Stigmata Turns To Stigma Haven S4E09 William

This ep recapalypse is duly dedicated to Shernold. For her birthday we made her a lot of swearing at all the reveals she wrote into this! Also a lot of hiding behind the couch. She was given a ginormous chunk of metaplot to convey and she knocked it out of the park and over a Beam. So. Previously, on Haven: Wade went completely off the rails, so Duke killed him. Agent Howard didn't help Laudrey get to Haven, William did. And he was both completely creepy (as were his two buddies Heckle and Jekyll) and completely in love with AudSarLuLex (but not his two buddies). Also he made threats that weren't immediately recognizable as such at the time. Audrey and Nathan resolved to kill Nathan to end the Troubles! And then there was a gunshot!

And it turns out that gunshot is because Heckle is looming at the head of her bed. Audrey takes another shot as he runs out and disappears god knows where or god knows how. And she looks about exactly as shocked as you'd expect, though whether it's because a guy from the barn appeared in the outside world or because a nearly seven foot brick shithouse appeared at the end of her bed looking menacing or both, go figure. Shooting at him was definitely the right call, though. She might even have shot him; given his ability to appear and disappear I wouldn't bet that a bullet would stop him, but it was worth a try. Nathan gets out of her that Heckle was from the barn and now he's here and what the fuck, before Duke and the others come in. Nathan deploys Duke out the back and now no one's thinking clearly, he calls her Audrey right in Dave and Vince's hearing, so Vince calls him on it. And, blessedly, wastes very little time telling Nathan that the plan is off. Well, it was a stupid plan, anyway. We're all too busy taking action in this scene to have much in the way of an information exchange, so Nathan wastes about a second giving him a 'really? seriously?' look before tearassing off in search of the intruder. Meanwhile, Dwight's taking out his trash in the literal good housekeeping sense rather than the police chief sense and, well, someone's creeping up behind him with a baseball bat. It's Heckle's other half Jekyll! You leave Dwight alone, you low fucker.

Everyone's gathered back in Audrey's house. She's sure it was the same guy from the barn, he's very distinctive. Yes, yes he is. Vince has a couple of sketches for her to see and, yes, it's Heckle and Jekyll. To no one's surprise they're the two men who kidnapped Carrie Benson, it's almost like a negative reveal at this point. Nathan had thought the people in the barn weren't real, and so did most of everyone else, excepting William of course, as Jennifer so helpfully reminds us. Dave explains for Nathan and Audrey that when they helped her escape the barn they tore a hole in the 'soft spot' between worlds and brought a great evil into the world, which apparently takes the form of an oversized growly guy and a weasel-faced man. And William, let us all not forget William and that theory that he is the great evil. Let us certainly not forget that. And now Heckle and Jekyll are running loose in Haven and zapping people with even worse Troubles (or, you know, any at all). Which is why, Nathan interjects, they need to let him and Audrey get on with it. Nathan, if you'd stop being all interrupty you'd know what Vince is about to tell you. And possibly what he should have led with, which is that Audrey killing the person she loves now that the soft spot has been torn open will just spell even further doom upon the town. Doom! Doom upon you, doom upon your family, doom upon your cow. Thank you, Duke, for that tone of snark that lightens things even momentarily. Dave and Vince scurry back to the archives aka the murderbunker, and let us all note that despite the fact that Audrey's apartment is covered in windows, it's really dark during this scene. Dark lighting for dark discussions, at a guess. Certainly after we'd seen this episode we decided we weren't going to fucking rewatch it until daylight was good and present. Vince notes at the end that Audrey and the boys' deception may have saved them all, to which she can only quip 'you're welcome.' Because really, you guys. You should have known something like this from the beginning, what the fuck kind of an answer is kill the person you love? A stupidass Sorcerous answer, is what. You're going to hear that term a lot this recapalypse; I recommend you brush up on your Arcana as relevant to Murderboarding and otherwise wait patiently for us to get to the big reveals at the end. We have explanations.

Meanwhile, over at the ugliest green building I've seen since the purple house down the street, oh hey a hashtag. I've been wondering where those are. They're getting awfully blurry and indistinct these days. Anyway, Dwight is coming back to consciousness. Tied to a chair, like you do when you've been snuck up on and hit in the head with a baseball bat. And asking the first two of the B5 questions which we will of course facepalm at. Jekyll is trying to play Hyde right now, explaining that he and Heckle have lost a box and Dwight is going to help them find it. While jamming the end of that baseball bat into Dwight's gunshot wound, in case there was any doubt as to their willingness to hurt him if they didn't get their way. I'm pretty sure no one doubted you, guys, you hit Dwight over the head with a baseball bat, now step off before I cut you. Ahem. Dwight points out that they might want to try something other than fear of pain and violence, considering he was in Afghanistan, and not pointing out that he was in Afghanistan and discovered he was a bullet magnet. Like you do when you're not trying to give your captors further ammo against you, but damn. Jekyll isn't very good at Hannibal Lecter-ing, offering up the Troubles as something that might scare Dwight. Then, when Dwight points out that he's already kinda got one, offers him another. Yeah, you guys are creepy. No one likes you. Fuck right off. The opening credits offer us no real surprises, so when that's done we're right back at the interrogation scene, with Dwight showing no real surprise but the comprehension that, oh. These are the fuckers responsible for the weirdass Trouble behavior around town lately. Why? Because they lost something and they want it back. Full disclosure here, at this point we decided they wanted the Crocker box because we were still kicking around the theory that William was the original Crocker and this had to do with a perversion of a system already in existence. Chances are that by now most of you have already seen the episode and already know that that theory was really, really blown to hell and gone. So, box? What's with this box. WHAT'S IN THE BOOOXXXXXXXX. We're not going to find out yet. We are going to get a close up shot of Dwight's wallet, keys, badge, sidearm which is not a gun thanks to his Trouble but is in fact a taser, and cell phone, then back to Dwight so we know who was looking at it. One of these will be used to help him escape! It's a bit like a MacGyver mystery. So, having established his plan, Dwight bravado's that if Jekyll lays a finger on him he better kill him, which is safer to do when you're being threatened by an evil nebbish and not by Andre the Giant's younger brother over there. Dwight/Adam Copeland isn't exactly average sized, and Heckle/Robert Maillet makes him look average just by standing next to him. How's that for scary. Go go ex-wrestlers. But no, killing Dwight isn't part of the plan yet. Apparently neither is maintaining a safe distance between himself and his prisoner. Dwight doesn't even have to lean far forward to headbutt him, and then it's time to bust out the chair-fu! Adam Copeland is making with the old wrestling moves to the tune of thousands of fanfolk squealing in delight, not that it gets Dwight very far. (Also, on his bad shoulder? OW.) Just far enough, in fact, to dial Nathan and put the phone on speaker but muted. Clever boy, very, very clever. More clever than Jekyll, who doesn't seem to have noticed that Dwight went for his phone first and the taser gun second. Neither does Heckle, who wishes to do violence to Dwight. Jekyll tells him to take a walk, and a close shot on the phone reveals it's picking up all of this. Excellent. And that's a good slice of conversation to tell Nathan what's going on and why Dwight isn't responding, too.

Back over at the police station Duke is wondering why they can't figure out how to save the world back at the Gull where there's alcohol. YES. There should be much alcohol for this conversation. Okay, not for the conversation they're about to have, which is Nathan interrupting with the phone call and putting it on speaker because he is a good boy, a clever boy, and now that the Audrey thing has been settled everyone is communicating again and have I mentioned how much I love when people do that? Because I do. Phone on speaker and listening to the conversation Dwight's having with Jekyll, first asking if Heckle's going sightseeing to open the way for some of the most inane babble possible in that situation, but at least it gives landmarks! And talking to Jekyll to get him talking also means that the girls get to hear his voice and identify him as That Guy From The Barn. The smaller one, though everyone's smaller than Maillet. Still very little interaction between them, though I suppose when you're suddenly confronted by someone who was eavesdropping on you without knowing or being able to control it I'd be a little wary of direct interaction too. Dwight moves on into what he calls less legal attractions, apparently there's a high-stakes poker game that Duke goes to. Let's all take a moment to stop and appreciate the cuteness of what that implies, that Dwight assumes either Nathan will be with Duke and let Duke listen to this, that Dwight has enough faith in Nathan's policing that he assumes Nathan knew about it too, or that he assumed Nathan would take the information to Duke the second he could. All of these are adorable. Anyway, that does the trick because now Duke knows where Dwight is being held, in addition to being the subject of a few looks from Jennifer. Hilarious ones, though. She seems to have a pretty good idea that Duke didn't indulge in the more fleshy offerings of this less than legal attraction, but she's going to give him shit anyway. That's my girl. And notably, he's not trying to keep her from running off with him to the dangerous situation any longer, either. Aww you two. All right, then, off to rescue Dwight! Please do. These fuckers are damaging my calm.

Jekyll is reading Aristotle's Rhetoric. Because of course he is. At least it's not Plato's Cave. Heckle looks like he still wants to knock Dwight into next week, and Dwight is still being obnoxiously cheerful about chattering at them on any topic but the one they're interested in. In this case, astrology! It's a very common interrogation/reverse interrogation tactic, and it's pulled off with great aplomb here. No one's either inclined to or going to answer, because that's when Dwight's phone starts beeping and calling attention to itself. I think that's the low battery beep? Jekyll smashes it and has just enough time to be all menacing and suggest that maybe they don't need Dwight, much to Heckle's pleasure, when Nathan and Audrey burst in! Yay cavalry! Cavalry with a shotgun. Um. Dwight. Troubled. You guys? Which Dwight points out after they start Mirandizing Heckle and Jekyll and, oh, rubber bullets. Which is an interesting question, that implies that Dwight's Trouble is only activated for gunpowder bullets (fitting for a Trouble probably in existence only since then, though what, before gunpowder was it bow-and-arrow? slingshot? what I'm saying is, these Troubles have been around a LONG time and this one implies it postdates gunpowder becoming common in the Americas, which suggests they've mutated/been added to before), but has anyone actually tested that theory? Though on the plus side, if they do have to do it right now, the worst Dwight'll get will be a lot of bruises and maybe some cracked ribs. That's survivable. At any rate, Audrey wants to know who they are and how they got there. Jekyll seems to think she'll find out soon enough, in a very ominous tone of voice. That really doesn't bode well. Might I suggest that they washed up on a wave of doom? 'cause that seems the most likely right now. We interrupt this pondering for a groan from the other room. There's somebody else here! Who the low men don't seem that interested in concealing right now, which should have screamed setup to us and didn't for the main reason that we already knew it was William from the previews and we already figured these two were working for him. Taking into account that it was a setup more actively might have gotten us to the hilltop sooner. Then again, maybe not. At any rate, over to the groaning person, who turns out to be, yes, William. As the episode title says. Hello, you creepy bastard. So very not nice to see you again.

Over at the police station Audrey is using her talk gently to the traumatized person tone when she asks William how he got out of the barn. Which is understandable, she did kind of find him chained to a chair and hooded, and he's looking around a bit wide-eyed like he's never seen this place before. Or maybe like he's never seen a police station before. She tries to get him to remember who she is, that he knew her, and to find out how he got there, but he says he can't tell her and right about here on that look he gives her is when we started swearing and pointing at the screen and shrieking that he knows every goddamn thing. Including probably a lot of things she doesn't. Still. Again. That's not the fear of someone in an unknown place by unknown means, that's the same recognition and sadness he showed in the bar, and if Audrey's time in that bar had been less clouded by fuckery she might notice. She might not, this might also be our paranoia from being exposed to copious King, but he's definitely not being too quiet about his emotions. Telling all kinds of lies, but not being too quiet about what he's actually feeling. Anyway. Nathan hauls up and suggests that maybe William doesn't want to talk in front of him? Which is a damn good guess, really. So Audrey tries introducing Nathan so he's not a stranger anymore and, wouldn't you know, she introduces him as the "way to her heart" guy. Uh-huh. Because that's going to end well. She looks all happy and proud of herself and when we cut to William we do see that that hurt and now he really isn't going to answer any of your questions, yay! When they were still in the bar/n we theorized that maybe once she was back in Haven he would do the quietly let her go for the greater good and her happiness thing. Given the expression on his face now, I'm thinking not so much. He tells her that he can't tell her because he doesn't know, the first thing he remembers is waking up in the room with the bag over his head and WILLIAM YOU ARE A FUCKING LIAR WHO LIES. The hesitations, the strain on his face, the complete lack of eye darting or other signs of agitation, he totally fucking knows everything and he just now decided fuckit, I'm playing dumb, and that reminds us that he totally knows about the barn's memory wiping abilities, assuming he's not the one who does it. You fucker. Well, now his voice goes agitated, now that he's decided he's going to lie his way out of this and into whatever it is he's planning. William, I'm going to punch you in your lying face. (And that's another thing, we've seen the low men aren't too concerned about committing random acts of violence, so the lack of any bruising or anything that would indicate they forcibly subdued him? That's another giant red flag. Crimson, you might say.) Audrey takes pity on the poor amnesiac man who's giving her puppy eyes right now and tells him his name is William and he helped her. Why she's telling him his name is William when he's been clearly responding to it all day I don't know. But she is. The nervous laughing isn't helping. Nor is the genuine pleasure that she remembers his helping her fondly. He wonders if maybe he was just on a bender, which leads to comment about microbrew, more nervous laughing. Oh god William stop playing hurt and vulnerable it only makes me want to hurt you for real. Lock you in a very tiny box where you can't get out and hurt anyone else. You creepy, creepy fucker. You know how in the opening credits there's that poster that says "The most Revered Flagg to elaborate on the proper devices and most godly mechanisms for the examination and discovery of Wytches"? Yeah. Hi Flagg. Or the Haven equivalent thereof. Everyone who has read any amount of Stephen King from the mid 70s to the mid 90s-2000s is now twitching and vomiting into someone's shoes.

Let's go do something happier. Duke is giving Dwight shit for the smaller of the two low men getting the jump on him, Dwight is giving Duke shit for not showing up for the big rescue, both of them are happy to see Dwight's alive and unharmed apart from some bruises and Dwight's actually doing an almost-smile of friendship there. I'm reasonably sure they put this buddy-buddy moment in here to accentuate what comes later, but good god it's adorable and I wish we got to see more of these later. Right now, Dwight's got an interrogation to conduct. This one's much more to his liking than the last interrogation he participated in. Sadly, Jekyll isn't inclined to give him either his name or any details about this box he's looking for, even with the original kidnap-the-Chief plan foiled. Or, as he says, not foiled, just needs a little tweak. Dwight is not putting up with this shit today, and he barely has to lean out of his chair to grab Jekyll by the front of his shirt and yank him across the table. Hee. Yeah, while he's waiting for that tweak to go through, Dwight would like to know about the other people he's kidnapped. And by this I assume he means Carrie Benson and the Driscolls, though given what happens later he might also mean Jordan and Wade's other victims, since he doesn't yet know the two aren't connected. Unfortunately that question marks the end of Dwight's clear thinking for most of this episode. We don't see what happens, but we do see him let go/shove back the low man and sit back in his chair, and by the stunned and increasingly paranoid (I am told he is now making Edge Crazy Eyes (™) but since I don't watch wrestling I will take people's word for it) look we know he's been whammied of some sort. People! Leave my Dwight alone you fuckers. Isn't it bad enough that he got shot while whammied? Jekyll is way too pleased with himself. He suggests Dwight go worry about all the other people in town who've disappeared, ahh, there's the Jordan and Wade's other victims group, and he claims he had nothing to do with them. He'll rub it in now with saying that while Dwight's sitting here "wasting time" with him, there's a killer running loose, and he hasn't even narrowed down his list of suspects. Hoo boy. As always with Haven, this can't possibly end well.

We move on back to William in the office wiping black gunk off his hands. This will be thematically important later, though right now it really is just fingerprinting ink. Guys, I love that you're running him through the system, but I am quite certain that nothing's going to come up. He gives them some song and dance about being interrogated about the box, which is a nice trick of interrogating them about the box and seeing what they know while still playing the innocent puppy face. No, William. Not innocent. Nathan goes off to try his own version of interrogation, namely that if he pretends to know something they want maybe they'll give him data in exchange! This would be a great theory if it weren't for the fact that William and his low men set this whole thing up for one specific purpose and they already know all of the puzzle pieces. And why they're trusting anything that comes out of that bar/n and isn't Audrey I will never fucking know, except that Colin Ferguson is really fucking good at portraying wholesome and helpful. Right up until he isn't. Here he'll lie with the truth some more! Yes, there are some things that he needs to know. There are also MANY things he needs to fucking spill without fucking around with all the people Audrey cares about. You fuck. Which he won't, because he needs to prove things to her as well. Fucking Sorcerers. She has a theory, and it's one of the same demons we first arrived at and discarded as unlikely, that William was meant to be Howard's replacement. Considering the data Audrey's running on, it's not a bad first theory! Considering that nobody (TEAGUES I AM LOOKING AT YOU) will cough up enough information about the history of the Troubles and/or their origin myths for her to comprehend that maybe this guy isn't all he seems, too. Yes, we're still bitching about people not sharing data, they really do need to sit down at the Gull over drinks with a murderboard and start trying to figure this out. Personally I'd like it if Ginger (remember compelling voice girl from last season?) were there to interrogate the Teagues because fuck them (William's probably immune, the fucker), but I'm not a nice person. Audrey's still got on her talking to the traumatized/Troubled person voice, whereas William is way too eager to sit down on a couch with her and, to all appearances, listen eagerly to what she has to say. Actually I'm quite sure he's eager to hear what her theories about him and the barn are, because that tells him about what she does and doesn't know. Right now? She still knows way less than he's been hoping for, by that "oh." And to me, at least, that look isn't just one of sympathy but of guilt. Yes, William, this is all your fucking fault. Feel bad. He will not feel bad. He will play the redirect oh I'm a moron card by commenting that those aren't farmer's hands. Ass. More of an ass at the hint of teeth when Audrey tells him that the real him is in there somewhere and ain't that just layered as fuck considering what he's hiding. Yes. The real William is full of desperation and toothy smiles and FUCKING EVIL. I don't think you really want him to come out, Audrey, except he kind of already has, and we're all fucked. The musical low bass drum cue says so too.

Meanwhile, Dwight goes slowly insane, but insane in that very focused way that's still capable of putting pieces together. Now those are really close to the Edge Crazy Eyes, except there's still a layer of Dwight under there, too, which, oh honey. And also, goddamn Adam Copeland. Well these hallucinations are really, really not subtle, hello Duke with the knife. Looking all evil and pointy-toothed and ready to come for Dwight. Who's either actually bleeding or hallucinating that he's bleeding, neither would surprise me given what he's been through and the point is, blood plus Crocker equals bad. And a threat. And nobody's had time since last ep to update Dwight on the whole Crocker Trouble being gone aspect, so he gets to find out some other time! Like in a little while. Poor everyone. Meanwhile we pan over to Duke and Jennifer, where he doesn't really want to ask her to do this for him but she is small and nonthreatening and knows more than the low men probably think. I don't think they're too good at the thinking thing, they mostly seems like Can-toi to me, and nothing this episode negates that impression. (Hence the low men in yellow coats references all over the goddamn place.) She promptly stomps all over the soft opening he was gearing up for, and this is why we love Jennifer. Because Duke needs someone to tromp all over his shit sometimes. But, and this is more of the Duke we know and love, he points out that they might not just know things about Audrey and Howard and the barn but also about her, how her Trouble works, and, implicit in that, is it really gone? Because the Troubles have been changing, and they don't have any history to go on for Jennifer's Trouble, and she's been looking for answers. While it's a little manipulative it's also accurate, and it's thinking of her when Duke has every reason to be mainly thinking about the things that have been weighing on him for months at this point. Which Jennifer knows, and we get a really, really adorable moment of reassurance and then kissing in the middle of the police station. She's clearly scared but doing it anyway, and Duke clearly knows that and will be right there with her no matter what. Even though he can't go all silver-eyed and superhero for her anymore. I guess they're not trying to hide their relationship! Aww, you two.

On over to Heckle's cell! Since they've got Jekyll in a formal interrogation room for the moment. Jennifer's idea of interrogation is pretty much babble that doesn't give away the homeworld, which isn't a bad tactic when nervous and dealing with the strong silent type, and makes for hilarious snarky lines about bucket lists. Excuse, the strong silent jumping in her face through the bars type. Duke has words for that! Also a hand to his throat, and interesting that he's not infecting Duke at the same time. Is it a one at a time sort of deal? Do they have to infect only Troubled people? Is it hands off the Crocker? WE DON'T KNOW ISN'T IT GREAT. Grumble. Besides, it leads to everyone against Duke, which is par for the course with mindfuckery on this show. And again we don't see what exactly happened, just that something did and now Jennifer's whammied. Well, that puts paid to the theory that she's immune to the Troubles, or at least to this degree of targeted attack from them. Hard to say, considering the rules have been bent if not outright broken. I'm going with outright broken, considering what William is. And it's not that Duke using her for sex is her primary fear (though that comes into play a little later), it's the belief that he wants to lock her up now that she's no more use to him. See, we said leaning on her Trouble to tell them everything and prying all the data out of her was going to bite you in the ass, guys. Maybe not quite this dramatically, but we did say that in her profile. Sigh. Nathan's interrogating Jekyll! Can we go three for three on infected people? WE CAN. Jekyll knows he's lying, isn't even trying to hide his disdain for this town and these people and seems to think of this box as something on the order of a Pandora's box, Nathan wouldn't be able to help but to open it and thus everything would be destroyed. Since the town isn't destroyed yet, QED the box has neither been found nor opened. Oh, and Audrey would be the first target, which is probably untrue but enough of Nathan's weak point to get him to slam Jekyll into the table. Great. And now we see what the fuck it is, and had our heads not been spinning so much from, okay, NOT either of the Crocker boxes, what the fuck is you, we might have gone to he opened his mouth and a thing from the box came out. As it is, we spent awhile twitching and going IS THAT A FUCKING TOOTH. No. Fortunately. Though now we really do need to read Tommyknockers before the end of the season, because between that and Dark Tower we're landing all kinds of King references. (Short, Wiki'd version: the Tommyknockers infect the citizens of Haven with a weird gas that makes them very inventive but ups their paranoia so drastically they go around killing each other. Oh, and there's one guy who's immune. It's King. There's always one person immune to the weird. Sounding familiar? Yeah, I thought so.) This is not even vaguely subtle manipulation of Nathan, and the fact that it's so completely hammer to the forebrain is indicative of how strong these mindwhammy pebbles are. It's all playing off genuine fears of the three affected, but at least Dwight and Jennifer were encouraged to fill in their own gaps. Then again, Nathan's buttons are big and red and have neon PUSH HERE signs above them, so there's that to consider as well. Oh Nathan. She is not falling in love with William. I would be really shocked if she, once she remembers everything William wants her to, does what he seems to think she will! That's also par for the course for his type, actually, once their plans to get what they want so badly are almost to completion, they start to realize that they've actually obliterated any chance they had of getting it. But we'll leave Nathan charging back to his office to confront William.

And go to the Cape Rouge! Where Dwight, yes, he's definitely bleeding now, dammit Dwight. Interesting that he definitely didn't appear to start until the whammy took hold, though arguably it took that long to seep through the gauze. It's a slow bleed, or it started out that way. If he keeps using that arm to recklessly dig through Duke's garbage in search of a knife it ain't gonna stay so, however. (Poor, poor crew having to reset for multiple takes of this. Ugh.) Further progress of the whammy in the station, where Duke's trying to be comforting. It's hard to be comforting when you're being hallucinated as the guy still in love with Audrey who will tell the woman he just slept with all about how Audrey's better. Oh Jennifer honey. I can see, though, why that would be a lingering source of insecurity for her, she's new, she still hasn't gotten a chance to know Audrey, all signs point to the specialest messiah figure ever to messiah, who wouldn't be kind of intimidated? I mean, really. Even knowing that Audrey needs some girlfriends and not just guys making sheeps'-eyes at her, I'd be a little wary too. And that's without the knowledge that every woman who's gotten close to Audrey has died or moved out of Haven. She's still responding with snark and sass, trying to stand up for herself even though it's completely not necessary. Duke has moved on, he's ceded the field to Nathan in the way that William can't (hello, parallels) and though he may not be in love with Jennifer yet, there's a lot of chemistry both physical and emotional, and they work well together. And sometimes that's enough to build on. Unfortunately for Duke, being presented with a mind-whammied Jennifer means he devolves to stammering for answers, what's the right answer. Oh honey. There isn't one right now, although the ones he gives are sweet and accurate as far as they go. Not prepared to use the l-word yet, which is totally fair and also wouldn't get him anywhere since she's hallucinating Duke inna straitjacket. Oh both of you. And now we get straight into it, the paranoia-fueled theory that Duke seduced her for her knowledge about the barn and did it all for Audrey and so on and so forth! Which, wow, that's some heavy whammy. Because letting alone the fact that neither Duke nor Audrey is that kind of person, her connection to the barn was gone by the time they hopped into bed together. As far as anyone knows, including Jennifer. I kind of love Duke's reaction about "no wait I'm the guy this is my job" and kind of just want to give him a hug. Poor bastard can't catch ANY breaks. Including having his home invaded and the inability to figure out the rest of this conversation! Though if he got a minute to breathe I have some confidence that he'd figure out it was Troubles/whammy-related. Not right now!

Right now we get to go chew William's face off again. YAY. No, wait, the other thing. He wants to know what Audrey thinks will be in it. That is the tone of a man who knows exactly what he's asking and who he's asking it of and it makes me nervous and edgy. Audrey is pretty sure it's something bad. Yeah, that seems like a very safe bet. William would like to go get something to eat if they find the box and it turns out not to be something terrible, which is so very asking her for a date. Both because we're biased against him and because he's getting right to the edge of if not just inside her personal space. Also he's setting Nathan up to find them standing close together and talking, since Nathan takes one look at them and has visions of oh that's why it looked like they were making out on the desk. Because Nathan is hallucinating them making out on the desk. That's... kind of gross, actually. And even Nathan seems to realize something's not right, by the face he's making while he shakes his head to clear it, but he doesn't quite manage to get from hallucinating Audrey and the mysterious William making out on the desk to he's being whammied. Which is likely because he's being whammied. William will get back out of her personal bubble now that he's finished insinuating things at Nathan, and Nathan will get all up in his business telling him that she's not Lexie anymore and to back off. The morbidly hilarious thing about this is, while William's pretending not to remember the barn and Nathan's yelling at him about getting close to Audrey by playing the poor-me-I've-got-amnesia card, is that he's right. He's just also crazy. And accusing Audrey of not seeing the guy playing her, which would have more weight if the other example he used there hadn't been Duke. And then there's more ranting, blah blah he's going to fight for her blah blah she's going to sleep with William, blah blah violent batshittery ahoy. Storming out. Audrey and William stare after him, with William trying to wonder aloud if in the barn they NOPE! Nope, no, nuh-uh, nein, nicht, non, nyet. Iie. Minime. William will now comment on Nathan's jealousy issues, to which I say POT. KETTLE. LIAR.

That said, it is also a giant honking clue that something is seriously wrong, and Audrey would go investigate except that Stan pops his head in and says the coroner needs to see her. I do adore those interludes with Gloria, she brings an appreciable touch of wry to the occasion. Audrey asks Stan to let her know if Nathan leaves the station (Stan may be puzzled but he's lived in Haven long enough not to even ask by now) and, yeah, she's taking William with her. As much as I wish to do copious violence to the fucker, keeping him in sight is probably the best bet at the moment. Though she's thinking of it as keeping him under her protection for now. There's a brain on a table in the autopsy room! Gloria is playing a game on her smartphone. As you do. Her irritation at being interrupted in the middle of her game is quickly brushed off when she sees the handsome new partner Audrey's dragged in oh god no. You don't want that one, Gloria, he has diseases. Where's Wuornos? He's uh-busy. As opposed to actually busy. It's interesting, too, before we get into things, how Audrey has suddenly become Lexie again for Gloria, never mind the fact that Gloria's already made Audrey and doesn't seem to care. Never mind that the plan's off and won't work, too. Her word choice is marginally more Audrey but the posture? Definitely Lexie. Anyway, Nathan's acting strange, everyone's acting strange, including this dead guy on her table who apparently got shot after an altercation with his neighbor in which he accused said neighbor of sleeping with his wife. Except that said neighbor is a gay man. Gloria knows this because she's friends with the neighbor, though she didn't know he carried a gun and by the tone of her voice more than anything, that's extremely unusual for neighbor Ollie. She doesn't, though, emphasize that anymore. Ollie says the guy was acting totally berserk, so Gloria checks first for toxins, like you do, and then for tumors or signs of a stroke. Instead she finds a small black stone. And it turns out there are several more like them, we don't get a number. Gloria advises strapping down anyone else who's got a rock in the brain. It's worth noting that even she sounds rattled by this. William, meanwhile, heaves a sigh in the background that in retrospect sounds like nothing so much as "how many more of these little unimportant people will die before I get through to you." Shudder. Twitch. And Audrey, of course, has a candidate for rock-in-the-brain: Nathan! Oh goodie.

Speaking of people with rocks in their brains, over on the Cape Rouge Dwight has not at all systematically torn Duke's boat apart. It was a nice boat, too. And now Dwight is sitting on the edge of Duke's bed twirling a knife and looking in his notebook and give it a bit, soon he'll be writing All Work And No Play Makes Dwight A Dull Boy in it. Extra bonus points for the long shot down the narrow corridor to give that shrinking feeling on our first glimpse of Dwight in this scene. Duke picks his way down to the Chief, both because there's crap all over the place and because let's not get too close too suddenly to the very large, very crazy, very trained in violence person. Duke makes some comments that would be amusing and disarming or at least benign if Dwight weren't hallucinating a smirking, murderous Duke overtop of that. Failing a friendly response, Duke points out that Dwight's bleeding with the implication that they should see to that, but Dwight is having none of this and demands to know if Duke killed Jordan. This is going to suck when Dwight has to deal with this after he's been de-pebbled. Especially since the next thing he does is to threaten to cut the truth out of Duke. Um. ... No, I got nothing else, just um. And also oh honey. Okay, I got one other thing, the way they're shooting this gives Duke the taller-appearing angle to Dwight, despite Adam Copeland being at least an inch or two taller than Eric Balfour. Not just a taller appearing angle, we actually get a shot of Dwight as he gets up from the bed that's looking down from over Duke's shoulder. Implying, I think, that the control here is all with Duke as being the only one in control of his own brain. Oh kids. After the commercial break Duke will object on the grounds of not proper procedure. Because Dwight so looks like a guy who's worried about procedure. Duke. Come on. Dwight wants to know why Duke has the murder weapon, which would be a legitimate question even if he weren't whammied, and Duke doesn't know. In the sense of not being able to offer a rational explanation doesn't know, that is, though the emotional one he does offer is self-castigation. Well, if it's not his murder weapon, whose knife is it? Duke doesn't answer immediately, just tells Dwight to come with him and he'll show him. And then he turns his back on the crazy man with the knife who under all the rage has a lot of fear showing. Because that's smart. Bad Duke. No cookie.

Over at the hospital William is confirming that Audrey thinks the men he was found with, because I don't for one New York minute believe that they abducted him and neither should you, that she believes they're Troubled and that's causing this. William gives away a bit of the homeworld here, maybe just a continent, by agreeing that whatever it is is making Nathan see and hear things. Um, no. You don't know that for sure. You know that it's increasing his erratic behavior and emotional lability, not to mention inducing paranoia and possessiveness, but you do not know about the actual auditory and visual hallucinations. Bad William. Lie... okay, no, we don't want you to lie better. But still. He will then lay on some more worry about me focus on me, by pointing out that he was with those guys for days (really? days? you remember that when all you remember was waking up with a bag over your head?) and he hasn't been affected. Audrey immediately asks if he's feeling okay, if he's feeling at all weird. Really? William asks. Which, okay, fair point if you take him at his word about the amnesia, and also delivered with a wry self-deprecating humor and smile that makes me lament how good Colin Ferguson is at playing cute and adorable. Especially when he's also really damn good at switching to hellish and evil in the next second or two. He then asks about her, and she brushes that off because she and we all know she's immune. Following that up with leaning slightly in with that wide-eyed intensity and saying "It's a good thing we have each other." WILLIAM I WILL CUT YOU. I DO NOT LIKE YOU BACK THE FUCK OFF AUDREY. Yeah, there's a double meaning in that. Also I'm pretty sure that liminal lighting bisecting his face isn't an accident and his eyes are doing that super blue thing again. Make him stop. Minus ten million points for the fact that his shirt, once bright blue in the bar/n, is now veering between gray (comma shades of? and not the bad porn kind either) and very very faded blue. Remind you of anyone? Like Flagg? Yeah. Audrey is not paying attention to him and his double meanings right now, she wants to know how to stop this Trouble. Well, he said, being suspiciously reasonable for a fucking evil creature, it all started with the two guys and their missing box, so why not go ask them? And then he heads off. And Audrey follows with this look like she's wondering what the hell he's up to and starting to figure out that something isn't quite right here. Exactly. Something isn't right. He's taking this all way too calmly, is probably her main indicator. Now lock William in a very tiny box of his own till he agrees to behave himself.

Not like that's going to happen, so as a consolation prize, let's go back over to Duke and Dwight. This looks like a rather familiar hillside, although the purple flowers aren't in evidence at the moment. They get out of Dwight's truck that apparently Duke was driving? I wonder how he accomplished that, though it's probably safer. Duke also will pull out a knife that looks a bit like it could be used as a very small entrenching tool. Dwight, now that he's had his paranoia jacked up over 9000, takes this as a threat. This is a good spot to bury a body, he says! Yes, yes it is. The knife isn't for stabbing, the knife is for digging and giving me fits about how that is not what you do with a knife. Argh. Bring an entrenching tool next time, I'm sure one of you has one. Oh thank god he's not digging up his entire brother with that. Also because that would be gross and stinky. He's digging up a flat stone on which has been carved Crocker oh honey. You dug your brother a concealed grave marker? Oh Duke. You can see Dwight taking this in and a flicker of sanity or at least calm coming over his face as he realizes that Wade was the one doing the murdering. And that Wade murdered Jordan. Duke's got the flat affect of someone trying his hardest not to break down completely, oh honey, and he wonders, aloud and in mourning, if maybe he'd told Wade from the beginning, if he wouldn't have killed all those people. Most likely the answer to this is yes, but it won't help to guilt Duke about it now. And anyway, in pebble-in-Dwight's-head land, Duke is only frothing about the missed chance to kill people. And anyway, Duke could be lying, that could be Jordan buried in there! Dig him up, Duke! Says the crazy man with the taser who nonetheless seems to have little eyetwitches less of crazy eyes and more of trying to clear his brain while not actually succeeding, and in conclusion fucking hell Balfour and Copeland stop breaking our hearts. Duke, you've gotten that he's been messed up by a Trouble already, why are you trying to talk sense to him? That's just going to get you tased. And then cuffed. Though the taser probably hurts worse, ow.

Okay, sure, let's go deal with the other rock-in-their-head people. Both at once? Oh dear. This can't possibly go badly at all! Nor is the obsessive caressing of Audrey's photo by Nathan anything to do with foreshadowing or aft shadowing or themes or anything. Really. And here comes Jennifer! For additional aberrant behavior. Even worse, Jennifer's actually saying that Nathan's being awfully quiet for a guy whose girlfriend sent him packing, etc. He doesn't even have to hallucinate anything to stoke his jealousy, she's right there for him! Illusory!Nathan is chewing the scenery in Jennifer's direction about taking pills by way of a response, though. Just to hammer on her fears some more. This reminds her of the real Nathan's aggressive tactics when she first came to Haven, when he wanted her to listen for the barn. Yeah, that wasn't ever going to come back to bite him on the ass. Meanwhile Nathan is hallucinating that Jennifer's actually telling him to kill himself because he's irrelevant and no one wants him. So, you know, he reacts the way anyone would when confronted with a woman apparently handing him a gun and telling him to kill himself: he points a gun at her! Yay. Wait, no. That other thing. Even better, he realizes that killing her won't solve any of his problems, okay, that's good. He'll just kill William instead! This pleases her and, honestly, it would please us as well if Nathan weren't brain-scrambled by a rock and likely to fail if/when he tries.

Back over to William the evil, we come into this scene with him looking sad and old and tired into a mirror. Window. Mirror. This is not symbolic at all, no really, they swear. Audrey wants the word games to stop, wants them to stop hurting people, and the low man wants the box. They get about two rounds of it in before William bursts in and demands to know how hurting innocent people is going to get him to remember. Excuse me? Remember what? Remember where the box is, one assumes, but from the context we're given I'd be wondering what the hell if I were Audrey even without taking into account that one does not simply burst into interrogation. Audrey gets him out of there while Jekyll smiles a little smile of Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen. That can't be good. Out in the hall Audrey yells at William a bit less for going in in the middle of an interrogation and more for exposing himself to the guy's Trouble, which is also fair except that William is totally fucking orchestrating everything. William halfassedly apologizes and then please tell me that's deliberate, folds his hands in front of his mouth as if in prayer. While saying it'd be easier if he remembered who he was. Oh lordy. I will dump all my Jung, Freud, and Campbell books into a sack just to beat you with, William. Alternatively, a zotty stick would do wonders for my temper right about now. Audrey reaches up to, to what? Take his hand? Pull his hands down, touch his hand? Something that involves soothing physical contact anyway because when they connect, there's a snapping sound and a flash of electricity. Well, that's new. And by new I mean PUNCH HIM BEAT HIM IN THE FACE LOCK HIM UP THAT MAN IS EVIL, I TELL YOU! EVIL! No. They have one false start of talking at the same time before Audrey says, sounding a bit shocked, that it was them. As in, the two of them. William's tone on "knew you were special" is very knowing and very, very unnerving. Audrey's unnerved too, thank god. She reminds him or remembers out loud that he saved her from the collapsing barn, he somehow got out and now he's in Haven, and that makes him pretty damn special, too. Yes. And not in the good way. William's still watching her like he's waiting for her to do something remarkable. Audrey's watching him like she's not sure she can trust him anymore. No. No you can't. He does hold out his hand, though, and, okay, a repeat experiment is worth a try? Zap, goes the lightning. Yeah. Audrey winces, but for William that not only looks like pleasure, that looks like pleasure he's been waiting a long, long time for and maybe thought he would never feel again. That's not helping the creepy any. I need to take another shower. He then describes the final death throes of the barn, as though he was just remembering. You're not just remembering, William, you're giving her a little bit to try and coax her down the garden path a little more. Just enough, an escape story about jumping out with the box in hand, being chased by the low men, and the whole town lit up beneath him. It's awfully clever of him to use the spark as a way to indicate that no it's all her, she's triggered his remembering. Not surprising, but teeth-grindingly clever. Audrey identifies that as the Haven lookout (isn't that where Nathan took his prom date the Rev's daughter to watch the meteor storm, noted back in s1? not THAT meteor shower, that we know of, but fucking STILL, everything in circles), and the box must still be up there. Which means they need to go get it! Except. Augh! Yes, the low man was listening and heard the whole thing, and Stan comes back down the hall shouting that the big guy (Heckle) is gone from lockup! Vanished. Because there is no fucking way he could fit through those bars even if he had time to wiggle out. And of course all of this is on purpose to get Audrey moving before she stops to think, you damned fuckers. All of you. Grrr. This does raise the interesting question of how William is communicating with them that it's time to get a move on, and all of the answers make us shudder and hide behind the couch from not!Flagg some more.

Somewhat less violently swearing but no less worrying, in the waiting area Dwight has now handcuffed Duke to a chair. Duke is making a racket but it's hard to say whether people aren't responding because their very large and erratic-acting Chief is the one doing the handcuffing or because Duke has had quite a few run-ins with the law before. Fortunately Audrey's coming up now, she believes Duke, she thinks she knows what's going on, and she's going to try and fix it. Or she would be able to if Nathan weren't coming up right now and threatening William away from Audrey, and Jennifer coming up from another angle and making snippy comments about three guys at one time. I can't possibly tell you what I'm thinking right now, and if Colin Ferguson were playing anyone else, well. I really can't tell you what I'd be thinking. Since he's playing the fucking Walking Dude, I'm really not thinking that at all. Go read the Flagg-Nadine interactions from The Stand if you want to know why. At any rate, we're rapidly escalating into an armed confrontation here, getting the attention of pretty much every cop in the room as Dwight points the taser gun at Nathan, now, in response to Nathan indirectly threatening him by pulling a gun. Not pointing the gun at him, but it's Dwight. He doesn't need to. What we have here is not only a failure to communicate, but a Mexican standoff. Audrey tries to talk down Nathan first, who continues to spit out words about not being able to trust a thing William says (which is true) and needing him out of the way (potentially true but not certain enough for me to be happy about taking permanent action) and the sad thing about both of those statements is they're coming from fucked-up-and-stoned Nathan. Making her that much more disinclined to believe him. Especially when William's standing there looking "what, what did I do?" Audrey tries, bless her heart. She pulls a Code Red to evacuate the building, and Duke spits out gas leak as the excuse, I swear. Haven has the worst infrastructure ever. It doesn't really matter what the excuse is, as long as everyone gets the hell out of the building and away. (Although we will note that this is the third in-text reference to gas leaks as a cover story. If you have any of the bottle left, finish it. Then get another one because William's just getting started, and you need a whole bottle for him.) Except for Duke, who is still kind of handcuffed. Jennifer being nearest he asks her, with the sort of tone and phrasing that says he knows she's still whammied and he's not hoping for much. Indeed not, because she slaps him. And then Dwight points his taser some more and says to get away from Duke, he'll fry him with his taser (really? seriously?) and Jennifer says if it's anyone's fault here it's Audrey's and Nathan says to leave her alone and he's the real Chief in this town anyway and everyone is really going to regret this when they're sober. And on the plus side, that gets Dwight to tase Nathan! So Nathan's out, with Dwight's attention off of Duke William darts in and uncuffs Duke, who grabs Dwight's arm over the table and holds it down and nods/yells at William to cuff him. Yay? Extra bonus twitching for Duke saying that William's going to fit in just fine around here and the way Duke and William move in tandem, which does not make us any happier about the Crockers' involvement in all of this no matter if William started out as one or not. God, you have no idea. Duke volunteers himself to hold down the fort so William and Audrey can get the box, though Audrey's still reeling from what just happened and worrying over Nathan. Under any other circumstance I'd be happy about William gently reminding her that they really should get to the box before the low men do. Knowing that he probably runs the low men and is increasingly likely to be the great evil they unleashed? It's kind of the opposite. The more so the more he reminds us of William from the barn. We're imagining what you'll do with that box, William, and we still want to rip your throat out with your teeth. We have all our shots.

Audrey and William drive up to the base of the lookout hill, Audrey tries to brush off what happened as "crazy, huh?" and William pronounces it eye opening. Oh, here we go. He's not wrong about Troubles bringing out the worst in people sometimes, but he's clearly hitting Audrey where she lives when he says that her friends have got a lot of that worst. Projecting much? Oh, even better, he's now going to go on a mini-tirade about how they don't know how special she is and how they don't deserve her. Alarm bells are ringing for Audrey now, but they've done a pretty good job of changing the subject and keeping her running every time they do something that makes her go "wait a second" that she doesn't get a chance to say anything before William goes running off to a tree stump. Oh, hey, it's the hiding place of the box that he said he didn't remember. He's found it! Yay, let's get it back to the low men oh wait no? He doesn't want to? We'll be back here hiding behind our couches, in our bunkers. Actually, we'll be pulling up the bunker floor and going into the bunker under the bunker. William wants to enjoy the sunset and how beautiful it is up here. No, Audrey, William's odd behavior so very isn't the Troubles. He's Troubling, yes, he is deeply Troubling, but he's not Troubled. As he will proceed to explain now that he's dropping all the amnesiac pity me pretense. This isn't about "some stupid Trouble," as he puts it, which, considering he was in the barn and talking about her saving people and lives at stake? That's a fairly sharp turn even from how we've come to know him. He invites her to take a seat, tries to be congenial as how he knows it's all happening so fast but he was so excited to feel that spark between them again, a literal spark in this case. And here's the obsessive love again, the intensity that's focused entirely on her and has no room for anyone or anything else. We saw it at the barn, and it's really coming out to play now. I don't like this. No one likes this. Apparently when she came out of the barn and went right back into being Audrey (!) he thought he'd lost her forever. (!!) But now he knows she's in there somewhere, etc, etc. Oh, and he always did remember the barn. Okay, first of all, knowing she came out of the barn, yeah, he was there when she jumped through the dimension door, that's not surprising. But knowing she went back to being Audrey? How could he tell? Where did he go when the barn finished collapsing? Because unless he was well hidden in the crowd of Guard (or in one of their heads, let's not rule out that body-jumping theory) he wasn't there at that time. And, lost her forever? Back the fuck up, he had her in the first place? Oh the theories do we have for you, but we're going to try to get to the end of the episode with minimal ranting interruptions before we go through them all. Not only does he remember the barn, he remembers so much more. That field used to be their favorite place. They used to have such fun, and somehow she will remember that again, And yes, he knows what's in that box. He says, pointing to it with an attitude of "this old thing?" Audrey's well and truly scared of him by now, as well she might be. And it's taking her a second or three to catch up that everything this entire day has been orchestrated by him. Yep. He doesn't even look embarrassed or ashamed, that's more of an aw-shucks expression as in being demure with praise. Why did he do this thing? Well, apparently to get her to open the box. Take your pick, folks, is it Se7en or Pandora.

We find out after commercial when she does open the box which, by the way, has a stylized tree on the lid. No, I don't know why. There's an extremely alien flower in it, which Audrey does find beautiful, and it kind of is. Not so beautiful is William sidling up to her like a boy giving a girl a corsage before the prom. (A: Or a man with a wedding proposal, for extra creepy.) This is not the fucking prom, William. You are not her prom date, back the fuck up. Like the lady says. The lady who in fact has now jumped back a fair distance and is freaking right out, like you do when a Flagg-creature sidles up to you. William's disappointed tone is pretty much like you'd expect, accompanied by the smile of knowing he's going to get what he wants eventually one way or another. Ew. The flower turns (back?) into black pebbles, now looking like some sort of fungal growth, and Audrey snaps the box shut and tosses it away from her again. But not, William adds, altogether surprising. Oh look, it's Heckle. No, Audrey, William doesn't work for him, though his near-on scornful tone suggests they really are low men, Can-toi, servants. And they do work for him, both of them, and that really doesn't even merit the jar. It is mildly surprising when William hands Heckle the box and tells him to get his partner back here, and pebbles start flying out of people's ears. Apparently Jekyll was a pile of evil tar-like pebbles incarnate into human form, or they both were, or something. Go figure. And yes, he's gone from interrogation. Poor Duke isn't immediately sure whether or not to start uncuffing people, but at least he's not the only sane person in the room anymore! Because no one is in life-threatening distress the first one he'll attend to is his girlfriend, as you do, and Jennifer immediately apologizes for being crazy. Which Duke freely admits she was, but that's okay. Trouble-induced crazy is pretty much being dosed with something against your will, and you don't hold it against people afterwards. Over on the hilltop the pebbles are coming home to roost, and it's fairly telling that most of this is shot with William and Heckle standing shoulder to shoulder and Audrey small and vulnerable off to one side. Yes. They're that scary. We only get that glimpse before we're back to the precinct and Dwight is reminding Duke that, yes, murder is still a crime, but in this case it was a crime for the greater good. Plus it was defense of another given that Wade was going to kill Jennifer at the time, and that may or may not have come out in the interim while everyone was getting uncuffed and sober. Jennifer reminds him somewhat obliquely, with the general phrase that Duke did what he had to do to stop Wade, and Dwight agrees. It may help, over time. Right now Dwight would also like to confirm that the Crocker Trouble is well and truly gone, because, as he says, it may not have been the best solution but it did keep the Troubles in check. A good safety mechanism for the worst ones. Echoing the buddy conversation and interplay of earlier, Dwight asks Duke why he isn't happy to be rid of his Trouble. Apparently because even with it gone, Duke doesn't feel free. I'd feel so much more comfortable if he'd used a different phrasing. I think I would, anyway. That smacks of something that's going to come back and bite us in the ass later, and we really have enough ass-nibblers on this show.

Hey, speaking of ass-nibblers, back to the hilltop with William. Too bad we can't push him off of it. Apparently this isn't a game to him. No shit, Sherlock, this isn't a game to anyone. And, okay, since he's starting in on that rant let's tick off the list of abusive partner bullet points, shall we? Starting with repeating how serious a matter this is, continuing on with stating that he's the rational one here and she's the one who's unreasonable or stubborn or stupid and he's trying to get through to her. From there we move into separating her from her friends, though calling them inferior is about as blatant as you can get almost to the point of being caricature. I won't say it's not potentially triggering, but it's definitely much more blatantly an evil act and evil words than you usually see unless the abuser has escalated to outright physical and direct violence. Audrey zooms in on the one part of that which is informative, which is that William is drawing a line around herself and him and differentiating them from the rest of, as far as we can tell, everyone. Does that make the two of them not human? Not ordinary human? What? We seem to have an us-and-them theme going on this weekend, between this and the social commentary of Grimm. This is more relational, psychological, use of relationships type of us-and-them, though. William is frustrated, trying to get her to see things from his perspective or at least how he wants her to see them, and again the key informational piece here is that the barn is gone, and why doesn't she remember. Ah-HAH! So the barn, in addition to amplifying her love-powered Trouble-nullifying ability, was also suppressing her memory of who William thinks she used to be? Because let's not forget here, her being some sort of non-human ancient creature like him is all dependent on William's point of view at least in that respect being the correct one. Whatever the reason, now that she's out of the barn, she doesn't remember whatever it is he wants her to remember or believe, so a further demonstration is in order. He takes one of the pebbles which, let's not forget, seems to be Jekyll's true form (ew) and holds it up by way of demonstration. Then crushes it in his hand. It doesn't seem to hurt, just takes a moment of concentration and then he opens his hand and it's covered in black-brown dirtlike ick. Yes, Audrey, he's the one who's been going around palming people and infecting them with Troubles, or exacerbating their Troubles. It doesn't even seem to take much effort for him to pull the ick off of his hand and back into pebble form, so there's that at least, easy to undo if only he could be brought to it. Oh, hey, let's get back to that abusive language here, where he says it was quite a chore for him to go around messing everything up like that. You've all seen Labyrinth, right? Okay, probably not all, the relevant speech is at the end where the adversary is talking to the heroine and saying "You asked that child be taken, I took him. You cowered before me, I was frightening. I have re-ordered time. I have turned the world upside down and I have done it all for you. I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me." They do that. They all do that. And he's going to keep doing that, because he loves her and he wants her back. And he believes she loves him too. EW. Poor Audrey, or whoever she is, she tells him that there is no part of her that will ever love him, and given everything I really believe her. Maybe once, but not anymore. He isn't willing to believe this, he reframes this into her meaning no part of Audrey Parker or any of the other Haven-savers, he calls them in that scornful tone again, and he's talking about the real her. I would love to know what you know about the real her, William. Come over here, Dwight wanted to carve something, we'll let him carve it out of you. No, according to William there is someone else inside there, the real her, and she is his. Complete with lightning flash, snap, and distorted voice. I'm freaked out, how are you?! Oh, but we're not done yet. Audrey's on the ground again when she wakes up after that, Nathan finding her. He has no idea what happened, wants to know where William is, and is probably quite a bit more worried when Audrey freaks out and clings to him like there's no tomorrow. Which at this rate there might not be. For our final trick we will focus on Audrey's face as she clings to Nathan, her eyes opening. Who's behind them and whether or not William took (tried to take?) her memories of what just happened on that hilltop, well. That's a mystery we may have to solve next week.

Okay, so! Theories. There are two main things you have to know about our grounding for freaking the fuck out over William. One of them is Dark Tower based, and the other is personal mythology based. We'll go with the first one first, because that's slightly easier and ties straight into personal mythology. Those of you familiar with the blog and/or accustomed to looking up the King references and/or know the King references offhand are probably aware that they've been upping the DT references a lot this season. From thinnies/Todash portals to crabstrocities to everything happening over and over again in circles to things that should not be drawn through FUCKING DOORS STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THIN FUCKING AIR, we're really leaning on these bits of King's mythology lately. It is, admittedly, also a lot of stuff that speaks to us on a fundamental level; one of the things King was trying to do with DT was create his own mytharc on, frankly, a level similar to Tolkien. Whether or not he succeeded is in the eye of the beholder (and not the dragon thank you very much) but the fact that his patterns are engraved on our memories in 20' neon letters is a fairly positive sign in that regard, I would say. So. Dark Tower and King-verse in general holds one character, the basement muse, who goes by any number of names but most people recognize him first as Randall Flagg. However, among other names is Marten Broadcloak, who seduced Gabrielle Deschain away from her husband Stephen and brought Roland Deschain to his initiatory rites of manhood early, leading to the ultimate cycle of events in the Dark Tower series. Now. We don't have any proof of anything, but we have some definite implications that Audrey and William come from the same place, and right now? We're thinking that's In-World, or the rough equivalent thereof. And that William is Marten and Audrey is Gabrielle. Possibly a mashup of Gabrielle and Roland, considering poor Gabrielle never had a bit of control over her destiny and Audrey's slowly gaining ground there. Which leaves us wondering who Stephen is, but that retains the love triangle aspect and brings a lot of King mytharc into it without ever saying anything directly that would, you know, lead to potential lawsuits.

The second part of this, and the part that is far less arguable in our minds, is that whatever William is meant to be a parallel/stand-in for in the King universe, he is definitely and unquestionably a Sorcerer. Because the post on it is fairly general, let's start hauling out William's specific behaviors and applying them to the Sorcerer archetype. Lying with the truth: check. Lying for what he believes is a good purpose: check. Using his power to force others to do what he wants: REALLY FUCKING CHECK. Acting like he's chosen love when he's chosen a sick, warped form of it that will destroy (is destroying) everything and everyone it touches: so very check. Awareness of all these facts and inability to stop himself from choosing otherwise or, indeed, to see that there's anything wrong with his choices: again, check. And hide in the Teagues' murderbunker. There are several things we can predict based on these patterns, because frankly, to us, Sorcerers are fascinating. There's a reason K still watches The Mentalist; there's a reason A swore so much at the TV this week and yet rewatches Labyrinth a couple times a year. Sorcerers are compelling fuckers; that's their nature and everyone's downfall around them, and as with many such types, they amuse more in literature than in life. And are more redeemable there. So. We've studied them. We know this pattern. It's a safe bet that the real way to end the Troubles was to kill William since, assuming that he's telling the truth about that and not just the truth as he sees it, he was the one AudSarLuLex whoever the fuck she was way, way back when, loved and was supposed to kill. He's already demonstrated an ability to cause and worsen the Troubles, it's not much of a leap from there to think he's the original cause. It's a further safe bet that he's up to his eyeballs in at least some if not all of the memory wiping bullshit that's going on, because he wants her not to remember how to solve the Troubles once she gets back into the barn, he's using that time with her for his own selfish ends. Let's not think too hard about what that entails lest we all need steel wool showers. Audrey, despite being the great love of his life, is almost assuredly not the kind of person and never was, who would tolerate his abusive fuckwit behavior. I wouldn't even necessarily assume she did love him, all we have to go on for that is his word and a vague-at-best legend that might point to him rather than whoever she loves outside the barn. It is, however, a safe bet that she cares enough about all people, that being one of her defining trait if not her PRIMARY defining trait, that she'll want to try and rescue him anyway. If she's given reason to believe she can, and you can bet he'll find, create, bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate his way into a reason. Possibly as early as next episode, we're putting money on William deciding that her issue is the Troubles? Fine! Poof! A Trouble-free Haven that's always been that way, now come away with me and be my love! It will, of course, be rotten at the core and a trap and all manner of other Bad Juju.

Rewinding a bit, and running with the assumption that William is the root cause of the Troubles, here's roughly how we think it has gone in the past. Once upon a time and long ago there were two beings. For the sake of not fucking with our heads any further we'll call them William and AudSarLuLex. And William and AudSarLuLex loved each other and were happy in a world that included some form of the Haven Lookout or a place that looked like it. Something happened. We're going to go ahead and blame William for fucking something up because pattern says so, and nothing about William says he's not falling into Sorcerer pattern. Eventually this culminated in the breakup fight to end all breakup fights, and the Troubles came into being. But! Someone worked out a solution! And assuming certain aspects of her personality that have stayed consistent were present back then, AudSarLuLex volunteered to be an integral part of it. However this came about, the bar/n or whatever it started out as was engineered to amplify her anti-Trouble and suppress them, William's wrath, for a period of time. Here's where we get a little more into supposition. We've (most likely) blown the theory out of the water that William is one of the original Crockers. Given what we now know, and given that we're 99% sure William is this great and terrible evil thing, we're going to go ahead and guess that the Crockers, or whoever became the Crockers, were the ones to engineer the barn with AudSarLuLex, and that in return she used whatever power William was using to Trouble people, in order to give the Crockers the ability to remove the curse from a bloodline forever and so that they could take care of Haven in her absence. That even fits in with the Crocker Box and the Omnia Vincit Amor. Now, still in the realm of supposition based on thready facts, we're guessing that the cycle goes the way it does because AudSarLuLex and the ProtoCrockers locked William away in the bar/n, trapping him there between worlds and hiding the door from him. Which, really, explains why he needed Lexie to find the door. They lock him in the bar/n, the Troubles go away, and William erases AudSarLuLex's memory of whatever horrible thing he did so that they can be together and be happy. And that's the part I'm least sure on. We're guessing that because he seems like the kind of guy who would totally do that, given even a sliver of a chance, but it's not quite as neat fitting as everything else. At any rate, as the cycle wears on, AudSarLuLex and William get more and more contentious, William gets more and more cranky, she gets more and more tired, and the Troubles start reappearing. He doesn't even have to start new ones, he can just wear down her energy and leave her with less and less of it to suppress or heal the Troubles. So, as Agent Barnvatar said, she has to go out and recharge. The bar/n reappears, spits her out with a new identity which probably is what Agent Barnvatar is responsible for, and she goes around healing people and the whole thing starts up again.

Except this time Nathan shot Agent Barnvatar, in a hindsightedly WIlliam-like act. Thereby destroying the bar/n, potentially William's prison, and freeing said great evil to enter the world, etc. It's entirely possible that aspects of if not this entire theory will get blown out of the water next episode, but hey. We know a lot more now than we did before, sadly, much as we might wish we didn't (I lie, we always welcome new data even if it freaks us out) and we'll keep revising as long as the data keeps rolling in.

So! Now what do we do? Long term, there's several ways this can end as they ramp up to the season finale. Audrey can try to kill William and that can make everything worse. William can, after many frying pans to the head (we sincerely hope literal ones) (Sorcerers make us more violently inclined than just about any other type of person out there, and if you have to question whether they exist in real life, I invite you to check the abusers' red flags list again), decide to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Unlikely, but plausible. Nathan and Duke could also find a rather permanent solution to the problem, though I'm not sure how that one would work out in the specifics rather than the generalities. What we do know we have is a clear ka-tet acting in concert, and I would argue that Jennifer completes that ka-tet. Meaning that maybe, just maybe, they can be done with this shit soon. Bonus extra ka-tet points for that fucking tattoo, though we still have no indication of what it means. Were there four building the initial prison? Is there something else that indicates four people in a ritual circle of some kind will finish this? WE DON'T KNOW ISN'T IT GREAT. Though viewing them as a ka-tet and Audrey as the dinh (head of the ka-tet) would indicate that whatever has to be done about William, she's going to be the one ultimately responsible for it even if the boys and Jennifer can come up with a good plan of action. Another interesting piece of this theory is that the Troubles seem to have gotten worse and worse as AudSarLuLex gains more and more of her memories from past lives, and that this is her crawling out from under William's mental control. Hence his increased desperation right now, and willingness to let all the appearance of being innocent and sweet fall in an attempt to make her remember.

Next week on Haven: there are no Troubles, Duke is a third generation cop, Nathan's a doctor, the Teagues aren't hiding their wealth and are instead the preppiest snootiest fuckers around, and William? Oh, he's there too, and he looks like nothing so much as a puppyish guy who brought his favorite girl the best present in the world. We'll be back here with our shotguns.