So. It's the last season. Everything's gone straight to hell. And we're punchier than we've ever been, so here's the deal. For those of you who are amused by such things, we're starting a "Fucks Given" jellybean jar. Guess how many times we dropped the f-bomb while we were watching or discussing and working on the recaplysis. Whoever gets closest wins a No-Prize. (Which is basically a shout-out on the blog, if you never read the Marvel comics at the right time.)
Everyone buckled in? Got your safety gear on? Everyone got a firm grasp on their buttocks, their wits, and their boozahol? Because we're all going to need it. Previously, on Haven! Charlotte is Mara's mother. (No, not Audrey's, even if she really really wants us all to believe that. Creator, sure.) Mara made Duke into a Trouble bomb she plans to set off unless her mother lets her out of Haven. Honestly while I firmly disapprove of her methods, she clearly hasn't been taught better. Dave is having mysterious visions of a lot of people dying and the word Croatoan carved into a rock. This just gets better and better! Audrey talks Joe Senna down from his Trouble, which is surely only here because it will be Important Later, and oh, Charlotte is a terrifyingly manipulative evil bitch who's willing to kill her own daughter and make Audrey be the whatever-non-human-being she is in order to get someone who won't point a gun at her. Charlotte has not met Audrey when she's super pissed off. Oh, and Duke exploded with Troubles, as per Mara's threat. Seriously what the fuck did you expect, Charlotte.
We pick up right where we left off! By now that's at minimum thousands, maybe tens of thousands of Troubles. Nathan is wearing his Captain Obvious hat, I see. I have a question that hasn't been answered as of the end of these two episodes! Can Charlotte and Audrey pick up one of these new Troubles? We know they're not immune to their effects the way they are to the prior Troubles, because Mara did that on purpose, but we don't know if there's anything in their DNA makeup (for lack of a better term) that will prevent them from becoming Troubled. At any rate, Duke falls over either unconscious or dead (look, it's Duke, he's just unconscious) and Nathan asks if Charlotte can help him. Please let's never ask her for things. Do you know how many strings are attached to her help? Because we don't, and that's even more worrisome than if we DID. I'm going to have a moment at the screen over how Duke is literally in the Pieta pose with Audrey THAT'S JUST WRONG OKAY. For those less familiar with Marian Catholic traditions, that'd be Duke as a dying Jesus and Mary holding him in her lap; which Mary sometimes varies between his mother and the Magdalene, I believe, but still and nonetheless, AUGH.
Well, Audrey, all those Troubles went to fucking up everyone else even more than they already were. What did you think, they were going to go into orbit and become just some more space debris? While creepy and Camazotzian, no, that is not what's happening. We have the by now entirely predictable Happy Beach Scene that's going to turn into everyone shrieking and running away, though not from sharks or Glendowers or anything else in the water. First three people (drink!) get stung by Troubles on-screen, then the third guy (drink again!) appears to have a Trouble similar to Garland's in that he causes earthquakes. There are not, however, cracks in the earth, so it's not the exact same. I have to say, if I were Mara I'd've riffed on some existing Troubles and made variants just to fuck with people's expectations of How This Trouble Works! Or even, Whose Trouble Went Off This Time. OR, if you're of a really long-term sadistic mind, Whose Child Is That Really And Why Don't They Have My Trouble. I mean, the possibilities could be endless. But anyway, that solves a couple problems in one: neither Mara nor the writers' room has to come up with a HUGE mass of never-before-seen Troubles.
Ominous shot of the encroaching fog! Duke is indeed just out cold. Charlotte nobody believes your apology where is the Lying Cat when I need it. (K: LYING.) Oh hey, shit's exploding. Again. Literally. Well, maybe not the literal shit part, but definitely the exploding. Nathan needs to go to the station so he can coordinate with people, Audrey plans to take Duke and Charlotte to the hospital, Nathan your clingy obsession is what fucked this town over in the first fucking place so can we just not? Audrey would also like him to just not, although the question about trusting her not!mother is a good one. Even if her response isn't. Audrey no. No it counts for Charlotte thinks she can manipulate the hell out of you where she couldn't with Mara. I appreciate that you'd like to think that choice counts for more than that, but she chose you and KNOWINGLY risked (you can't tell me otherwise) setting off Duke because she wanted a pet daughter she could bonsai into her perfect image of the perfect family. Because Charlotte is fucked. up. Who believed the line about her research at the start? I didn't! I will, however, buy her line about a little family time being *pause* enlightening as a suggestion that she's allowing for the possibility that Charlotte is a lying conniving sack of shit who lies and she wants to get as much information out of her as she can. Even if it's false information, it's a place to start. Nathan leaves her with a kiss and commentary about just getting her back and stay out of danger seriously who the fuck do you think you're talking to, Nathan. Audrey thrives on danger and getting to help people. You KNOW this. This is one of the reasons you fell in love with her. Stop being a fucking moron.
Down to the PD! That is… a lot of cops. In fact I'm with one of the random Tumblr commenters from last night, where the hell did they all come from, I didn't think the force was this big. Are there reservists? Is the town even big enough for reservists? Or did they call in other shifts to work 12s, or what? Dwight is dispatching people since he has the best idea of what the fuck to do with this many Troubles, or at least he's better crisis management trained than Laverne. (Also, y'know, we can show him onscreen, and not one of the Haven producers, I think she is?) Sadly, there is no getting ahead of this thing, no matter how much Dwight might wish it, and that's going to end up taking a toll on everyone and particularly, right now, him. Fog bank not helping, etc etc, oh here come the Teagues to demand answers. I would argue they're the last people in a position to be able to demand any kind of info from anyone, given their fucking secretive bullshit, but hey. Nathan shoos everyone into the office to update them. Vince's first takeaway is "Mara's gone for good?" That is a good and excellent takeaway, I must say, four for you, Vince. Which might be the first time I've said anything of the sort, certainly since oh about the end of s2 sometime. But Duke, Trouble bomb, etc. I believe this is one of the few instances of bringing the primary cast up to speed that doesn't ENTIRELY take place off-screen, which I approve of as a writing choice. It lets us get the impression that fewer secrets are being kept (yay!) while allowing the writers wiggle room to later go "oh but crucial detail X was forgotten/withheld on purpose," and in this show usually on purpose, and it doesn't eat up screen time with expository bullshit. So we have all these new Troubles, Vince and Dave confirm that the fogbank is keeping people in and Dwight leaps to the obvious "it's someone's Trouble" conclusion. People are panicking! Anyone could be Troubled! The combination of these two things is Very Not Good. By "could snowball," Dave, I think you mean both will and is. Vince gives him a Significant Look of stop keeping secrets, brother-mine, which is fucking rich coming from him. I take the four back. Dave will now 'fess up about all the visions! At least the gist of them, which is for those who don't remember: people dying and screaming, Croatoan carved in a rock, area description matching North Carolina, and we know there's a thinny down there. Croatoan is also carved in a rock in the here and now! Yaaaay. How much do I love that Dwight doesn't need explanation about the lost colony of Roanoke beyond the word of warning/summoning/whatever the fuck? So much. No, there's nothing else, or at least nothing Dave remembers off the top of his head. I do have one question though, if the running and screaming in the present is caused by Mara fucking everyone over with a Trouble bomb, what was the running and screaming in the past caused by? That would have been during the cycles, at the start of the cycle, was it also caused by Mara? But if so, why, considering the Trouble bomb was caused by her in response to Charlotte interfering. And is that tied to the mist wall or the mist out of the eyes? It's a hinky connection, is what I'm saying, and it seems like there's something about both the past and the present that we don't know, different things about each. At any rate, considering how chaotic and incoherent the fucking things are, to say nothing of the chaos in town, I don't really blame Dave for forgetting about the weird dark mist out of the eyes thing. Dwight asks about inducing a vision on purpose because, as he says, they need answers if worse is coming. This is true, however, could you try not suggesting shit that might kill your source of answers? No LSD for you, Dave. No. Bad. I cannot condone that. Vince is right, though, drugs that already induce altered states of consciousness have brought on visions before, and as little fun as a morphine addiction sounds, everyone dying of some kind of weird serial killer sounds worse. Peyote might be safer, though. The Teagues go off to figure something out, and Officer Rafferty comes up to tell Dwight and Nathan it's a madhouse out there, yadda yadda. She knows about the Troubles! But not everyone working the PD does, particularly not all the people out trying to calm the Troubles. Um. I'm going to take a second for Garland are you high why did you not hire a majority of cops who knew about the Troubles. I assume Because Vince and the Guard, and while they could have hired from within the Guard the fewer cops with split loyalties the better, but for fuck's sake more people capable of keeping a cool head in supernatural situations is BETTER. Argh. We get the requisite over the radio scene of having to listen to a bunch of people maybe-die, definitely be affected by a Trouble over the radio, while the whole station stands around helplessly. And then another explosion, this one right next to the building. Oh yay. Roll credits.
Credits have not changed! Which you bet your ass we were on the lookout for. We reopen with another panover of asploding!Haven and Audrey and Charlotte drag Duke through the elevator doors at the hospital. Here have a wheelchair and an expository nurse about the killing gas upstairs with a face. Audrey's all fired up to go help where she can because that's her Thing, but no, Charlotte's going to try and make it HER thing. Uh… huh. My what are you up to, you lying liar face: let me show you in. (K: LYING.) Duke, half-conscious as he is, has a similar face once the debate is over and Charlotte goes off to get her "research." Duke actually feels pretty good, if not, as he points out, normal. Poor Duke. Not a surprise, though, considering all the Troubles he was walking around with. I wouldn't feel very good being a walking supernatural bomb, how about you? And he demonstrates the doing okay by getting up and immediately engaging with his surrounding and almost as immediately reaching the terrible conclusion that the panic is all because of the Troubles he unleashed. Honey. Mara did that. Not you. He's not wrong that this is also because his plan to skip town through a thinny failed, but that's still not his fault. Audrey is all wait what you were WHAT, which was about our reaction when we first figured out his martyrdom play. I do not even know where Duke Crocker gets off claiming to be a selfish smuggler at this point. I also think we were supposed to take the "Dwight and Nathan and… you" as being somehow romantically significant, but I don't, not really. Discomfort with admitting to someone's face that they matter, absolutely, that's Duke all over. He's going to escape his emotional distress by going to dig up the family journals and see if there's anything in there that could help them! Which is also not a bad plan in general.
Meanwhile Dwight and Nathan are driving out to see what the fuck happened with that last emergency radio broadcast, which turns out to be at the edge of the fog with a lot of cars scattered over the road. And yes, yes it is rather ominously quiet compared to the screams and shouting, Nathan, we're so glad you noticed. I'd argue they should be unsnapping their taser holsters, but given the Troubles, okay, maybe not. At any rate, there's not much you can do to or about the people who are literally frozen in place. That must've been a fun filming trick. Hmm, who do we know with a Trouble kinda like this? Touching them doesn't appear to damage them or Nathan. Nathan quit poking the models. Actually given the current state of the Troubles and how a lot of what we know is being rewritten, I'd go with a no-touchy rule for first contact of any unknown Trouble situation if I were them. If Haven weren't so isolated I'd say send in the drones, but I doubt Haven has drones. At least two of the bystanders are frozen in the middle of running away, several of the cars are damaged, the cops were trying to arrest someone. Dwight would like everyone to rewrite the fucking procedure manual. I cannot blame him, but those are going to be some awfully ingrained reflexes. Let's have a graphic demonstration that the cars just get turned around out in the mist and can't get through, and a discussion of how much worse everyone being trapped makes things. I have another question: are there seriously no people living right underneath the fog? The fuck happened to them? Because it cuts across what looks like actual blocks in a couple places. If anyone watched the other (other other) Stephen King based TV show Under the Dome, we know we got some really graphic looks at what happened to people who were straddling the line when the dome came down. It was exactly as gross as you'd expect. This fogbank, though, seems thicker and less slice-y than that. So, what, do they get spat out one side or the other? Probably the Haven side? Or are they tucked away in the Fogbank of Holding until the fog disappears? And if so, does it disappear them when the fog lifts or does it leave everyone wondering where the time went? Come, sing with us the song of our people. (The chorus is "Insufficient data".) So yes, we're going to have a lot of snowballing Troubles: first everyone panics and tries to leave, then they realize they're trapped, then more Troubles, then more panic, then MORE Troubles, and basically Haven's going to burn. As a containment method this is not awful for the rest of the world(s); as something a whole lot of people are going to have to live with and maybe die by, it fucking sucks. So! Nathan can think of one person who creates barriers like this out of strong emotion, namely fear, but this is to a greater extent even than protecting his children individually by shutting up a room down at the station or almost sinking a boat. In fact, I dare to say this is William amped up someone's Trouble type of extent. Still, he sends Audrey off to look for Joe to see if it really is his doing, and if so, if she can talk him down from it. A good plan! Oh and here comes a car barreling faster than safe through the line of cars and frozen people with no fucks given for if it hits Nathan or Dwight. But the driver does noticeably miss all the frozen people - until it gets bounced back off the fog, and then it runs straight through at least three of them, by their clothes it looks like two cops and a civilian woman who'd had her hand upraised in a 'stop' position when she was shattered. Apparently when you impact frozen-by-Trouble people at high speeds, they chunkify like they've been through a rough-chop in a blender. Eww. That'll be a pain to clean up. Nathan that barrier is so not coming down anytime soon.
Back to the station, where Dwight has apparently suggested something in the truck that Nathan's not entirely happy with or certain about. He doesn't, though, have anything else. Dwight has a murdermap! In some respects literally. And a list of shit they're up against: explosions, magnetic storms, the fog… Other things on that list include the officers frozen gee I wonder if it's one of your people, Dwight. This is some messy fucking handwriting, but let's see what we can pull off of the map not mentioned out loud: mysterious lights smashing into homes on Duke (heh) St, Mrs. McDonald, wood transmuted to cardboard, tooth loss (sorry K), something at the fishing plant that sounds like a shotgun or an air cannon (someone can't spell cannon), something affecting hundreds downtown, something eyes at an optometrist's, I think that says worms on one of the outlying islands, and talking birds on top of Tuwiuwok Bluff. What is this, Narnia? Nathan concedes the point, they've spent as much time and energy keeping Haven's secrets as anyone (really? even Vince and Dave? just saying) but now they want there to be a town LEFT. Honestly I can't fucking believe people still are ignoring that Something Supernatural is going on in this city still, but sure, okay, it gives Dwight an excuse to badass around. Seriously where did all these cops come from. Are they Dwight's hires? In which case bad Dwight for not hiring more people who were at least Trouble-adjacent. Married into a Troubled family, etc. The audience will now proceed to have some No Shit moments, but this scene is significant both because Dwight looks to Nathan for support (one of the last times he'll do this in the first couple eps) and because this is a cat that, once let out of the bag, cannot be crammed back in. (A: Not even if you tell the cat it's a murdercave to attack you from. Look I'm just saying: not all cats.) (K: Damn right not all cats. There is a difference between going into a bag and someone cramming you into one.) It's a pivotal point for the show to just break one of the core rules they've maintained for five seasons, and it should impress on everyone in and out of the show how bad things have gotten.And even if they tried to tell the HPD don't tell anyone else, it wouldn't work, so thank god they skip that one. There are some interesting jawdrops and confused looks and blank stares to match the very few knowing and wary looks as Dwight and Nathan slowly reveal Haven's secrets. Some of them. Not all! But the important ones. I wish they'd gone for the one where Audrey is some kind of Troubles savior, though that would've required even more delicate handling and preferably her permission. Still, it's one of those things where you give people a beacon of hope, and Audrey has historically been really okay with that position. The boys also out themselves as Troubled right upfront. Guys, I know it's really personal? But it would be a SUPER good idea for you to tell them all WHAT your Trouble is so they don't freak out that you're going to do something to them. ESPECIALLY YOU, DWIGHT "BULLET MAGNET" HENDRICKSON. IN A COP SHOP NO LESS. Do you think this is going to come back to bite him? Do bears shit in the woods? Dwight goes on to explain that he wants them to change into peace officers, not police officers. I would like to make the point that ideally THAT IS WHAT THE POLICE SHOULD BE DOING. Also this is not actually going to work the way Dwight wishes it would: everyone's scared of the Other, and this is about as Other as you can get. If they were all military it might work, military with Dwight's training? But they're not. They're small-town cops, with cop mentalities, and if the last year and some has shown us anything in the real world, it's that that's not too far off from a standard gang mentality with the force of law behind it. Since we're also doing season two right now, let's not forget the couple cops we saw in the lockdown episode who were particularly belligerent (and clearly mostly out of fear) to "special" people, and now let's picture them with a full confession from the person or people who they expected to lead them, and full awareness and expectation of them being able to police Troubled people with an eye to stopping the Troubles. How many of them do you think will opt to stop people's Troubles with a taser or a bullet? Yeah.
And now, Duke! And Nathan hugging the crap out of him. Awwwww Nathan. You really do care. Even though you're crap at showing it a lot of the time. Duke wants to stop hugging and start focusing on cleanup, first he calls it Mara's mess, then his mess. Nathan that would've been a great time to disagree about whose mess it is, not just nod silent and stoic like you did. He's found reference to the girl who explodes everything she touches in the Crocker journals, he knows the trigger, he gave her the Trouble, out of everyone he should be the one to talk her down. This seems reasonable! Nathan wants backup, and isn't all that fond of the idea in the first place, but it'll stop exploding girl from hurting anyone else and traumatizing herself further, and it'll give Duke some small peace of mind and a sense of being able to do something to mitigate the endless river of crap, so they may's well go with it. They walk out just in time for Dwight to wind up his presentation (you should've made a powerpoint, dude) with the requisite opening the floor to questions. Stan has just one: what? ("the fuck" is implied). Poor everyone. It IS a lot of infodump. Unfortunately you have to be adaptable, and if you're not, well, you and everyone around you is fucked.
The Teagues went to Gloria for a narcotic/altered consciousness inducing drug! Well, I must say she's probably the right choice, both as far as having something to hand and for keeping her mouth shut about why, but woooow could you look more uncomfortable, guys. I'm a little concerned that a body's going to slide out when Gloria goes over, but no, she's pulling out a bottle of tequila she claims is so strong it's illegal in Mexico. Uh… huh. I mean, maybe! Somehow I think part of this is for show, though. Vince has side-eye over her keeping it in the freezer with the bodies. Vince are you really saying you didn't know HOW morbid MEs get? Particularly functional alcoholic ones? Because honestly.
Joe Senna is not home. Maybe he's out looking for his son! Who's missing. On Route 19. Fucking seriously? Fuck you guys. And his partner got frozen, because yes, Alex Senna is a cop. (We all remember that from last season, he got sealed into the gun locker? Because nothing bad can ever happen when you're sealed in a gun locker.) And just as we said then we say now, that's just awesome and cannot possibly go wrong. Ooh, hey, anyone want to bet his partner was one of the people who got splatted? Not that we're going to find this out but I volunteer the idea for extra owies. Charlotte would like to know what the fuck they're going to do even if they get the barrier taken down, except the conversation about this gets derailed by the massive explosion a couple blocks over. Yes, she's scared, Audrey even when you were immune to ALL the Troubles you still weren't immune to explosions. I do have some sympathy on that score. I do not have sympathy for Charlotte's give no fucks about anyone except her and her supposed daughter, not least because of the aforementioned bonsaiing. Audrey also has no sympathy, particularly for the attitude of being better than other people just because you're immune and being scared when that immunity's taken away. She's been there done that got that t-shirt, Mom, grow up. Let's not forget, she did a fair amount of talking people down before she knew she was immune to anything. Charlotte will now try to assert her authority by claiming she's driving. That works better if you get the keys before making proclamations.
Lisa Hawkins is the name of the exploding touch girl, though if she's been holed up in there for even the last hour she's clearly not the source of the decorative fireballs blossoming all over town. I say decorative fireballs because there is at least an even chance they're only springing up for decoration to underscore the fact that shit has gotten very, very real. We're talking Samuel L Jackson staring at you with the eyepatch I'm the realest person you're ever going to meet levels of real. Which is why it is only an even chance, it might turn out in the next couple episodes that these fireballs come back to haunt us. Not from Lisa, though. She's hiding, probably trying to keep calm, considering if she's the exploding touch girl from last season/last mid-season she killed a guy. Nathan's bringing two uniforms and Duke in, detailing the rest of them to go keep pedestrians clear, presumably that's going on first which is why Nathan's approaching Alex Senna, asking him where he's been around town. Because reminding him of the traumatic things he's seen is a great plan. No, I take most of that back, Nathan couldn't him specifically how rattled he was until he started talking. And then of course once Alex says where he's been one of the other uniforms makes the connection and starts freaking out in typical cop faction, get back, he's one of them, drawing that line there. And Alex freaks out and freezes everyone. Like you do. There are worse Troubles to have at least, if he can oh hey Duke's moving. So Duke's the immune one now. Sadly by this point Duke is traumatized enough that his ability to talk anyone down from having frozen a handful of people is severely hampered. I mean, let's go through a short list of everything he's been through lately, okay? To his respective time he a) saw Audrey, a close friend, walk into a doom barn to stop the Troubles, to which b) Nathan then shot the barnvatar, causing the barn to collapse on Audrey and thereby changing it from maybe I'll see you in 27 years to who knows what will happen. So c) he dives into the barn, d) loses 6 months and makes a friend in Jennifer Mason who then e) dies horribly because he brought her to Haven where she participated in a ceremony to f) open a portal to shove William the Troubler through who, let's not forget, caused him to g) have to be reTroubled so he can h) kill people to take away their Troubles before they kill others. This isn't even going NEAR the part of i) his brother took over his bar and home and kind of his life while he was gone and then j) also took over his role as Troubled-people-killer since Duke couldn't get him to leave Haven in time, resulting in k) Duke having to kill him. I'm up to K. That's a whole lot of trauma. So really, the wondrous part here is that Duke's still up and running and not actively trying to harm himself and not that he's not doing a better job talking Alex down. Because he isn't, really. He's basically beating him with the blunt end of Hi you're the Troubled person freezing people because of your terror.
Over at the morgue, Gloria and Dave are having what looks like an homage to Marion Ravenwood out-drinking everyone in Tibet at the beginning of Raiders. Except she's only out-drinking Dave. Also she's surprisingly sober-seeming. I mean, functional alcoholic, but that bottle's significantly emptier, even with two people doing shots. You don't know what now, Vince? Maybe you should've thought of that before you got your brother soused. Dave is very, very drunk. Asleep and drunk. Yeah, I'd check his pulse too, thank you Gloria for having the most common sense in the room WHILE DRUNK. For fuck's sake. Oh, hey, Croatoan is the trigger word, we can all finish off that bottle now. Some guy who looks vaguely familiar is being chased through the woods! Dave is not going along, he's too drunk to be of use oh wait, of course Gloria has a sober-you-up banana bag. Except it's a sober HER up kit for when she needs to be less drunk for delivering a report or working an autopsy, I assume. Well, at least they're not playing the alcoholism solely for laughs. (K: It looks like the color of Vitamin B urine or possibly Surge soda, I'm kind of laughing.)
Back over at the house of frozen and 'splodey (not nearly as icky as the Song of Ice and Fire but close) Duke continues to do a crap job at talking down Alex, who has finally caught up with the fact that Duke isn't frozen when everyone else is. Why? Well, that's because Duke gave him the Trouble. Let's all note he's not even trying to explain that this wasn't his idea or his wishes, this was a psycho alien using them as hostages with Duke as the weapon pointed at the heads of everyone in the town. She pulled the trigger, Duke went off, and now everyone's suffering, but no, Duke's framing it as his fault because after the last six months he might well be passively suicidal. At the very least prone to accepting any kind of blame or anger directed his way whatsoever, making himself the whipping boy for everyone's fears and frustrations. And boy howdy are there a lot of them in this town. On the plus side, Alex getting angry at him means he's not afraid anymore, which means everyone comes unfrozen! Yay! Ish. One Trouble down, umpteen-frillion to go. Nathan goes over to see how he's doing, what happened, figures out pretty quickly that Duke's immune to the Troubles he gave people. And even if there's no judgment from Nathan, there's a hell of a lot of bad timing when he tells him maybe it's better if he's not around to talk down exploding touch Lisa Hawkins. Duke doesn't even argue, doesn't do much of anything which is even more worrying than if he'd picked a fight with Nathan, remember when he used to do that? Given that he's likely immune to her explodatouch, he should be picking a fight with Nathan, if Lisa needs a cool-down hug he's the only one who can give it. But no fight. Just quietly slinking away. Oh Duke honey. You need so much you time, some good things, and a mountain of therapy. A Lonely Mountain sized mountain of therapy. Let's all take note of Duke walking away alone to Nathan walking to a circle of people who accept him.
From the victim-blaming we go to manipulating! As much as I complain about all of this it IS actually believable, and everyone's recovered to some degree from the sheer broken of the first half of this season. (Except Dwight and Duke. Poor Dwight. Poor Duke.) Nathan confirmed that Joe Senna either is causing the fog or believes he is, let's not rule out that he believes it and it's not true, because there are LOTS of people who could have good reason to want to trap everyone here. Certainly people are taking advantage of it already! So they get to walk, and I like the nod to how inconvenient heels are for this amount of walking, and while they walk Charlotte offers to take Audrey away from all of this. Because, you see, she closed the thinnies! She can reopen them again, surely? And they can go? Audrey gives her a lot of what the fuck are you smoking looks and intonation, and questions her dedication to Sparkle Motion the search for a cure to the Troubles. (K: No, Sparkle Motion comes later.) (A: Look it's foreshadowing!) Yeah, no, that wasn't the research, that was the magic ring! Apparently what they actually do is act as essentially a… homing beacon? Directional anchor? Something that lets them travel the void safely, anyway. Charlotte's pitch is let's get the fuck out of here while the getting's good, and we can be a happy family again! Oh, and you can even bring Nathan. She guesses. She's selling it with certainty but we don't know if she knows she's a lying liar who lies, if she's lying about being sure, or if she actually is sure and allowing Audrey a pet. Which is kind of what it sounds like. It'll be Audrey's real home! Charlotte I think you have forgotten that this is not Mara and Audrey has a lot of memories of Haven. In fact they're the only memories she's absolutely sure are hers. And whose fault is that? Oh yeah. Yours. Audrey could possibly make the correction to "mom" sound more like "fuck you" but she'd have to put some effort into it. Thanks but no, this is home, she's here to help the people of Haven and she'll never abandon them. Are you high. Etc. Audrey also proceeds to hammer on the what the fuck you promised a cure, or at least trying for one, are you lying about that too? Well… yeah kinda, is the answer. (K: LYING. Take a drink.) Specifically hat Charlotte needs, and I actually do buy this given later revelations, is a lot more time to study the Troubles and the deathtruffle aether and how it all interacts in order to come up with a workable solution. And she doesn't have it, nor, at this point, does she have a secure location for it. Okay, but… the Barn? I love the continuity we're getting here. Charlotte BUILT the fucking thing, it's a prison, it was supposed to fix Mara's mess if Audrey went ahead and killed Nathan, yes? No. No it was just going to kill all the Troubled people. That is, in fact, like ending the Troubles! Which I believe is what we said the first time the fucking Cabot journal and all of that came to light, was this is a sadistic solution and not the way someone we want to emulate and whose directions we want to follow would go about this and NO DON'T KILL NATHAN THIS IS THE WORST IDEA EVER.
So in light of these revelations which are more in the nature of confirmation that Charlotte is a hellbeast, I have one major question. If Charlotte is skilled enough to combine two life-forces, and she knew Mara knew more about the Troubles than she did, why is she not therefore skilled enough to TRANSFER THE FUCKING KNOWLEDGE to Audrey? Or is she powerful enough but not skilled enough to do something that, say, requires that kind of fine control? (Which actually sounds in keeping with her make-things-go-how-I-want-them-to personality.) Or did she just decide not to in another of her high-handed my way is obviously the right way decisions? Or what? Because it seems like that would be an obvious way to fix this, except no. Although it would put Charlotte in the position of having to listen to her daughter, and that seems like the opposite of what she wants, so I can see why she didn't do it. And you know, while I'm on the streak of bad-mouthing Charlotte, I get that, to some degree, she really is trying to be a loving mother etc. Maybe she even realizes that she done fucked up back in the distant past. But she keeps compounding her mistakes, and she refuses to listen to what the person she thinks matters most to her wants, so I have very little sympathy. I could actually consider her trying to be a decent mother if this weren't her first go-to and instead she listened to Audrey. Even if she doesn't think much of the rest of the town! Sure, she has no emotional connection to them, that works, and lord knows Audrey could use someone actually decent at protecting her AND listening to her, but that's very much not what's happening here.
Back at the other scene the lady cop who freaked out at Alex seems to be making up to him right now, aww. That's actually a really nice bit of hope there that they've included, that a person who panics and gets potentially belligerent or violent at the realization that someone in her proximity is Troubled, can calm down and accept and treat the person as a human being and not a walking curse bomb. To compound that, Nathan has his arm around the exploding touch girl (which may or may not mean she has it under control, it might mean people can touch her but she can't touch anyone, like Jordan and her full body suit) and is reassuring her that it's going to be okay. Two Troubles down, umpteen million to go? Take one down, pass it around. Audrey's back! Nathan is deeply relieved to see her, and they bring each other up to speed briefly including touching on earthquake guy, and Alex doesn't know where his father is either. So now what's the plan? Well, it doesn't involve Charlotte, that's for sure. Before she can explain what that means Vince is calling.
That did say worms! And 11 dead in a flash flood, so we're up to a death toll of at least 14 just this episode, that's high. Dwight continues to frazzle and triage, sending a guy over to Harper's Mill when Charlotte walks up with an armful of folders. Dwight's still pissed at her, to the point where the first two replies are single word ones. And the few sentences that she gets are cutting, though it's even odds whether or not she actually cares. I will allow, though, as how the fact that she's dropping off files with him and not with Audrey means she at least believes in the possibility of a reconnection, whether that's because she's persistent and can't believe no one will believe her or because there is some modicum of feeling under all that manipulation and arrogance I can't quite tell. I'm going to go with the first couple, because nothing she's done so far makes me think she cares about Dwight for Dwight's sake, instead of to make herself feel nobler and like a better person. Dwight isn't having any of her bullshit either. Oh Dwight. To add to his problems, Stan's coming up with news that the team he sent to deal with the zero gravity problem (oh my) need backup, though Stan is volunteering to go. We love you Stan. Please don't die. Dwight has a moment after Stan goes, if only quietly to himself now that there's no one else around to hear, a moment of admitting that this isn't working. But he doesn't have anything else. And now another cop is basically shoving earthquake guy (third appearance! drink! heavily, by now, we sure are) into the station and talking about locking him up. Because that'll calm everything right down. Meanwhile Dwight is wondering why the hell the cop brought a guy who causes earthquakes to the police station. As if to underscore the monumental stupidity of this action, the building starts to shake. Awesome.
A flyover tells us that Nathan's parked along the side of the road by someone's car, seeing the brothers Teagues in a second maybe it's one of their antiques. You know, the one Dave got locked in the trunk of. Neither of them are very happy about what they have to tell Nathan and Audrey, which is that Dave's vision led them to Joe Senna's cooling corpse. According to Dave, dying doesn't always end a Trouble that's active at the time of death. (That's relative news to us, but sure, why not. There's room for every type of Trouble, right?) And he has a good point, no one knows what all the new ones do or how they operate. It's not a reassuring point, but it's a good and valid one. Vince has an even more worrying theory, what if the killer in Dave's vision scared Joe into creating the barrier around the town and then killed him to prevent it from coming down? That's... okay, that's a fair notion as far as that goes, and a terrifying one, but to what end? Generally killers have a motive, even if it's simple jealousy, greed, or I hate everyone die all you fuckers. What do we know so far? We know that at one point in the past, in the late 1500s, the word Croatoan was carved in a settlement near another thinny and there was screaming, carnage, people dying. We know that recently the word Croatoan was carved in a rock near Haven and now there's screaming, carnage, people dying. We do not know the initial cause of the screaming-carnage-people-dying in the late 1500s, but we do here, and it does not appear to be identical to previous given the set of circumstances likely didn't exist back then. We know there is a black mist monster that is killing people, whether a monster of black mist or a monster that causes black mist. We assume, if we believe the characters on-screen, that Joe put up a barrier that separates Haven from the rest of the world, but we don't for sure know its origin. So basically there's enough here to link Joe's death to the original massacre, particularly when we get autopsy results or rather lack of results, but all we have for the most part is coincidence and very loose circumstancial evidence. We don't even have a proper order for causes and effects. In other words, it's time to sing the song of our people again.
Back at the police station there's a symbolic sign shattering and Dwight is trying to talk earthquake guy down, which doesn't much help when people are drawing their guns and firing. Dwight, given that you FAILED TO TELL YOUR COPS THAT YOU'RE A BULLET MAGNET you are so lucky that the bullets went into the desk and that no one's questioning why they suddenly made a right hand curve. Everything's wobbling, maybe they didn't see that, people are more in denial mode than most. You are still really fucking lucky Dwight, you need to stop being lucky and start being good. Speaking of good, THANK YOU McHugh for clocking the guy upside the head. It is indeed hard to be agitated when you're unconscious. Now if you could clock Dwight upside the head a few times until he sees sense. It'll have to wait until everyone evacuates the building considering it's just had a good 5.0+ shaking and is now highly unstable. Dwight, of course, is not evacuating with everyone, and if he hadn't gotten a distracting phone call I'm betting he'd be the last after checking all the rooms and making sure everyone had gotten out safely. Because Dwight. The distracting phone call is immensely distracting given that just a few minutes ago he was admitting this wasn't working. It's Nathan, of course, telling him Joe's dead and the barrier's still up, and at this point no matter how steady Dwight's voice is you can tell he's about given up. Nathan isn't giving up, his voice still has the upward lilt of hope, but Dwight's is even and tired. Which isn't making the whole "I know how we're going to survive this" any more reassuring. Thanks. Nathan and Audrey do have kind of a plan, as much as you can ever have a plan when dealing with the Troubles, if only Dwight would hear it. Mostly it involves asking Duke to see if he can find a way to bring down the barrier, given that he's immune to the Troubles coming out of him. Which, really, given that he's immune to the new Troubles and Audrey and Charlotte are immune to the old ones, they should have a pretty solid overlapping strike team going on here! But no. No, that's not what happens. Alas. We are not that lucky, as Nathan so glibly points out. I kind of missed this Nathan, who made plans, who was focused on the good of Haven while being in love with Audrey, instead of having his emotional switch set to either or.
I don't know if they have tornado sirens in Maine so I'm going to go with those are air raid sirens, and Dwight's voice coming over a massive broadcast system. Well, this never ends well, but let's see how he does. And yes, the initial broadcast is canned. Oh, hey, they even have a speaker in the church. Makes sense. Dwight is now proceeding to out the Troubles to the ENTIRE TOWN, damn. And the barrier, which is a good plan considering what happened to the people who tried to escape earlier. His plan, as it turns out, is to turn everyone to the Guard as a source of people who have experience living with the Troubles, whose mission it is to help people with the Troubles, presumably both the directly Troubled and the Troubled adjacent. We see a number of people driving up in trucks, including one with the Guard symbol SLAPPED RIGHT ON THE SIDE, wasn't this originally supposed to be a secret organization? I'm going to go ahead and blame Agents of SHIELD for this one. Dwight urges people to stay calm, to help each other, that they can survive and get through this if they do. Reminds people of togetherness. It's not a ... a bad speech? As far as such things go, and even this kind of awkward speech where he's clearly forcing optimism and hope when he doesn't feel it, you can't tell that over the loudspeaker. He's using the right words. Just the fact that he's following up the air raid sirens with a message urging calm and hope and holding out the possibility of survival, particularly with the underlying notice that there is an Organization Here To Help You, all of these things reinforce people's sense of stability. Which will help. It's not a long term solution, but it's a good short term shock to the system to get people calmed down, to at least halt the cycle of panic-Trouble-more panic, and hopefully get things moving in a better direction again. Because I can't even begin to count the number of small-t Troubles they're in for with the barrier up like this. Food supply is the first thing. Breathable air doesn't seem to be an issue like it was in Under the Dome, water could be a problem, depending on their reclamation and/or desalination options. Physical resources like metal, clothing? What about medicines for the diabetic, the asthmatic, those with alternative blood pressures, those with various mental illnesses on the drugs for that? There are so, so many ways in which they are so screwed if they can't get that barrier down soon. No one wants to think about that, thinking like that induces panic, so they have to calm the population down and work on long term solutions in a quiet, stable group while providing short term emotional relief and not making any promises they can't keep. So, yeah, Dwight, have some more pressure. No worries, you can take it.
Audrey's calling Duke to meet them over by the barrier. Duke's only vaguely skeptical about whether or not he can walk through the mist, and even if he can then what, though I think that's less that he's not profoundly skeptical and more that he genuinely doesn't care if he lives or dies. I can get out the list again if you want me to remind y'all how much he's been ground down and broken by the last few months. No? No. Audrey reminds us all of the immunities, Nathan hopes Duke can just sort of walk in, wave his hands, and the barrier comes down. Duke, like Dwight, has the flat delivery of the person who's hit the limit and says nah, he's not the solution, he's the problem. Nothing is ever going to be the same again and it's all his fault, and he should just go. Or he should have just gone. Audrey knows exactly what he's talking about, I don't know that Nathan doesn't but his reflex isn't to speak, it's to be stoic. (And then to shout a lot and flail and do something physical, but we'll get to that in a second.) But they're way past talking things out now, there's nothing Audrey can say that Duke can't twist around. He's helped them? Helped them by killing people. They can work this out? He tried that, not that he says this but let's all remember the season of Duke tries to avert his destiny and gets consistently smacked down for it? So no, Duke is gone, in whatever way shape or form he can manage it and by the time Nathan's un-stoic'd enough to say something Duke's in the mist. Which of course means Nathan has to shout and flail and run into the mist, stumbling back out of it again a second later. Oh sweetie. You all are so OT3 it hurts.
Nathan pulls up to a site down in Haven again, somewhere with a picket fence and a bunch of people with packed bags. And Dwight. Who is kind of smiling and cracking jokes again, possibly because he tried something and it worked. Even if it's only for a short while, he has a tiny bit of hope again. Or at least the kick of having accomplished something. Nathan and Dwight have an interesting and necessary conversation about how long is this softcore martial law going to last, and Dwight was thinking permanently. HPD is disbanded due to either attrition or everyone who was left joining the Guard. I think that's actually a simplification, but I wouldn't say it's much of a stretch, either. Nathan's now going to draw the us/you line between him and the Guard, HavenPD, which he's grown up with and in, and the Guard, who he did admittedly pretend to join but clearly never felt a part of. I'm not sure if it's an authority thing he's having a problem with here, that the Guard bucks the traditional authority in town, or if it's an abuse of power potential thing here. Because we've definitely seen the Guard have, mm, something less than a respect for chain of command or consequences of their actions. Not that the police don't abuse power and disrespect the chain of command either, but there's a greater societal expectation on them, whereas with the Guard there's the question of whether or not they "know any better." On the other hand, given that Nathan did grow up basically in the HPD, it might also be sheer territoriality. It's hard to say, and I don't know if we'll see any of these issues addressed later. Instead we're going to get a good eyeful of Dwight's issues, where he says he's not the Chief, that's not him, and walks away from the badge on the ground. You know what this is? It's the Troubles, including his Trouble, and him failing to protect people from them all over again. And by people we mean his baby girl. Yes, Nathan, go pick up the damn badge, it means something very different to you, it's not so much a weight as a grounding thing for you, so put the damn thing on.
Over at autopsy, Gloria is cranky. Again. Still. There is no cause of death for Joe, and that makes her cranky. Apparently the only other death like that was the Colorado Kid! So the drowned thing was a faked up autopsy report? No, I'm only a little bit surprised by this. Oh, hey, it's the Colorado Kid theme underneath Dave explaining how his visions showed someone pulling something out through people's eyeballs. Cued by the black petechiae in Joe's eyes. Ick. That said, no, Dave didn't kill Joe and probably then didn't kill the Colorado Kid/James Cogan. He's just connected to whoever did. Whoever, Vince, not what, this is definitely a who, give the killer the agency clearly being taken here. DAVE, I AM YOUR FATHER. What? It's totally possible. The killer, I mean, not Vince. As far as magical theory goes, blood connection, a connection of origin tends to be a strong one. And for that matter, whoever said either of Dave's parents were Earth human? I'm getting ahead of myself, this is what happens when we get a double episode.
Nathan and Audrey are having some bonding time over his chief badge when Charlotte shows up to ruin everything. It turns out the shroud has blocked every way out of Haven, including hers, and I'm going to take a second and stop and go why are you calling it a shroud. Is this a verbal quirk or yet another thing she's not telling us? No, we're not getting any more of that today, but we are getting Nathan throttling Charlotte into agreeing to help use her research and her knowledge to find some way of ending the Troubles NOT by killing everyone. So, clearly Audrey's told him about the whole barn thing still, and you know what I suddenly want to know now? Did the barnvatar know that? Or was he told something else too? Or was he programmed to obey? Or what was Agent Fuck You's role in all of this, anyway? Rarr. Ahem, back to the present. Nathan getting all authoritative at Charlotte. She's stuck here, so she might as well help with what she has, and what she has is experience and knowledge. Possibly more knowledge than she's letting on, although I don't think at this point that she's lying about not knowing how to come up with a cure, or about being stuck there. If she is, she's using her proximity to manipulate most likely Audrey and/or to search for something else, and we don't have enough information as always to make that determination yet. So we'll operate under the very dubious and much side-eye assumption that she's offering to help in good faith, and move on till we have proof otherwise.
And for our last scene outside of town, Duke's walking the road! Hitchhiking, there's a cab without a rig coming up. So, sure, he can get a ride with the trucker. How many of you thought this was going to be William Shatner when the truck door opened? 'cause we did! Duke asks if he came from Haven. Uh, Duke, Haven's been under a fog for at least a few hours, you can't have walked that far. Well, maybe, we don't have a timeframe for how long he's been walking. But still. And we get the answer we were kind of expecting, which is Haven whatnow? There's no Haven, Maine. Because of course Joe or whoever enfogged the town dragged it off to a pocket dimension, assuming it ever really existed. That's somewhat harder to bring down than a dome bubble.
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