. Note that I don't say unstable, because they aren't precisely, they're just less stable in part because of a history of less easy communication and more lying and also because of the greater stressors on them. Lately that's skewing more towards greater stressors, which they will now proceed to talk about. Not facing each other, I note. The blocking puts them at the tail end of a fight, though given Nathan's quiet tone it seems like it's a fight they haven't had yet. He brings up her words from talking down Aidan, that some truths are hard to accept but other people need them to, he brings up Duke's words, that Jack was willing to sacrifice himself to end one Trouble and Nathan's scrupling at ending all of them. Audrey does not want to hear this. Audrey is staring straight forward with the broken look of someone who had everything she wanted in life, or near enough, and has had it blown out of her hands with a shotgun. Nathan tries, bless his heart. He comes and sits in front of her, turns her to face him, takes her hands, all the usual comforting gestures. He is, I dare say, focusing so much on Audrey that he's missing a key point in his speech to convince her, which is that someone is changing the rules. Which means, or it would mean to me, that they should be very goddamn sure that killing Nathan will end the Troubles, because if that's changed too, they could fuck themselves over even worse. No, Nathan's not thinking about that, and Audrey's not thinking through her grief very well at all. Nathan's focusing on something to do with blessed are they who martyr themselves for the salvation of others, yes, I've seen that theme, it gets very tiresome very quickly. Even if he is also grieving for the things he'll lose as a result of this. But then, focusing on and repeating that they can end the Troubles, help everyone, cure it all with one bullet, is at least a better argument than anything else he could come up with. It's also, we'll note, deeply telling that Nathan's going around everywhere armed these days. Even in a place where he should feel safe. Audrey sits there quietly and limply, crying, because what else can she really do? They don't have any other answers.

They don't have any other answers because the fucking Teagues are sitting on them all. HEY, VINCE. DAVE. COUGH UP THE INFORMATION. Well, not yet, I could stand to see Duke and Jennifer being cute a little more. And kissing her is a good way to get her not to vocally agree about you being an idiot, Duke, well done. The conversation turns, as it does when two people who don't know each other too well give in to a mutual attraction, to her stuff and getting to know her through what she's discovered about her birth parents, I guess? And their stuff in the attic! It's kind of like a radius, that way. Apparently the Stevenses moved out a while ago and the new owners of their house had left that box of stuff in the attic. Silly stuff, like an old troll doll and AUGH FUCK IT'S THAT BOOK. THE BOOK AGENT FUCK YOU TOOK FROM AUDREY. WHICH HE LATER RETURNED WITH THE BARN COORDINATES. Just so you all are aware, when that book showed up we didn't stop swearing for maybe two or three minutes. Yes, Unstake My Heart is back, not only with the barn coordinates and "happy birthday" written on it (which we still don't entirely know what that means, maybe just a metaphor for her rebirth?), but it also went with a book that had "until the tenth generation" on the back cover over the book blurb. So, yeah. That's unnerving. Probably not quite as unnerving as Vince and Dave barging in while you're sitting on your boyfriend's lap kissing him and wearing only a button down shirt (Duke's? Hers? I'm betting Duke's by the size of those sleeves and the length of it.) but somewhere along the lines of a different type and the same degree. Vince and Dave are falsely apologetic because they're too energized by what they've learned. This is getting to be a thing with Vince, at least, though it's a nice bookend to the beginning of the episode. And by nice I mean Vince if you ever walk up on me unawares I will hit you. Anyway. Learnings! Which they will now proceed to spew out at us rapid-fire so we have to take notes and then let the full impact of it hit us later! In the order in which it's given and with interjections as they occur to us, they have the journal of one Sebastian Cabot, explorer most likely of French origin, who wandered the area in the winter of 1497 which is well before most of the European explorers hit New England. it is, however, 19 cycles of Troubles ago EXACTLY oh FUCK EVERYTHING FUCK YOU GUYS FUCK THIS BARN AND THIS DOOR AND EVERYTHING. 19, for those unfamiliar, is the most significant and arguably evil number in King-verse, particularly but not limited to Dark Tower. There is also a historical Cabot (John) who landed around there at that time. Italian. Vince continues to ignore Duke telling him to get out and ramble about how Cabot records the Troubles fairly accurately as well as an ancient Mi'kmaq legend about a time they considered the darkest in their history. A time that Dave chimes in was caused or heralded by the opening of an otherworldly door that shouldn't have been opened. Which is what Dave thought would happen, but he's pleased to be wrong since none of the very specific harbingers have shown up! What, like horseshoe crabs with human eyes, those harbingers? The ones Jennifer's been seeing? Okay, it is kind of hilarious to watch Vince's face go from smiling to oh crap in less than a second, but I'm with Dave on this one. What. Back the truck up.

We would also like to inquire as to why Jennifer is the ONLY one who's seen them as yet and what that indicates about her place in all of this, on account of how that's an AudSarLuLex trait and she keeps accumulating those like they're going out of style. Is she the great evil? Is she the original intended savior? The savior-to-be? What the actual fuck is going on here, is the question, and we don't yet have enough data to form a concrete hypothesis other than that she's deeply linked to AudSarLuLex and that she keeps not having scenes with her so we can't get a good grasp on what those ties are. I do not think this is an accidental writing decision at-fucking-all, along with the one where none of the directly-affecting-individuals Troubles are anywhere near her so we can't see if she's directly affected by Troubles, too. I'm just saying. Add to all of this, the fact that if we're using Jennifer as a parallel Audrey and hooking her up with Duke so there's no imbalance of ties here, that makes four equidistant which, oh, hey, that's the figures in the tattoo drawing! If you think this is a coincidence I have a piece of property in Maine to sell you. The two main other things this firehose of data gives us are that this is has been going on a fuck of a long time, longer even than colonial times which was our only vague guess as to the possible starting date of the Troubles, and frankly that means Audrey cannot be the first physical embodiment of the savior of Haven. She's white, not First Nations, to put it as bluntly as possible. So there have to have been multiple messiah figures. And the fucking door, which has been opened at least once before and led to a time of great darkness, we don't know if it was under similar enough circumstances that we can hazard a guess as to whether they rebuilt whatever form the Barn took prior to colonization (you can bet it was a different one, though, it seems to take the form of the dominant paradigm at the time like all good blending creepy artifacts) or if this was something else. Maybe even the beginning of the Troubles, and creating the Barn (which we'll keep calling for lack of a better name) was their initial solution? Maybe something else. These are yet again those answers which look like more questions, but they are answers, after a fashion.

Since we're not going to get much more information the rest of this episode, let's take a second and lay this out in a somewhat more organized fashion. First, we have the things that have been established as always having been here, namely the Troubles and the 27-year Cycle. From this we can infer that the Anti-Trouble Avatar which we know as AudSarLuLex has also always been here, though probably not always in the physical body we see her in today, since he or she ends the cycle and begins the next cycle, and therefore the fucking Barn has always been here as well. We don't know for certain about the low men Heckle and Jekyll, but given that they came with the opening of the dimension door and the journal refers to the opening of a dimension door as heralding a dark time, we can be pretty sure they predate AudSarLuLex too, possibly coincident to the Troubles. Then we have the things that we only can date back to the start of AudSarLuLex's existence, her as avatar for one thing, potentially the Crockers or a family calling themselves that, definitely at least as far as the metadata and TV story are concerned the love triangle imagery. And finally we have the things indeterminate, the things we don't know how far they date back. Namely, all of the Troubles, even the founding of Haven ones, the Glendower Trouble, the Crocker violent form of anti-Trouble, the Teagues Trouble of whatever the fuck it is, and the Driscoll family and their purity of non-Troubled line that we got this episode, other than "several centuries" on probably all of these things. The Glendower-made Crocker box goes back to the 1700s, we can use that as a starting point. So. This means our theory of a love triangle as the initiating event for the Troubles pretty much goes out the window, this wasn't the act of some sorcerer scorned, this was here all along. It doesn't shoot too many holes in our theory of AudSarLuLex as cursed by someone she cuckolded, possibly involving Crockers, especially if opening the door means the act of killing the person you love makes everything nineteen times worse yes I had to. Being cuckolded would probably make someone pissed enough to set that in motion! We don't yet know the mechanisms of turning someone into the anti-Trouble Avatar, though, which does leave big holes in any theory we would come up with. Argh. William still could be the original Crocker for the AudSarLuLex Antii-Trouble Avatar OR he could be the embodiment of the big evil itself or both, even, and the unmistakeable part is that we've just had one or two pieces of new data that reframe all our existing assumptions to a greater or lesser degree, and insufficient data we will chew on your liver.

More rapid cuts, now, back to Audrey's apartment where Nathan is finally admitting that he can't stand watching people die and be hurt, and drawing some parallels between people who died today in what's both emotionally manipulative and wholly accurate. Moreover, he's letting his detachment fall to the side of the road, he's had it up to here with people dying, okay, I will understand but I will not accept. Audrey's much closer to doing both, though, because she's got the whole messiah-savior complex going on her own self, and neither of you is asking the relevant question about what other changes to the rules might be coming. Duke and Jennifer took one phone apiece to no avail, and I maintain that having her try to reach "Lexie" is totally a deliberate parallel. Argh. The Teagues read over the journal some more, Dave sounds like he's quoting directly and has a lot of it memorized, no surprise there, they've been going over this for months now. There's a great evil, agony, suffering, no specifics given other than WOE AND DOOM AND BRIMSTONE. More or less. A soft spot has been ripped open, yeah, that sounds like the Todash portal/thinny/whatever you want to call it, those never lead anywhere good. Jennifer lightens the mood very slightly with a rather Whedonian (Willow, specifically) delivery on that not knowing what she knows, regarding Lexie and the barn, yeah, that's fair to say. Meanwhile Vince puts down his reading glasses with this oh-shit look and that is never good. Vince, fucking use your fucking words or I will cut you. That is a helluva way to tell Audrey about Duke having to kill Wade, Nathan, though I can't say she didn't already guess it, in all likelihood, though it's another highly effective piece of emotional yanking. Not that Nathan's yanking Audrey around with the desire to hurt her, but he does want to persuade her over to his way of seeing things, that he can't do this anymore, that they shouldn't ask the rest of the town to bear this when they could fix it. Meanwhile we sit here and scream in conjunction with the realization of this whole great evil portal opened thing going on that NO BAD WHOEVER WANTS YOU TO DO THIS IS A BAD PERSON AND WANTS TO MAKE YOU LIKE THEM. Seriously, we haven't hammered on this too much until now, but putting people in a situation where they have to kill a person they love? That is an evil fucking act which looks to beget another evil fucking act, and that way lies, you guessed it, a way for more bad shit to come to Haven. I don't even buy that it was always their ultimate salvation, I buy that there's a lot of shit missing from their dataset, because on no planet with morality similar to ours is killing the person you love ever a desirable thing. Assisted suicide for terminal and personal illness is maybe the only exception I can think of, and then you know who you go to? A fucking doctor, not your beloved. I seriously question Nathan's statement that this is the most loving thing they could do, but given the assumptions they're working from it really is starting to look like the only way out. And she's pretty well convinced, going from trying not to touch the gun as it lies in their laps to halfway picking it up, not with the resolve of Audrey Parker, trained FBI agent, but the wariness of someone trying not to touch a dead skunk. Getting closer, though, sadly. And there it is, the frame from the promos of her with the gun held against his chest. Oh everyone.

The foursome from the boat are pelting to the Gull to tell Nathan and Audrey what they've found, since they can't raise them on phones, Duke really doesn't give a shit if they're banging in her apartment again at this point. And he's the only one who might know or suspect that's the case. Dave would like to know what KIND of suffering and agony and as much as I facepalm at him for being pedantic yes, that's a useful dataset to have, because with details of what's coming maybe you can find a way to stop it! Or at least survive it. Stopping it is definitely Duke's goal, he nudges them into thinking about it, hey, Vince has a riddle! Vince, I am severely disappointed in you for not memorizing all the fucking data right here and now, I'm just saying. The riddle is, "what was once your salvation is now your doom," GEE YOU THINK. Of fucking course it is. That's both typical of these narratives and typical of these types of curses. Lots of rhetorical questions leading to obvious answers and Duke finally slips up and calls her Audrey instead of Lexie. Vince, you seriously fucking made her LAST EPISODE, don't ask dipshit questions like that. Especially not when it delays Duke going up and stopping Audrey from killing Nathan oh. Well. Too late! Say all of their faces, and fucking shenanigans, say we. We don't know how Nathan's going to survive, just that Lucas Bryant is in all of this season as well as the sneak peek for next ep, so it's safe to say somehow that happens. We're looking forward to finding out how they pull it off and what the gunshot is actually about!

Next time on Haven! William's back in town, after Dwight gets kidnapped by the low men of the barn and rescued by Audrey and Nathan with rubber bullet-filled guns. (Which might have something to do with how Nathan survives, but I'm guessing not.) Dwight is also a pissy fucker over this, like you are, but they make sure not to put holes in the low men that can't be patched up before they get answers. William apparently has lost his memory, which would be consistent with a trip through the barn, though we'll reserve judgment on whether or not he's just faking it really well until after we see more of his mannerisms. Colin Ferguson is a tricky bastard and I do not trust William further than I can throw the Barn and its dimension door. Jennifer has a knife, Dwight looks like he's shooting Duke and threatening at least someone else, possibly one of the low men? Lots of deliberately misleading edits, in other words! Oh GOODIE. This is going to be so much FUN. William, if you turn out to be the great evil I swear I will rip your throat out with Fassbender's teeth, Colin Ferguson or no.