Previously, on Haven: There was a lighthouse! And Dave freaking out about an otherworldly door some more. (That explanation's not going to bite anyone in the ass at all.) And really bad Uncharted jokes, really, you guys? William made horrible puns and kept trying to get Audrey's attention like a particularly obnoxious middle-schooler. Death truffles ruled the day, and Audrey started coming in touch with her inner original because she and William are so connected. Also a screaming baby became a mass murderer. Just another day in Haven!
Now on Haven, it still looks like a twisted, fucked up wedding. Audrey still isn't nearly as sure of herself as we'd like her to be. And, really, no one likes this solution. This time when she puts her hand on Duke she does remember something, if only a flash of what appears to be a fun time with nakedness, water, and William. Also kissing. (Which was apparently filmed in Halifax in October. Ouch.) I'm sure you can imagine what they're doing that the network won't let them show. The memory makes someone in there smile, hard to say whether that's Audrey or the person William remembers. Since most of you have seen the episode already we'll go ahead and say, yeah, her name was Mara, we suspected that ever since A Certain Someone let it slip in the livechat after Haven last week. Nathan says her name to try to get her attention, but it doesn't seem to work. She is getting someone else's attention, too. William and his henchbeasts are fucking fishing. Because of course they are. That, too, is a theme among the works of Stephen King, the human-shaped villains that are way more than human are always doing or wearing or both, something very ordinary, very human. Very folksy. I imagine he/they think it makes them creepier. They're right.
Nathan repeats her name, this time going for Parker, which seems to snap her out of it possibly because it's more like what she's used to? It's the tone of one partner to another, which goes back all the way to the start of their friendship and their acquaintance, rather than their romance which is still relatively new. The aspect of pulling on her general role as a protector and guardian might also be at play here, rather than pulling on a romance when she's remembering another, potentially stronger one. At any rate, Nathan asks if she's okay, she turns to assure him that she is (albeit in that distracted way that immediately lets everyone know it's a total lie) and oh look. Her eyes are that freaky supernatural blue that William's sometimes was. Was, are. Same difference, as we cut to William sensing a disturbance in the Force over at the dock. He directs his henchthings to stay there till he calls. Apparently he's got a date. That's so cute, William. Come here so I can shoot you in the face.
All right, over in the house of impending doom, Duke is staring over everything out of a window with, well, the expression you'd expect him to have, having agreed to kill someone to save a shitload of everyone else given that he hoped he'd never have to do it again and he's already done this a couple of times. Grim, braced, tired. Nathan comes up and asks how he's doing. Duke gives him exactly the response I would have given him, probably both of us would, in the same situation. Not quite what Nathan meant but it's one of those nice little signs of how much they've grown as a couple as friends that all he does is clarify what he means, with no change in stress or concern. He means is Duke physically all right. Duke thinks so, or at least he isn't experiencing any adverse symptoms and as far as the rest of it goes, he's doing about as all right as can be expected. Jennifer isn't very happy, that's a nice deflection on how happy you are Duke, but we'll let it stand because it's not like you're going to cough up your insecurities, fears, and griefs now when it won't help anything. And he hands Nathan a knife. Which is awkwardly symbolic. And practical, in this case, for all the dubious looks Nathan's giving him, he wants Nathan to cut himself so they all know whether or not his powers work as originally intended. If he's going to kill someone, he's going to make damn sure it's going to work the way they need it to. Which is a good plan! A pity no one thought to question the whole kill Nathan thing like that in the beginning of this season. Well, Duke might have been thinking it, but he didn't bring it up. Anyway, Nathan cuts himself on the tip of his finger, which is such a sensible place contrary to the across the palm cuts that almost everyone in TV or film ever does that I had to stop and freak out at A and confirm that I saw that correctly when we saw it in the preview clip. Seriously, it's so... sensible. And no one ever does that, it's always a cringe-worthy cut across the palm that looks like it should go into tendons. He smears the drops of blood that result across Duke's palm and, hey, presto. Silver eyes. Note that neither of them worries about this, gets any more tense, Nathan doesn't even flinch when Duke looks back at him with his silver Crocker eyes. Just as calm and bland as always, and Duke calls it just like riding a bike for us Crockers. That, too, is a bit of a significant step, throwing himself in with and embracing a legacy of doing something he finds deeply, profoundly distasteful (murder) so that other, more horrible things don't happen. We haven't seen him take up his role with quite this much acceptance until this last arc. All right then! Roll credits!
The credits, thankfully, have not changed. We don't even have any surprise guest stars, just the ones we expected, although Christian Campbell could your name please be a little more different from Camargo's? That was mildly freaky last week. The boys finish having their moment, Duke's eyes go back to normal, everyone should have a bad feeling about how easy this appears to be since we know Audrey didn't nail her Trouble-giving abilities the first time, why would she do it the second? (Note that we do not, in fact, get a third this season. I'm assuming they're saving that up for when she's Mara.) But it looks that simple right now, and they'll take it. Ben especially will take it, though it's not clear if he sees the silver eyed Duke as he comes in to interrupt their moment. Dammit, Ben, they were about to kiss, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Ahem. Seriously, though, it's a nice bit of purely physical acting, Ben all sad-but-determined and Duke acknowledging that it's his right to ask for this in his position as a Crocker, which does not, I think for Duke at this point, take into account his position as a person. We've always known that Duke was a master of compartmentalization, and now we're seeing it even more starkly than when he just had the Crocker Trouble as a matter of inheritance: this is a burden he's choosing because it means he can do something nobody else can. (Still want to know why the fuck nobody's asked if they can take Troubles away, since they can give them, but insufficient time and the Crocker line was so clearly set up as this failsafe that I understand why they don't reach for it. Sort of. While I'm facepalming into my Cheerios.) But it's him-as-Crocker, not him-as-Duke, and I'm pretty damn sure that he's trying to break the two personas apart for his own sanity. Oh Duke. At any rate, no, I don't think Duke's worried about turning into his brother, he's worried about turning into his father, not that they're having that discussion right now either. There's something more important weighing on Duke's mind, and for once I'll agree with him, that there's something different and worrying about Audrey and would Nathan please keep an eye on her? Because he's her partner and because he's her lover and, probably, because Duke feels the need for backup in this. He's been the one to, to steal a phrase applicable to Audrey herself, see what's right in front of him for awhile now rather than what he wishes were there, and the fact that in the face of all Nathan's self-delusion Duke's asking him to put it aside shows an immense amount of trust. Or an immense frying pan to the forebrain marked Get A Clue, take your pick. Both, probably. Nathan is fooling nobody including himself as he protests that everything will be fine just as soon as they get rid of William, that's the stubborn petulant I do not want to believe anything could go wrong and I can make it tone. And I think he's starting to realize that he's paddling up and down the river, but Nathan's always been inclined to believe in the power of Wuv Twu Wuv to make everything go right. Oh Nathan honey.
We go back out front, where it's no mistake that we have three caregivers clustered around baby Aaron. (Who was apparently played by twins and occasionally a doll, so no, not one of the production babies we know about.) Ben corrects Audrey that no, Aaron's a big boy now, which has nothing to do with his age and everything to do with what Ben's about to do and the difference it's going to make in his son's life. More paddling for everyone! Or at least for Ben and Gloria (also, you guys, was that a deliberate Buffy reference? because if so I think I love everyone in the writers' room even more) (no, according to Millikin it's not despite their love of Buffy, I'll be over here giggling don't mind me), where she's making no mention of what he's about to do and he's giving her the grace to ignore it. Sort of. As much as he can under the circumstances. Audrey is saying a whole lot of nothing one way or the other until directly asked about it by Gloria, who sort of wants the comfort of someone to tell her that there's an afterlife but mostly, I think, wants the comfort of someone to listen to her. Actually, Audrey's still so rattled by remembering Mara that she's still not doing much more than listening, though she at least has one of the right leading questions to ask. No, Haven's Haven and ghosts in Haven are (albeit a nice tie-in to the first time Duke had someone commit suicide by Crocker) not necessarily anything to write home about. As it were. But something more universal, the concept of a soul and an afterlife? Gloria's science doesn't explain how our meat-and-electricity brains get from that to consciousness, with a nice little nod there to Audrey's multiple personalities and incarnations over there, what of the original remains, what does having been all those other people do to that original, so on and so forth. All these questions that we don't really have an answer for yet. But Gloria believes because she knows so much, and it's a pretty fucking amazing speech that I've heard other scientists give before and I kind of assume the writers drew from their own real experiences. Believing in something bigger than you are once you know all the wonder that's out there is pretty common, actually. And because we're doing this as much for dramatic effect as anything, Gloria's final pronouncement that something of us remains after we're gone (looking, of course, at baby Aaron) is punctuated by a gunshot. We may all sigh a little, because that was none too kind to any of those still living. It does serve as an announcement without Duke having to say anything directly, and it is a lot less like Wade than using a knife, I will grant all of this. I'm still going to facepalm a little.
Some slo-mo of the abruptly traumatized/shocked, mostly focused on Gloria and Jennifer because they're the ones less accustomed to violence, and lyrics that as always when they find obscure artists to pull from make us want to tear our hair out. I'll just leave those there. Poor Aaron starts crying, but it's clear from the way they're shooting this that nobody's going to die this time. Nobody else, anyway. Audrey, being the least traumatized by the violence and most concerned about Duke, is the one doing the comforting. Jennifer looks like she's just been gutpunched, which in a way she has. It's one thing to know the man you're sleeping with is capable of killing in cold blood when asked to for the good of someone's family. It's another to know he's actually done it, and a third thing to see the effects on him. Which come across quite clearly as he looks about as wrecked as we've ever seen him. Not just because he's killed someone, but he's killed someone he got to know a little bit beforehand, who knew what he was asking and who allowed them to exhaust all the other options before asking Duke to handle it (and let's not forget the cost in bodies of that), and whose family he does know, knew beforehand, and hates doing this to them. It's always harder to maintain the compartmentalization when it's personal. And then we have one of Haven's rare moments of utter grace, as Duke comes out and hands Gloria the blanket and uses euphemisms and circumlocutions to refer to the fact that he just killed Ben, ending with something that's both a plea for forgiveness and a complete lack of expectation that it'll happen. Gloria is brokenhearted, as anyone would be, but even through that broken heart she has it in her to give him the gesture if not the words. The words will be a long time coming - if ever, considering what else happens this ep - but the ability to do that isn't something very many people possess, and it makes me love Gloria about a million times more and gives her a depth of character that we didn't expect until these last two eps. Oh show. Stop leaving half-onions under our desks, you're way too good at it. Gloria has a job now, though, and that job is to take care of her grandson and leave this group of Trouble-solvers to do what they're best at. So she takes Aaron from Audrey, and Duke looks like a stunned mullet for awhile because people don't do that to him, he's the bad guy, nobody's supposed to see past that front. Duke, honey, you gave up that front a long time ago oh fine, go put yourself back together. I'd call it brooding except we usually reserve that for people who have less reason to be angsty, and Duke has all KINDS of reason right now.
Jennifer starts running towards Duke, as you do, and Audrey does too in case we hadn't already figured out that a bunch of this is about love, the people we love, and the things we're willing to do for them. (Or to them. Or with them.) Nathan stops her, though, because it's Jennifer's turn right now. Not so much Jennifer's place, more like her turn and with all the uncertainty swimming around Audrey in so many different aspects right now, Jennifer and her feelings for Duke are a much more known and sure quantity. Whether or not Nathan's thinking that clearly, though, I don't know. So, Jennifer to Duke. The blocking of this also puts Jennifer running past Audrey just so we can see that the costume director put both women in nearly identical outfits, only Jennifer's shirt is blue and Audrey's shirt is red. Because of-fucking-course. While I'm swearing Jennifer reaches Duke, who still looks like he's in shock, even as they hug. Jennifer starts out with the important thing, the lifesaving thing, where Duke saved a lot of lives by killing that person, because the one thing people tend to most want to cling to after they've done something terrible is that it was worth it, so Jennifer tries to give him that. Then asks if he's okay. No, he's not okay. He's very far from okay. But how he's broken and hurting isn't so important to him right now as why, and that's because William. William set this in motion and he's going to keep on pulling shit like this, and it's not going to get any better. And yes, Jennifer, he probably will have to keep doing this again. Audrey in Haven before, when it was still the closed system, was good at keeping people and their Troubles in check without resorting to the Crocker method, but this is a whole new Haven now. This is a Haven where a hysterical uncontrolled but untouched Troubled adult with an area effect Trouble is the best of all their bad options. So far we've had contagious Troubles, infants with Troubles, exacerbated Troubles, threats of Troubles upon Troubles. And let's not forget Audrey, newbie to Troubling people. We still haven't figured out what all she did to Duke, not entirely. For extra bonus points, Duke did notice that when Audrey re-Troubled him she started to change, he assumes back into Mara also known as the woman William's been waiting for. And while none of them have met her yet, it's probably safe to say that she's not a very nice person who'd be at all helpful to their end goals. Duke won't speculate on what happens if she finishes the transition, but whatever he saw scared him badly enough that he wants William the fuck out of Haven, North America, the planet, and this 'verse soonest. I couldn't agree more, Duke. Note that he's still looking for backup, putting Jennifer in the position of backup to Nathan. In case of Mara, break glass! Which tells us how far he's come to trust her in a few short weeks.
After the break we're under a gazebo (not an angry one) and Jennifer is giving what we at Murderboarding call the "I'm the unsub" speech, because we've seen too many episodes of Criminal Minds. Basically she is summarizing the outline of the problem before they all start putting the pieces in to try to solve the puzzle. In this case the speech starts not with "So, I'm the unsub" but "The key is these four people." And she points to the cover of the book, which is still the cheesy vampire romance cover for everyone else. On the plus side, the symbol is right there on Nathan's arm in tattoo form. The four figures on the edge of the symbol, she says (that the book says), need to stand at the edge of the symbol in the Heart of Haven, the Lighthouse, and the door will appear. At this point we freely admit that we were all "Nathan, Duke, Audrey, Jennifer, four people, let's go!" Ka-tet, right? Not right. The four people ended up not being a ka-tet at all in any sense of the word. But at least we're not alone in the conclusions we've jumped to! Duke is right there with us, and Jennifer tells him it has to be a specific four people. The book says it has to be four people from other worlds beyond ours, at which point I actually, yes, said "other worlds than these" out loud, feel free to mock my Dark Tower obsession. Hi, Millikin! Long days and pleasant nights to ya. I'd be immensely curious to see if the book does have glowing letters that say other worlds than these, but presumably to save on post production costs when she opens the book we only get the Child of Ruin passage again. Darn. The four people that need to stand on the symbol have to have been born in another world and drawn through a door, yes, I went there, to this one. Let's all note that the camera cuts to Audrey when she's saying this, and Audrey's eyes are that weird super-blue that William's were. Again. Or still. Probably still. She doesn't look terribly happy about it, but her eyes are still freaky blue. Duke tries to go with the you're Troubled not an alien approach by citing that just because she can hear the barn, to which Jennifer interrupts with yes, she can hear the barn, see the book, has the t-shirt, and was brought to this place by an otherworldly barnvatar known as Agent Fuck You. Excuse me, Agent Howard. Yeah, she's from the other world. Or as she says it, Duke's dating an illegal alien. That's all right, he knows a guy who does green cards, which is possibly the most adorable thing he could have said under the circumstances. Never change, Duke. Seriously. Okay, so, four people from other worlds, they know who three of them are. Vince and Dave are already looking, and hopefully whoever it is, is still in Haven. So Nathan starts the marching orders, sends Duke and Jennifer to meet Dwight at the Herald, and Audrey volunteers to deal with William. Because that's a good plan! Duke, who by now let's just go ahead and call him my audience identification character for the show, doesn't like this plan either. But he doesn't appear to have a better one and Audrey is sure enough that she can deal with William that he doesn't raise further objections, though I suppose it's possible he's trying not to alert her that he's worried about her turning into Mara. Which would be highly debatable in the amount of good it would do anyway, if it's Audrey it might only shake her confidence in her ability to handle this madness, and if it's Mara it would tip her off. It's a fucking tightrope to walk. Duke probably hates it as much as I do.
So they go off and now Audrey, or whoever she is at the moment, Audrey with pieces of Mara? And Nathan get to have the "Are you okay?" "No. Fucking William." talk. Because that talk sums up the state of almost every character on this show right now. As it turns out, Duke isn't the only one who noticed something going on when Audrey was re-Troubling Duke, though given that Nathan had to call her name twice to get her attention I'd be deeply worried if he hadn't noticed something was wrong. Oh, now we get the official name for the woman William wants Audrey to be, as opposed to the half-heard Colin Ferguson you are adorable but you are really bad at keeping secrets name. Which is the same name, you guys, it's Mara. As you know since we've been using it all recapalypse. It's not so much that we know the name or even that William told her, it's that she remembers now, and we've had at least a bit of a theme going on with the names of people and places. Mostly people. Crocker. Syllabic themes in Audrey's names. Hansen as the name of a bloodline that can't feel anything, physically. And so on. For extra bonus naming points Mara also means, in one of the older interpretations (Aramaic) in which it appears, "Lady" as in the title opposite "Lord." In Hebrew it means bitter strength. We share because we want you to facedesk as hard as we are right now. Just don't drink as hard as we are right now, that way lies hospitals. Anyway. Remembering Mara isn't like remembering Lexie or Lucy, as one might expect considering those are borrowed memories. Mara is who she originally was, the memories would naturally have a different texture. And given that, it looks like the memories are scaring the crap out of Audrey who she is now. Mara, as she describes her, is no one Audrey would want to meet. She did terrible things (looking around at the Troubles I can only say OBVIOUSLY) and was a terrible person, but maybe Audrey can use those memories as a lure to bait William out so Nathan can shoot him. With a tranquilizer gun. It's a surprisingly useful plan! William is so desperate to get Mara back that he might well fall for it, though given how skillfully he's been manipulating everyone else and how little Audrey still has of Mara I'm not as sanguine as she is? But it's a better plan than a lot of the ones they've explored lately, with little lost if it doesn't work. One hopes. If she drops too, well, they've got two unconscious bodies to lug around. Unconscious. Not dead. Audrey reminds Nathan while Nathan fusses over the plan that William knows Jennifer can punt his sorry ass back through the door and they ought to get moving before he tries to put a stop to that. To which I and she both would add the worrying fact that if Audrey can sense where William is and the general thrust of what he wants right now, he can probably sense her too. I use probably here to mean that they don't know for certain, whereas we do because we saw him perk up like a goddamn prairie dog when Audrey remembered Mara for a moment there. And according to Audrey, that connection's getting stronger every minute. Yeah. We definitely want to do something about that.
Meanwhile a different piece of the ka-tet discusses doors to other worlds and magical Troubles and barnvatars and things on the streets of Haven! Guys, I know the masquerade's nonexistent, and I realize that nobody's around right now - probably too scared to venture outside, and doesn't that say some things about how bad Haven's gotten - but could you maybe take it in somewhere? No? No. We'll have some more Sinister Ordinary with these conversations in the middle of broad daylight while Dave continues to protest the opening of the door. Dave, between the reveal that you were adopted and your protesting, this is starting to sound personal. What the fuck do you know. Why the fuck aren't you telling anyone. Especially that second one, considering that Vince is the brother who's most often out in front, the one everyone knows is keeping secrets nominally for the good of the town. Which just makes Dave the quieter, more likely to be dominant one, which is a thing most often found in by-birth twins, but in the archetype as well, the quiet one is often the one directing their joint progress. Dave has no actual suggestions other than flail, or none he's sharing with the rest of the class. Dwight, however, has one! Maybe Heckle or Jekyll is their fourth for the circle? That's not what I'd consider a good suggestion, considering that they seem to act only as a pair and don't exactly seem human. But then we have implications to outright statements that Audrey and William aren't really human either, so I'll strike the second half of that, which leaves the first. Another point against either of them is that they seem to be nothing but henchmen, but alright, alright, I'll stop nitpicking, they only have so many entities known to have come through the door and they need to chase down all possible avenues. That means Duke and Dwight get to go tackle the henchthings! Yay! No, wait, definitely the other thing. Jennifer raises a much more excellent point, that we now know of two people whose adoptions ("adoptions" in Audrey's case, but we'll go with it) were arranged by Agent Fuck You and mightn't he have done this to other people? With Dave making faces and jawclenching and lots of other very nervous worried tells over the clerk's office, going over records, doing things to track down what we may all assume are his lies at this point. Dave proceeds to try some misdirection! Well, sort of misdirection, it's the kind that works best because it's playing on genuine emotion. In this case, pantswetting fear of the door being opened again, the kind that looks oversold only because we don't have all the data. Duke and Vince are on the same side for a change! Go get Cabot's journal, Dave, and they'll keep on this line of reasoning because unless you have a better solution, Dave, which you wish to share? No? Then shut up and help. Jennifer wants to come with Duke, presumably because she's not sold on his I'm-fine-now act (as well she shouldn't be) and she doesn't see much point to tagging along with the Teagues. I have a point to it! It forces them to hopefully give you accurate data! Or at least to watch them for massive fucking tells. Duke will be good and not point that out. He will, however, use the perfectly valid argument that he'd rather know she's safe in the fortress of theirs. (At least they didn't call it a bunker. Thank you, writers, for not breaking our brains like that.) Jennifer: not pleased at being treated like a damsel, but treating her as a strategic asset to be protected is a valid approach and I'm going to hope she can read the other subtext there. Also, quite frankly, I don't know what the fuck good she thinks she can do other than moral support, we've seen the henchthings fight, particularly the big one. I don't recommend her with her lack of training taking either one of them on, even the little one. The Teagues and Jennifer watch them drive off, and she's feeling kind of twitchy still to be admitting her feeling like a freak in front of them. I wouldn't make such a note of it except that people are making a habit of trusting the Teagues with more information than I feel they deserve, considering how stingy with it they are themselves. Dave, notably, is the one to comfort her, saying she's special instead. Heh. Dave, honey, that's the sort of phrasing people use when they don't have anything concrete to offer for comfort. Vince offers something that I'm sure is intended to be more concrete but serves like a goddamn brick of it on her shoulders instead. Because making people into the only viable savior is always such a blessing oh wait no the other thing. Definite the other thing.
Over on the lookout which I'm on the verge of calling Lover's Leap or something, Audrey's making the walk of pain back up to see William. Who might as well be doing an actual jig at this point. He knew she was coming, he could feel it, there's so many dirty jokes there I'm not making, they're so connected, yeah, we get it, move on before I punch you. Irritation at William aside, this second time he's not so eager and bouncy as he was before, though he isn't as doubting as he might be either, presumably because he did sense something this time. Audrey's smile when she tells him she remembers her name is disturbingly full of real emotion. Let's all worry about that for a bit. Real emotion, some affection, some playfulness. Her eyes are still fucked-up blue. And that, hearing her real name? That puts a genuine happy smile on William's face, real relief and joy, which doesn't go very far towards making him sympathetic but does remind us that when he was with her in the bar/n those emotions, that love, was real too. What else does she remember? (And why is her hair reddish? Is that weird lighting or on purpose? Don't get it.) Well, she remembers that they were swimming. That they were happy. And by the look of both of them, much though we'd wish Audrey could stay Audrey, they were happy. Or at least William was happy, William adored this Mara person to the ends of the earth and into other worlds. Literally. And I think when Audrey says yes and it's a real yes, it's at least partly a real yes because those emotions were real for Mara and are and have been real for Audrey too. It's just that she associates them with a different person than Mara does. Would she like to feel safe and loved and in love and not afraid of anything again? Yes. God, yes, in a time like this. So, probably, would most of Haven and most of the Haven viewers. She ventures to touch his cheek, which results in the electric connection we've come to know and stare apprehensively at every time it shows up. Know and love and anticipate, in William's case, but when Audrey pulls away in what looks and sounds a bit like shock he begs her not to with some irritatingly heartfelt longing. Stop that, Colin Ferguson, I was having such fun hating on William. (I lie. Never stop being awesome.) At any rate, Audrey steps back to regain herself, and I think that is what she means to do, to regain her sense of identity and sense of self, the one she wants to keep as opposed to the scary bitch she doesn't want to be. And she looks around and says how beautiful it is here, as William's smile fades. See, now he knows. He knows she's trying to play him, and it's disappointing, especially given the elation of realizing she is remembering her former self who loved him. It's at least partly, I suspect, because Audrey has her Audrey talking down the psycho face on, not the most urgent version of those faces but definitely one of those faces. So open it's bland, and a mask. That's okay, William has masks of his own! Though how Audrey notices that that quiet assent isn't full of his previous enthusiasm and adoration I do not know. Too much effort and attention spent maintaining her cover, maybe? Meanwhile speaking of cover, Nathan sneaks around in the bushes trying to get a shot. Dude, you should have set yourself up before she ever went there. I'm just saying. Failing that, you could always, I don't know. Shoot Audrey? No? No. You got talked into tranqing her by proxy for this whole shindig, you couldn't just tranq her to begin with and drop William while you're at it? Idiot. I mean, I kind of get why, Nathan has historically not been the best when it comes to pointing guns in situations that involve Audrey going all the way back to As You Were (1x09) though the more famous examples are Thanks For The Memories (3x13) and The Trouble with Troubles (4x10). But still, Nathan. Are you ever going to learn from any of this? William will now take advantage of Nathan Not Learning A Damn Thing by interposing Audrey between himself and the gun and suggesting they go to that watering hole with the swimming and the happy instead. I suspect this is at least as much to provoke Nathan, in the event that Audrey told him about Mara and William's naked shenanigans. Also by way of testing Audrey, who looks far less sure of herself than she should be or Mara would be in the same situation.
While they have their little not-as-mock-as-we-wish-it-were lovers' pedeconference and Nathan rustles around in the underbrush, Duke and Dwight are having some buddy cop moments! Oh boys. I really love how they've grown from mutual antipathy to mutual respect and even support, and much like Nathan (though with less childhood baggage attached), it's from watching each other work and coming to a greater understanding of who the other is. Let us not forget the themes of identity and hating the Other in Haven, and how hate and fear tend to go away when we reach an understanding of what the Other is? I say tend to because it's looking a lot like hate and fear are going to be increased at least for a time as we understand who Mara and William are, on account of they are genuinely not good people, but who's betting on a s5 redemption arc? (Hey, SyFy. We're getting a s5, RIGHT?) Anyway. Duke allows as how the henchthings will need some persuasion, and is awful cheerful about getting to shoot something in the cause of Moral Rightness. I can't entirely blame him for relishing the chance to do something he knows would be a good deed, i.e., getting rid of the fucking creepy low men from the bar/n. I will note that this trend toward violence is not one I'm entirely sanguine about, even as I acknowledge there's a lot of reasons for it. On the upside, he's with Dwight! So no bloody retribution. Zappy retribution, on the other hand, he can get behind, and how adorable is it that Dwight's bringing an extra taser along with him for people who normally carry firearms when he needs backup? So adorable. I am all about this kind of electricity instead of Audrey and William's kind. Dwight will also take advantage of their moment alone to hammer on Duke with some frying pans about how he did, maybe not the right thing, but the only thing anyone could do. And to tell him obliquely that it won't come back on him, they're calling it a suicide, moving right along now. Heh. Dwight even makes it personal by reminding Duke of what he himself has lost to the Troubles, that if Lizzie were still around he might be asking Duke to fix this Trouble. Oh Dwight. I'm not sure I entirely believe that - I think Dwight's more resourceful than to commit suicide by Crocker - but given what little we've heard about Dwight's father, now, I can believe he might go around manipulating people into something like that. Maybe not our normal straightforward Dwight who we know and love, but to save his daughter, I could see it. We get a nice touch of military cadence from him, walking point, emphasizing the under siege and soldier aspects both of Dwight's past and of Haven's present, and Duke looks like he's about to change the subject away from things veering close to emotions when oh look, coughing up blood. That can't be good. And has to be related to his reTroubling. Dwight obviously sees what just happened, but he'll let Duke get away with brushing it off for right now since he doesn't appear to be changing into a ravenous hellbeast or sucking anyone's organs out or anything like that. They have bigger problems, and that really is the biggest problem right now: a lack of time to address all the little shit before it turns into something that destroys someone(s).
Nathan continues to run through the underbrush, which in this case is actually a quite well-tended path. Way more than a deer trail, which is kind of what I first expected, for the woods metaphors that gives us. We continue to yell at him to shoot Audrey because they're connected and all he needs is to knock one of them out. Sure, that raises the issue of getting two bodies to the lighthouse (please no Woolf jokes here, my brain hurts enough already), but it's not like Nathan doesn't have a cell phone and an assortment of people with big trucks and/or trunks. I'm just saying. Grumble mutter. This is partially to increase the urgency, but mostly so that we can cut back to the shore where the henchthings are digging for bait, and thereby know that these two scenes are about to be deeply connected. Not like that. Ew. Well, sort of. Again with the Sinister Ordinary aspects, this one again intentional at least according to the Sync stuff, not that we're much surprised. Duke's griping about trying to arrest these guys with nothing but a pair of tasers is largely for form's sake and at least partially because if they have to fight these guys physically - as they expect - this is gonna suck. Well, yeah. Henchthings made out of black tarry globules of evil! The heavy is completely unmoved by two tasers into his chest, as we pretty much expected, Duke is getting serious about his wish we could use guns, I kind of question why they sent Dwight on this mission anyway since there's not even any point to the pretense of doing this like it's legal. Guys. They are alien henchthings from another world who somehow gave one of you intense paranoia. Guys. Oh never mind. We come back from the ad break to what looks like it's about to be a brutal fight, the moreso because I don't think Dwight's all healed up from his GSWs of 4x09 yet, and yet, not so much! The henchthings turn their heads in unison like they're listening to faraway commands, look at each other, and apologize to Dwight for not beating the tar out of him (yes, I went there). And then they turn into the death truffles and swarm off, while we do the dance of fuck yeah vindicated. We've only been calling that since 4x09, though we didn't have sufficient proof to be sure it was both of them until just now. Dwight and Duke reach a parallel set of conclusions to ours, which is that black death truffles = made here or at least made not human = not useful for their purposes. Have we mentioned lately how happy it makes us that, for all we gripe about some characters' emotional hangups, most of them are really quick on the uptake? Like here? Because it does.
Running Nathan is running. Sad William is sad, but still hopeful and thus giving Audrey more data in an attempt to get her to remember more of her original self. Note that we're sticking with original, or trying to, whereas he consistently calls it her true self. He's been helpless, yadda, he had to watch the bar/n layering false memories on top of her. I would argue that, okay, yes, base personality has nothing to do with who Mara is, but what AudSarLuLex and all her other incarnations has been through, learning to save people, being able to save people and see the value inherent in doing that, is enough to change a person. I almost think that, contrary to what Audrey says, the bar/n wasn't intended solely as Mara's punishment but as her redemption. For, y'know, all the good that's apparently done, but it was an attempt at teaching her a lesson. At a guess. He's genuinely sad about what happened, too, that's not all sadness that she's playing him now. And the story he tells begs a whole lot of questions, ranging from who are they to who's powerful enough to stop William from doing something he wants to do? To the ever present where the fuck did he get banished to? We've been thinking it was the bar/n, because we're sadistic fuckers who came up with the notion of William and Mara getting a subjective few minutes/hours/days at best in the bar/n before the start of the next cycle of Troubles. Which would be punishment, the vicious kind that reminds them of what they lost every so often without actually giving them a way to get out of it. But now that we have absolute confirmation that there are other worlds (and how many other worlds are there, huh? we're betting on twelve and swearing at the thrice-damned Beam some more), it's possible he was in yet another world for his own banishment/punishment. All William says, the annoyingly cryptic fucker, is that it was a terrible place. And that he promised her that he would save her, that it was what he clung to throughout his banishment. (So probably not the bar/n, then, unless it was hiding them from each other. Probably that means he snuck out of wherever he was trapped when shooting Howard caused enough of a thinny for him to slip through.) Colin Ferguson says that's what he clung to as an actor, that it was a promise to save the person he loved, and yeah, now that we know that? You can see it through his entire performance, not just the belief that he's doing the right thing and the thing that his lover wanted him to do, but the desperate belief that the woman he loves is under there somewhere because otherwise it's all for nothing. You may make your own parallels with Nathan here, I'm too busy smashing this desk with my forehead. In case we didn't get the parallels, the camera will swing back to Nathan. Audrey asks the first of the many questions this brings up, who was doing the punishing, was it Howard? What was Howard, was he like them? I LIKE THESE QUESTIONS. I do not like William's lack of answers. That's a very derogatory look over "nothing like us," (although let's all note it's not the same kind of "stupid humans" derogatory he showed before) which could mean in the moral/mental sense and could mean in the physical sense or could be both! As ever, we don't know, isn't it great? Though it makes me lean a little more toward the theory that Howard's a created golem-guardian-avatar type of being, rather than being someone like Mara and William (or with similar powers) who volunteered to be bound to a construct to keep Mara locked up and William out of the world of Haven. Which are the two big theories we're tossing around at the moment, and sadly we have insufficient data to rule either one out.
Nathan is also nothing like them, and now he's lined up for a shot, just in time to get knocked out by a pile of death truffles given human form. Whoops. On which note, it's not clear which of the many possible avenues of inquiry Audrey intended to take with the barn being gone now, but it's perfectly timed for William to smug it up at her over thanking the now-captive Nathan for that! Yes, Audrey, he knew. What he admits to is that he suspected but wasn't sure, so he called his death truffle henchthings in to check! And lo and behold. Audrey's more Audrey now, freaked out and protective of Nathan and wait, no, never mind. That impotent kind of rage is something that's way less Audrey and maybe Mara or maybe just a woman who has no idea who she is right now and is scared shitless of making the wrong choice. William, being a manipulative fuck, will use even this to his advantage! By telling her that she knows how to command them, she knows how to make beating Nathan stop, so order the death truffles to do it and they will. So she does. And they do. She doesn't actually sound much like Mara at this point, she's too scared and uncertain in her control and, yes, very shocked that it actually worked, shocked at the connection she's feeling, there isn't a bit about this that anyone but William likes. But it's going to happen at this point regardless of anyone's preferences, and as we see when she pulls them out of human form and returns them to the box, there's a part of her that's enjoying the power. (That also explains the randomass box disappearing and reappearing last episode; it's not that there are multiples, it just comes when it's called. GOOD puppy oh no wait.) There's a sadness to her that's mostly Audrey, but a confidence to her that looks more like Mara, and it's that that William's focused on as he all but leaps in glee. Nathan, of course, is doing anything BUT leaping in glee.
I have no idea the fuck those clothes are, apart from competently made Renaissance Faire garb, but I'm pretty sure I've seen those patterns before. It's awfully distracting. William also seems to have a sword, for no reason I can discern. But he also has a kiss for his beloved, aww. By the state of her skirt she either hasn't been traveling through the woods long or wardrobe didn't bother to make it seem as though she had, but however long or far they've been traveling they're out of breath enough to take a brief stop here. William takes a breath and sits down, Mara sits down beside him, and I thank whoever it was who made the call not to try for any kind of an accent. I'm a little terrified of how that would have ended up. William thinks they should keep going, but Mara thinks they're safe and they're not going to get found, caught. Caught by whom? It's definitely a whom in the plural, William refers to the every rule that they've broken and what "they'll" do when they catch them. WHO ARE "THEY?" THE FUCK IS GOING ON? And other questions that they're totally feeding us because they enjoy our pain. Woe. Between this and what William's said so far, though, we can be reasonably sure that this rulebreaking involves giving people Troubles, whether that means breaking rules not to dimension-hop or not to alter primitive creatures or not to use their powers for evil or what, who the hell knows. Mara doesn't seem concerned with the punishment for rulebreaking except in that it might hamper her fun, but William's biggest concern is that they'll take her away, split them apart. Which already goes to show where his priorities are. Mara is determined that this nebulous they won't do that, but rather than "I won't let them" she says "[William] won't let them," which sets off even more alarm bells. She's not taking any action in that sentence, she's not even expressing a desire that might incite her to take action. She's deflecting his greatest worry with what might possibly be an assurance but comes off more like an order to him not to let them take her. In this case, no wonder he clings to the vow for decades and centuries to get her back. He is, in a way, making it now. And even as short a time as we've seen Mara and William, I'm having flashbacks to the end of the Mummy Returns. You who have seen the movie, you know the part. So. This is Mara! Not very nice, is she.
Back in the present Nathan in his usual hamhanded manner is trying to get Audrey back by telling her to get away from William and put the box of death truffles down. William, meanwhile, has taken lessons about feel the power of dark side from the Emperor, but he also makes a very valid point that Audrey is going to do what Audrey wants. Or rather, that she is going to do what she wants, not what they say. The problem here is that he thinks she's more Mara than Audrey, when the reverse seems to still hold true. Still, William is backing that she will do what she wants (in the hope that Mara is still in there, and hasn't everything he's done lately been with the hope that Mara's still in there?) which is an uncomfortably close parallel to Duke backing up Audrey in doing what she wants, making her decisions, making her calls and not what he would prefer her to do even when they aren't necessarily the same thing. Let me shorten and repeat that for you: William and Duke are now operating in parallel directions within the character narrative, whereas William and Nathan were not two minutes ago. Be afraid. Be very afraid. William's guess as to what Mara would want to do is probably pretty accurate, too, really. Certainly he hasn't been wrong thus far about his description of what she was like. Mara seems like she would totally give Nathan a Trouble by way of thanking him for reuniting her and William. Probably some hideously ironic Trouble. Audrey's protest isn't much of a one, more of a puzzled observation that he already has a Trouble and she's not sure what would happen if she gave him a second one. William certainly seems like he's dying to find out, and encourages her to be, too. It's okay, Nathan. No one likes this, either.
On the list of things no one likes, let's flyover Haven to the adoption agency where Vince is getting politely stonewalled by a young woman. Who then waits until her co-worker is out of the room to display her bona fides, and by bona fides I mean tattoo. She wonders why he doesn't have the files, because she arranged to have the files lost in his general direction a few weeks ago under what she thought were his orders. Eh? He didn't order that. And he doesn't know who did until she makes mention of his brother picking them up himself. Oh really. DAVE. THE FUCK ARE YOU UP TO. The fuck have you been up to, I should say, since a few weeks ago would seem to indicate this happened around the time of Jennifer digging into her adoption. Whether that coincided with her digging into her adoption or immediately followed it is a little more murky. Come to that, whose idea was it to make Jennifer do a background check on herself anyway? Not whose idea was it as stated in the episode, because given the way they both seized on it as though they'd just had the most brilliant idea ever they totally talked about that beforehand. And that's the conversation I want to know about. Alas, not likely to happen. Since that's the case, hey, Vince, go shake your brother till answers about all of this secrecy come out, would you? Although there's a part of me that's viciously pleased that the running around obfuscating and obscuring information and redacting the hell out of everything shoe is on the other Teagues right now. Oh yes.
Over by the water again Jennifer is explaining that Dave said their research room was broken into, tossed, and the Cabot journal was stolen. The problem with that, Dave, is that the Cabot journal is literally of no use to anyone who would have to break into that room. At least as far as we've seen. Thereby narrowing the list of suspects to one podling-looking fellow with glasses who's been behaving jumpier than a frog on a hotplate lately WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU. Ahem. Jennifer has no reason yet to suspect that Dave is lying, and she has more reason than the rest to empathize about getting valuable books taken from her, especially given that that book seems to be all that stands between herself and death by truffle creature. Dwight and Duke grumble about how this just makes finding the fourth person even harder, when Duke gets another sniffle (nosebleed?) that isn't a sniffle. And a cough that isn't a cough. And then, you know, he drops to one knee and one hand on the ground and starts killing everything around him. This apparently involved putting a greenscreen in the middle of the actual field to make life easier on the SFX guys, which I can only approve of. And cackle at, a little. I love technology. Dwight and Jennifer start backing up, Jennifer with some insistence from Duke, but that's what you do when you have the slowly spreading death rot, isn't it? You back the hell away from it. At a just-enough pace when the person at the epicenter of the slowly spreading death rot is someone you care about that you want to keep in sight to make sure nothing else happens, but yeah. This isn't good. Duke's looking even more freaked out. The tableau as a whole is looking even more like the scenario dead Simon described to him in the field of violets, was it? In Sins of the Fathers (2x13) so, you know, let's not discount that callback. It's still spreading when we come back from the break. He still looks freaked out. It takes a second for everything to calm down, for the music to warble off into, well, different music. It looks like the cessation of the spread is the cue for Dwight and Jennifer in unison to come back to Duke, who jumps away from Jennifer touching him. Like you do when you suddenly develop a death touch Trouble! He doesn't know how he did that. I'm not sure anyone in this scene knows how he did that, but there's someone who might! It's probably not Audrey.
Back over to the hilltop of horrors, Nathan is still trying to reach Audrey over Mara. Let me just say that between the makeup, the lighting, and possibly post-production Emily Rose looks like she has black pits where her eyes should be and in addition to all the other weird eye shenanigans going on in this episode it is freaking me the fuck out. I can only assume that's on purpose. The Audrey-Mara balance keeps shifting as she reminds Nathan that she did do those things, and she liked it. And she might still like it, which is only the truth depending, again, on the Audrey-Mara balance. Meanwhile William is encouraging her and dripping glee all over everything. You might want to get a napkin or something, dude. I mean, it's not like Mara hasn't been popping up all over the place in the last few minutes, but that's just unseemly. Also unseemly is the sniffling Audrey is doing now that her back's turned to WIlliam, because she is doing the messy crying thing. And trying to whisper "Now" to Nathan in the middle of all of that. Nathan, honey, that's your cue. Pick it up. Okay, it only took him twice to get what she was saying. Just long enough for William to get suspicious and then reel and fall backwards from being vicariously head-butted! It's not a tranq dart, but it'll do. I also have no explanation for how he gets out of the handcuffs without a key, assuming he doesn't keep a spare handcuff key in his back pocket for strategic porpoises. That seems highly unlikely, though. We'll go with that Heckle and Jekyll, being made out of tar balls, aren't familiar with all the ways by which one can defeat a pair of handcuffs and continue with the Nathan hauling Audrey and William down to the thrice-damned lighthouse.
While we do a little dance of glee at that glimpse of Audrey, because yes, that is absolutely the kind of tactical brilliance we've come to expect from her, and hope that it's not also part of Mara, we visit the scene of a different kind of brilliance. Sort of. I mean, it's not like these are difficult conclusions to draw, but Duke's also what we could call emotionally compromised right now. He hypothesizes that it's a side effect of Audrey re-Troubling him (true) but tries to pass it off as minor in front of Jennifer (so, so not true). She's not buying it. Duke, Jennifer is not some melting snowflake, I guarantee she can handle the truth, or at least your fears and insecurities. You moron. Honestly, this is probably my biggest problem with their relationship, that Duke's trying to hide his worst self from her not just because he wants to be his best self, the hero that she sees in him, but because he's afraid if she sees the seedy underbelly she's going to run away. To which we may all chorus DAMMIT DUKE and move along as she goes to get aspirin from the car. That's another thing she does very well, is give Duke space to freak out at someone he feels okay to freak out at a little bit, in this case Dwight again. Who calls him on it, confirms that he saw the blood earlier, what the fuck gives, Duke? He doesn't know. Not really, though his theory about it being an aftereffect of his reTroubling still sounds as good as any, and he'd really like to dismiss this whole concerned brother in arms speech now please Dwight? No, Dwight's not going to let this go, because Duke you're taking bad lessons from Nathan and his noble self-sacrificing bullshit. You don't have to sacrifice yourself all the time for the greater good, or whatever you think is the greater good, and you damn sure don't have to do it without a shoulder to lean on. At which point Duke has had enough of what he's perceiving as hypocrisy (and I can't say he's wrong), calling Dwight on being a bullet magnet who's the chief. THANK YOU. We've only been swearing about that since he turned up wearing the officially-labeled vest at the beginning of the season. Though we've also seen signs that Dwight's been leaning on Vince and Dave and while I fault his taste in certain respects I can't fault him in what he does say next. Not only that Vince walks point, as he says for our cut over to the Herald, but that Vince took care of the people who killed his daughter. Which is confirmation of something that we've been wondering and guessing at most of this season, on account of we know Dwight wouldn't willingly work for someone who was incapable of or uninterested in meting out justice for a fuckup on that scale. That pretty much says that Dwight agreed to work for Vince but not the Guard, after Lizzie, maybe after he'd been granted an initial mourning period (which would've been smart on Vince's part, not to even approach the question until then), and that their relationship is predicated on the deeper sort of trust that comes from fucking up and setting things right. Interesting, and indicative of, once again, some very long-running themes in this show about identity and seeing each other clearly enough to work past differences and learn to respect each other.
Over at the Herald Vince is sitting at his desk brooding like he taught Nathan everything he knows. Dave comes in all earnest about the break-in at their research room and stole the Cabot journal, oh noes. Yeah, that's not going to fly. Not when Vince knows better and especially not when he has surveillance footage (you know what? we're not going to ask how he got that) of Dave accepting the files from the lady at the adoption center. Who's the fourth person, Dave? What's with the freaking out, Dave? I'm sorry, Dave, I can't let you do that. Dave can't do that either. And he can't tell Vince, which is something of a shock and a departure from the norm. For four seasons we've had these two brothers sometimes disagreeing, not always acting as one, but always aware of each other. We even have Dave saying that he always knows where his brother is, even though in light of recent developments that becomes a whole other kind of fucked up sinister statement. But now? Dave is shutting Vince out. The creepy brothers, near twins, are having their first schism that we've ever seen, in case we didn't realize how incredibly fucked up this episode is. They were building up to it last season, in fact at the very end of last season, let us not forget the whole whacking of each other on the head, duct taping each other, and throwing each other into trunks of cars. On the other hand, let us also not forget that Dave offered to do the identification when Vince thought it was Audrey in that autopsy room on the slab. They're brothers, tightly knit, throughout their very long lives. And this is something Dave doesn't want to tell him. This is something that when Vince, not entirely unwarrantedly, thinks the fourth person is him, that rattles Dave so badly he goes straight over the edge into quietly hysterical as he confirms, no, it's not Vince. If it were Vince his reaction would be, shall we say, somewhat different. Vince has ever since first season (Spiral 1x13) been if not loud and in charge about his protective sensibilities, definitely not shy about expressing them or tossing around threats, whereas Dave's the one we were mildly surprised by when he clocked his brother in the head with a vase. Dave doesn't get violent or abrupt until shit gets real, at which point he seems to start coming apart very messily all over everything, and this is about as messy as he's ever gotten. It's hard to say where everything plays as far as cause and effect in this scene; Dave accuses Vince of letting his ego ruin his judgement but they're both being more than a little egocentric here, Vince in his assumptions and Dave in his escapism. More notably, considering that Nathan, Audrey, and Duke, and even Dwight to the extent that it's been asked of him, have all offered to sacrifice their lives in one way or another for the good of Haven. Dave isn't willing to do that! He's instead obfuscating the investigation in every way he possibly can. And then accusing his brother of being an egotist. For all that alleged egotism, Vince doesn't take the news well. He's been raised to the role of protector of Haven, but he's also been raised as a brother, and now in order to protect Haven he has to sacrifice that brother. Or so they all seem to assume, Dave more than most, because no one has yet brought up that standing on one of those compass points will do anything to the otherworldly person; the only one getting anything done to them is William, and only because they're all agreeing to it. At any rate. Dave saw Agent Howard in Jennifer's file, giving us a timeline on his little theft, and he didn't want anyone to find Howard's presence in his file. Vince, still grasping at straws, seizes upon this to ask why he thinks he's from the other side anyway, since Dave hasn't outright said that Howard's listed in his file as the agent of social services on record. Well, because Dave's been there. Um. Been? There? Excuse me? What? How? Why? What? When? Mostly the when and how, but also all the rest, because you'd think Vince or someone would have noticed Dave slipping through a fucking dimension door at some point in Haven's past! If for no other reason than those tend to be noisy. And Dave would have been too young to remember when he was placed with the Teagues family, if he was raised with Vince as his brother. And so we're back to what? how? why? what? when? Vince has no answers for these questions, nor is he willing to think about them right now, because they're going to the fucking lighthouse to get this fucking over with so they can have some fucking time to think. I'm assuming that last part because it's what I would intend were I him. Dave is not down with this. Dave is on the verge of a full-blown panic.
Into the midst of all this tension barges our happy trio of What The Fuck Is Up With Duke, looking for some aspirin. Which is no longer so much about the aspirin as about getting other people aware of the fact that something's wrong and enlisting aid. Nobody's really sure what they walked in on but you'd have to have the emotional sensitivity of a death truffle creation to miss the tension in the air. Dave is all too clearly asking - almost begging, by his expression - Vince to let him go, let him escape, let him have even five seconds' head start - as he says he thinks there was some aspirin in Vince's car. Yeah, no. That's not going to play this time, Dave. Not with Vince's familial obligations to do what's best for Haven. (Still wanna know all the nuances to the Teagues Trouble. Still don't. This irks me. It's irksome.) Less so with his sense of betrayal, because even though they can both be incredibly pigheaded and convinced in the One True Path to whatever their goals are, they're also fiercely protective of each other and unquenchably inquisitive. Which is part of why they're running the newspaper: because they love information almost as much as we do. (What. Whaaaat.) More to the point, they love to control it, and you can bet that if Dave had brought this to Vince years ago he'd have had a willing partner in looking for ways to save Dave from the siren call or what-the-fuck-ever of the door that should not be opened. Instead, Vince is reeling with shock and betrayal and pulling on the only sense of rightness he has left: his Master of the Guard/first-born Teagues authority. Which says, no, Dwight, stop Dave from leaving. Again notably, Dwight's agreement is clearly with Vince, not Dave, because he does. Not with any great application of force, but any sensible or even vaguely sane person (and Dave's clinging to remnants of sanity still, which he will shortly lose) knows that going up against Dwight in sheer brute force is a losing proposition. Finally we come to the problem Dave has with standing on one of those points! When he does, something draws him through it, that would be the writers' words and not ours. Roland, be nice, stop calling Dave back to End-World, that's not nice. Whatever's over there, it's fucking terrifying, at least to Dave and probably to anyone with a sense of self-preservation. This begs a couple questions, like when, and why. And a third, tangential to the why, because we know that Dave saw the thing he was most afraid of in Fear & Loathing (2x02) and it looked an awful lot like Sarah. At least, out of the incarnations we know about, it looked closest to her, though that was a truly atrocious wig. Was it Sarah? Was it Mara? I would tend to think, based on Dave's reactions here, that whatever's over there qualifies as the scariest thing he's ever seen, which means either we've got a continuity error here (possible but unlikely) or somehow he did run into Mara over there. Again: how? And when? Right now, as Vince looks ashamed of what he's done and revealed to others and angry with Dave for forcing his hand like this, I'm leaning toward something from Lucy Ripley's time. Again. Because we don't know much about it, but Dave's fear reactions aren't quite as strong in the memory we have of the barn in Sarah's day (3x13), suggesting that something happened between those two incarnations to draw him through the door and cause this fear. That, or Dave's much, much, much older than we think he is. Also always a possibility, since we don't have any aging knowledge about Jennifer but neither William nor Mara/AudSarLuLex seem to age at normal mortal speed, and it's anyone's guess how much of that is time running differently in other worlds and how much is whatever the hell they are that's not Haven-style human. And yes, we're differentiating between Haven-world and our-world now, on account of who the fuck knows how close the writers are going to walk to King-style separation of the worlds. Maybe there's a Mid-World where no powers exist. Duke has a very "the fuck are you" look for Dave. So say we all, Duke. So say we all.
Meanwhile, under the lighthouse! Audrey wants to know who built this place. So say we all, Audrey. So say we all. Nathan's recovery response after he takes a second to look around and think about what's going on is, well, humor. He doesn't want to use this contractor when they build their dreamhouse. You know, the usual thing, dogs, picket fence, sea monster in the pool. Lucas Bryant I have no idea how you sell these lines, but you keep right on doing it. Humor, anyway, is both Nathan's self defense and his way of reinforcing intimacy between himself and Audrey, let's all remember the numerous intimate humor moments between them this season. And he tells her it'll all be over soon. And William smarts off from one side of the room that it's only just begun, because to William his beloved and one true love is deluded, amnesiac, and being seduced by a talking monkey. Or some similar slur. He's hurting. He's pissed. He's going to try his damnedest to assert his version of the woman in question, Mara, over Audrey, by questioning whether or not she'll push him through the doorway. Also it's a good way to goad Nathan. He still believes, and possibly rightly so, that Mara is winning out over Audrey and that they both know it. Which is also possible, considering Nathan's capacity for denial! From our viewing perspective it seems like Audrey has a tenuous grip on dominance, and the plot demands that she keep winning until the least opportune moment. Which fear no doubt Nathan holds, because he does rise to the bait and go over and get all up in William's grill as William stands there bold as brass. Because Nathan can't do a thing to him without hurting Audrey! Right? Of course .... not so much. Nathan's answer to this is to knee William in the balls, and all over the country thousands of fangirls jumped up and cheered in delight. We had a brief digression, I must admit, over whether or not it would have any effect on Audrey at all, but since it relies on pieces of the anatomy that she doesn't have we've agreed it works. Just know that doing that to a woman is also very effective, and most women won't see it coming because we're not trained to protect our crotches the same way men are. Against groping, yes. Against knees, not so much. ANYWAY. So that happened.
Once I recover from cackling under the desk like a maniac, see, Nathan, it's possible to be emotionally compromised AND tactically clever! Do more of that please. Dwight has Dave in cuffs, Vince is taking point literally as well as metaphorically probably so he doesn't have to look at his brother right now, and Duke and Jennifer are bringing up the rear. Partly because Duke makes a good last resort, but also so that we can have this little conversation between Duke and Jennifer. DUKE. LISTEN TO YOUR GIRLFRIEND. I do not for one second believe you can control what's happening, nor does she, and probably nor does he when he's not busy lying for her supposed peace of mind. But he's scared now that she might feel a similar compulsion to go through the door, and he doesn't want to lose her in a different and much more immediate way than him dying or her turning her back on him. Which are the other two likely ways right now that he can't admit to anyone including himself, alright, we'll allow it as long as he's being semi-honest about his fears. Sadly, she's right. She has to do this, and she's putting herself on the line same as everyone else is, and though she's saying it for his reassurance as much as hers, she also does believe that there's nothing that could make her leave him by choice. I also suspect that's in the way of tacit permission to stop her, if she looks like she's going to jump through it without Duke. I do not want to think about Duke with his mutated Crocker Trouble on the other side of that door, either, though fortunately they didn't grace us with that particular ending again this season. The little procession continues down to the lighthouse, Vince slightly in front so that it's a rough three-and-two pattern. It also looks kind of like a weird Druidic procession, with the avenue of trees down to the holy place for rites. Not helping, guys.
Our heroes enter the Heart of Haven accompanied by some dramatic music and heavy rhythm. I still have to say, there's a lot more people here than I expected there to be, although the usual suspects in just about every configuration possible are there. Audrey has words for Dave that amount to "I'm not mad I'm just disappointed." Dave ventures a very fake-sounding apology to which Vince chimes in, no he's not, and I swear you guys we do not sound like that in the real world. Much. Okay, we sound like that right up to the point where Vince threatens to make his brother sorry, because that's more macho than either of us is capable of being that blatantly. Dave feels faint! I call bullshit! But they do sit him down against a wall and there's enough of them between him and the exit that they can probably keep him there, especially since whether your hands are cuffed in front or behind you, it's hard to run in handcuffs. Nathan tasks Duke with watching William while they try and figure out if there's any particular configuration or methodology to doing this. Boys on boys, girls on girls would be my guess. Just saying. Duke will watch WIlliam with great pleasure and possibly less great violence, except for the part where he's doing a bad job at hiding how bad off he is. This gives William a smug. He tells Duke, essentially, that he's a dead man, only the context makes it sound like bravado. No, no, it's an eventual fact, an observation, William calls it. He explains a thing to Duke wherein every single Trouble that the Crockers have ever absorbed into themselves, all the generations of Crockers, is now manifesting within Duke because of what Audrey did when she reTroubled him. WHOOPS. Apart from running down a list of six or seven known Troubles that we know of, a handful of other unknown Troubles that we know of, we're looking at a potential several dozen unknown unknown Troubles and, well, that's a lot of Trouble. In all this Trouble let's not lose sight of the fact that WIlliam wasn't there when this shit went down, the connection between him and Maudrey wasn't necessarily up yet, so the most likely way he knows this is simply because he looked at Duke and saw what was going on inside of him. Well, I'm creeped out, how about you? Duke isn't taking this well and grabs up a handful of William's shirt as he yammers on in typical villain-provoking-the-hero fashion. Jennifer, equally predictably, tries to stop him. No, still rattled, and yes, I'd be even more rattled if I were Duke. Except that Duke is also STILL LYING TO JENNIFER. DUDE. ENOUGH ALREADY. Death by Trouble overdose is not nothing. So he doesn't have to lie badly to her much longer he asks what the book says to do next, but there's no new information coming in, she doesn't know what to do, and she doesn't know why it isn't giving her specific instructions. Duke might be even better at this calming down and leading from just behind thing when he's using it as a way to ignore his own problems, because asking her what she thinks they should do gets her putting everyone on the compass points. Good Jennifer. Just for shits and giggles let's all note the ongoing theme of how the women step on their stones with fatalistic resignation and the men are both handcuffed and under protest. Squirmy protest, in Dave's case, and loud protest in William's as he tries to tell them what they're going to let in. So... what, William wasn't the great foretold evil? What's next, the Crimson King? Flagg? (Are we sure William wasn't Flagg? Except Mara didn't act a lot like Gabrielle.) Dwight goes over to help Nathan shut William up as Duke drops with what looks like nothing so much as a bad case of cramps. Shut up, I know from a bad drops-you-to-the-floor case of cramps. Dave will take advantage of the situation to grab Duke's gun from the back of his pants and brandish it around at anyone. DAVE. THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING. Duke, when all of this is over, will you PLEASE get a proper holster you can snap? Dave seems to have forgotten that no matter who he shoots at, he's going to hit Dwight. William gives no fucks for anyone getting shot (since, well, we did see him get shot and heal himself shortly thereafter, I guess he doesn't have anything to worry about) but is morbidly entertained that Dave is pantswettingly scared of what's on the other side of that dimension door. What? What the fuck is it? The Crimson King? Cthulhu? Ultron? What? Dave is so scared he's willing to shoot his own brother to stop from maybe getting pulled through that door, despite the fact that there are at least a couple of people who would chain him to the rock to keep him from doing so. There's a reason it's called being scared out of your wits, and this is it. Meanwhile Dwight moves around in the background, which means he's just large enough to be seen but we don't quite know what he's up to until Dave fires and the bullet turns right back around and goes through his shoulder and into Dwight's vest. We love you, Dwight. Never, ever stop being badass. Vince is still in shock that Dave shot him, Dwight corrects that because Dave only shot at him, and actually shot Dwight, and himself, as he catches Dave and gently lowers him to the ground. He doesn't say it word for word but it amounts to, he's had a long time to figure out how to use being a bullet magnet to his advantage. In fact, let's all remember that one of the first episodes he was in, he used his bullet magnet powers to his advantage, and Nathan's! (Lockdown 2x09) Because Dwight is, say it with me now: The Best. And everyone back to places. Duke, you may now commence lying about being doubled over in pain.
Okay, okay, he's not lying to Jennifer now. It's a little difficult to do that when you're lying on the ground gasping for air and clutching your chest like you're suffering massive organ failure. Which he might well be, considering the Nix Trouble. Or any of half a dozen other ones. He is, however, trying to make light of it so that he himself doesn't break down. I will accept this even as I still want to throw a fucking anvil at him. On the other hand, he's got to be incredibly aware of the Trouble he just absorbed, and if they do start mutating and showing up in something like reverse chronological order (which would be fairly traditional for such things) then he has to keep himself from crying. Otherwise he could kill… well, probably mostly Nathan or Dwight or Vince? Or possibly Jennifer or Dave; we know they're not immune, just hardier than your average bear. So. Hurry up and get on with it and hopefully after that we can all go back to the Cape Rouge for an orgy dinner! Sure. We'll go with that. Jennifer and Audrey exchange a look, and it looks like that's mostly Audrey again, giving her the go-ahead nod. Since those are the only two here willingly, that's all it takes! Still no new instructions from the book, but apparently Duke's dose of trust your instincts is still holding, because the book itself turns out to be the key to unlocking this door. The book and intent, I'd say, since the second's usually pretty important in magical doings. The center of the circle drops away, leaving a door in the floor, which is not normally how I'd expect these things to happen - I'll fully admit I was expecting something more like the Drawing of the Three freestanding door from earlier this season - but sure, that works! More of a Waste Lands dimension door in the evil-looking pit-of-hell type of vibe to it, too. Dave and William clearly think so! Vince and Dwight do have a certain degree of care in how they're holding Dave on his place but also look prepared to haul him back if need be, not that, apparently, you have to STAY on your spot on the labyrinth once the door's been opened. (For the record, we've been using labyrinth in its old Christian church sense here, the very simple pattern on the floor which you walk to its center. It's not a difficult maze; some have argued it's intended as a form of meditation to calm your mind and reach your center as you reach the labyrinth's center, some have argued it's a form of metaphorical pilgrimage. Nobody's quite sure, but it's a good bet the Haven writers are leaning hard on the similarity of the visual even if not on the literal Christian mythos of it.) Oh NOW William's freaked out and trying to negotiate! The downside to all of this attempt at negotiating is that I don't think he's lying about any of it. Keeping back the better part of context, yes, we know he's good at that, but lying? No. Which means he thinks that whatever they're doing and however much he may or may not deserve this, whatever's over there is even worse. Look, at least they didn't get the Glendowers in to chant Cthulhu phtagn at the circle, right? That's gotta count for something. I even believe that he can fix Duke, though I'm going to die laughing over how it's Nathan Duke cites as liking him just the way he is. Pardon me while I tuck my trollface back in my pocket. I love those two. And any further recriminations and pleading on William's part will have to wait, because Dave's gone all possessed and hollow-eyed and managed to shove Vince off him so he can go lemming into the pit of despair. Wait, wrong movie. It's only once he gets to a point of halfway between and Vince clinging on that he seems to register the fear of where he is, which does suggest one helluva lot of possession of some kind. And it takes all three boys not currently evil or writhing on the ground in pain to haul Dave out of said pit, Dwight says there's something pulling back, and Vince refuses to lose his brother. I'm kind of awestruck by the depths of their filial devotion even as I'm twitching over how much worse that pit does look than the clouds and lightning that Lexie faced when she leapt from bar/n to Haven. Eek. It also looks like there's some kind of sanity struggle going on for Dave, too, because his eyes clear up right before he gets hauled out of the pit. I'm choosing to believe Dwight's line about don't do that again, Dave, was either an ad lib or a writer's 2001 reference, do you have any idea how hard it's been to limit our HAL lines this recapalypse?
Of course now that Nathan has breath, energy, and attention to spare it's time to get Audrey the fuck away from William, who is trying to convince her that doing this to him would be being more evil than Mara could ever be. Well, that's progress, at least he's kind of admitting Mara was evil? It's also interesting in that it's the first time he's addressed Audrey as though she was a separate person from Mara and not the shell encasing his beloved. He's desperate enough to come to talk to her on her own terms now, but Audrey is not putting up with this shit. We have a moment that we don't at all believe means William's getting out of this in which she stops Nathan from shoving William through the dimension door, but we all know she's going to say something about doing it herself. And indeed she does! That's not the problem, here. The problem happens when William grabs onto her arm with both hands and the lightning starts coursing up and down their arms. William gets one good grin and a "I knew you were in there" as whoever she is currently looks on in horror, right before William goes toppling through. Everyone looks some combination of shocked or relieved, except Audrey, who seems to be mouthing "but..." Not that anyone sees this at the moment. Duke's too busy writhing in pain, Jennifer's too busy closing the door, Nathan's too busy trying to keep Audrey away from the edge, and the others are too busy either recovering from almost going through the door or gaping at what just happened. Jennifer does close the door with the book, though, as Nathan tightens his arms around Audrey because the hell if he's going to lose her through yet another dimension door. And up comes the slab till it's just floor again! And down goes Jennifer! Unfortunately the finale is not giving us many clues as to what happened to her, so for the moment we're going to go with death or incapacitation by psychic overload. Which is which depends, we think at the moment, on whether or not they get Emma Lahana back for season five. Because there's going to be a season five, right SyFy? So far, though, no clues as to her cause of droppage. What she does say, presumably because she was the only one looking through that door the whole time and she's previously demonstrated an ability to see or hear more than swirling thinny, is that they shouldn't have opened that door. And they shouldn't have been afraid of William, but whatever was on the other side. And with that ominous pronouncement, she's out! We can see Duke almost visibly trying not to cry except whatever else is going on, internal organ Trouble maybe, it's palpably and now visibly killing him. Bleeding from the eyes! And the ears. And the nose. That's fun and kind of horrific. But since we haven't had enough horrific yet, let's have Audrey Mara step out into the middle of the platform, declare him as good as dead, and inquire who's going to help her get William back. Well, fuck.
Normally this would be the part where we come up with theories. We're not going to. Sorry! By now the theories have gotten so big and so numerous that they could make up their own post, so that's what we're going to do, after a few days of sleeping and swearing and eating something vaguely resembling healthy food and watching episodes again and again. Look for a Haven mythology and speculation about the future post to come sometime in the next week or two, and after that we have a long, long, long list of essays to write.
It's been fun, you guys! It's been fun watching, and it's been great to have you all along with us for the ride. Don't forget to write or tweet or in other ways (secret decoder trashy fiction book. hashtags on walls.) convey to SyFy that we want a season five, and we'll see you back here for more recaplyses when it starts up again in the fall.
As a new viewer of Haven who came across your blog recently, I just wanted to thank you for the excellent work. I found it thoughtful. comprehensive and often hilarious. You've given me another reason to hope (pleasepleaseplease) for season five!
ReplyDeleteAww, thank you! Us, too. They keep hinting around the edges on Twitter, though at this point I'd just be satisfied if SyFy did their usual six eps to wrap the current plot-points before pulling the plug. Which is what I expect, best case scenario, given how long they're taking. :(
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