And Some Are Dying Haven S5E19 Perditus

No of course we're not planning to use the lyrics to When The Man Comes Around for the entire reason of Haven that would be dorky we are never dorks. Also I have a bridge in Halifax to sell you.

Previously! Deadly Tarot, memory wipes, and fucking Walter. And Croashatner. Let's take a second to highlight something here that we shamefully didn't go over in detail last time: Croashatner (barring a proper name for Charlotte's husband) says my aether. You turned my aether into something. Prior to this we were working under the assumption that this was William's stash, which was admittedly smaller. So what, were they working together the whole time? Did anyone notice this or know it and it just never came out on camera? Or, because let's face it, William's balls did look a mite punier than those in the cave, did they never find William's box o deathtruffles but instead Croashatner's entire mining cave full of the damn stuff? INQUIRING DAMN MINDS. Anyway. Audrey has the aether core, Charlotte has the knife, I have a burning desire for a proper sound sampler so I can see if there's another voice under Shatner and the distortion, and then Charlotte's dying in Audrey's arms while thankfully imparting some final information. Between last episode and this one, Charlotte wins the prize for actually conveying some useful fucking data with her last breaths instead of just "Oh I always loved you" or "Oh you are so doomed, it's the *ludicrous gibs ensue*"

We open with a panover of Haven that includes the shroud, as ever, just in case we needed the reminder of the current situation. (Someday I hope to be able to make all the Shroud of Turin jokes.) Then we zoom in on Charlotte's body on a slab, for bonus yes she's really dead, yes she's had an examination done. We get almost no time to question WHERE that examination took place before we see the Benjy's ice cream logo, which appeared in Consumed (1x04??) and at least two later eps, Burned (3x10) and Morbidity (5x09). Of the creepyass dancing headless bear people. Ahhheh. Well, it's as good a place to store bodies as anywhere, and you can always move the ice cream other places. Still, have some Sinister Ordinary and Corruption of Innocence just in case you missed it. Gloria delivers the verdict so far: fifteen stab wounds, which yes, as Dwight says, indicates personal as a general rule. Personal to the victim or to the perpetrator's perception of the victim depending on the pathology involved, impulsive, disorganized, frenzied, all of those apply. Or whoever committed the murder wants us to believe that. With these tools, I'd be somewhat surprised if Gloria could tell us anything about the nature of the attacker, but that would be the normal next question: can you tell if he's right- or left-handed, can you tell anything about necessary strength, height/weight, etc. Granted, this is Haven, so some of those questions would have to be adjusted for "and the supernatural possibilities surrounding this are…", but that's where you start! Audrey and Dwight are locked in grim defensive fuck everything and especially Croatoan postures, as she relays that Croatoan was/is her father, nobody makes the requisite Star Wars joke. Heh. She might understand better later, or if she were less in shock, but as-is I totally get the no wait what the fuck just happened how do I emotions for this oh right I DON'T. See also her pulling away from Nathan's silent offer of comfort.

Dwight storms off in search of revenge and maybe partially to let Nathan and Audrey have their moment, which consists of her entire body language pulling the touch-me-not thing and swearing she'll be okay. Yeah. Nobody buys that, Audrey. The barnvatar's ghost doesn't buy that. Somewhere Duke is lifting his head and calling bullshit mid-vision and he doesn't know why. Nathan is also not buying it and trying for the old hug-and-cry-it-out routine which has, yes, previously worked but isn't this time. Instead she's going to distract him by sending him after Dwight and run away. Oh Audrey. Gloria informs Nathan that Conan, excuse me while I die laughing, already left to look for Croatoan and that if she were who he was looking for she'd just shoot herself in the head and be done. I would definitely agree with that assessment. Dwight might have just BARELY more control than that, but in the end it would only be in service of more destruction, overall, I do not recommend getting in his way. Or in his flight path. Or in the same county.

We will now commit epic foreshadowing by going over to the Teagues, who are counting up something - ah, they're counting up all the people that they know have had their memories fucked with by Croatoan. Are you counting yourself at least twice, Dave? Because clearly you've got some degree of a passenger in there (doors on the beach, remember? The Pusher? Did-a-chok? Dod-a-chum?) Half dozen on the beach with the Colorado Kid, Duke, Vince, Dave, Gloria, Therapist from that one episode, Witness from last episode, Nathan? so far I'm missing five and yes we're counting up all the people, this is what we do, we're the nitpickers, remember? And/or if there are other people who were both on the beach for the Colorado Kid's body being discovered and whatever else has happened since then? Though I think that's mostly down to them. There's actually very, very few people left from before Audrey's time who're still alive. The Teagues. Gloria. I'd be kinda concerned if I were you. Audrey, technically, though since she doesn't seem able to access her memories of Lucy I don't think that counts. Nathan and Duke were kids at the time. Vince finishes tallying and comes up with twenty people, that they know of, whose memories have been fucked with by Croatoan. I'm hopeful that they already took the count on how many people they know of who've been killed, but maybe that's one of the things they've been whammied to forget? It's hard to tell, since we don't get a look at Vince's note-taking. Alas. They also bring up the valid point that they don't know if this is all they know/used to know, what they're being whammied into forgetting (since they've forgotten it) and why exactly they keep surviving being whammied. Everyone stop jumping up and down and pointing at Dave all at once, let's have some order in here. No? No. Dwight shall now burst in shouting and making demands about give to me all your data. FINALLY SOMEONE DOES THAT WE'VE ONLY BEEN WAITING THREE SEASONS. Last time I remember anyone doing it was Audrey at the end of s2 over them knowing about Sarah and Lucy, and they've only gotten MORE annoyingly secretive since then, with occasional lapses into communication. To be fair, I suspect they've gone or tried to go to the others with this dataset and gotten whammied into forgetting they were going to. It'd be consistent with Croatoan's epic bullshit. Anyway. Dwight bursts in demanding data, announces Charlotte's murder, Vince looks horrified and shocked and all manner of other things that are appropriate to the situation. He also calls Dwight "son," which is equal parts creepy and adorable, not least because he appears to mean it in a familial sense. Not surprising, just telling. Dave, by contrast, is the one with tells of a lie, he looks abruptly like a harmless old man which is ALWAYS a bad sign with them. Always always. Vince just looks old and careworn and like a retired general who would like to stay fucking retired goddammit. Dwight is prepared to forget about the barn and everything Vince lists off as now a Serious Problem, lacking Charlotte's knowledge, in favor of revenge. Dwight. Thank you Audrey. She would like to announce that she has skin in this game too, not just via her mother's murder but also her son's. That seems fair, at least if you're pulling the Dwight shut the fuck up and admit you're not the only one who's lost someone here card. Which is I think what Audrey's trying to do, and also this is her regret that she never got to know her son, was just beginning to rebuild a relationship with her mother, and the fucker took both of them. So yes, she is sort of here to stop Dwight from going off half-cocked! Inasmuch as she's a helluva lot better at being cold and rational when she's decided SHE wants revenge. In that respect, I think she's very clearly Charlotte's daughter. At any rate. Dave's going to help. He's going to have another vision. If I were Dave, I would be somewhat concerned about if Audrey's accessed weird interdimensional alien powers to deliberately cause visions. Or baseball bats. I'm just saying. She hasn't, but I'd worry. That face suggests alien powers or baseball bats.

When credits are over, we come back to the creepyass fucking campfire with creepy fucking Walter by any other name, who proceeds to assert that who are you is the wrong question. Okay, who in the writers' room was watching B5. Though sure, Walter as a Shadow, I'll buy that. Duke tries again from a slightly different, thoroughly exasperated angle, and only gets stared at with teeth and eyes, the kind that make me want for a very big psychic weapon of some kind. Sorry, Duke, but if this is Walter or his kin and kind, he's used to that and he totally does it for the reaction. (IMDb credits say yes that's Walter, but I still question that, given how wrong IMDb sometimes is. Also, y'know: Walter. Look, it's either call him by name or by scurrilous nickname, of which we have several for him.) Also arguments about how little time you have for this shit aren't being bought, given a) he knows who you are and b) you're in North Carolina, which whether you measure from Haven or Halifax is a long fucking ways to come for answers. Especially by car. Walter's NEXT question is "what is it you really want to know" and no, seriously, who was mid-B5 rewatch for this ep. Duke gives in, at least seemingly, and will play along for now: what's wrong with him? Nothing! He's exactly what he's supposed to be, a Trouble-eating terror of the night. Insert your own Duke-as-Batman jokes here. Walter will now proceed to babble out a lot of information that's useful to us but really fucking not helpful for Duke, considering he missed a bunch of the developments up in Haven. It confirms roughly what we got last ep, though specifies that the Roanoke colony was made up of the Troubled, which he starts by calling "cursed," just in case we wanted to know where he stood on the matter. O-kay. Well, Duke doesn't know what a Croatoan is, which is kinda unfortunate for him, but we know that yes, that many Troubles in one place would be pretty attractive to someone who wants to eat the aether out of people. I'm curious about several things here, which will be derailed abruptly by WAIT FUCK I FORGOT THAT SIR WALTER FUCKING RALEIGH WAS THE ROANOKE FOUNDER. Oh my god I hate everyone. No wonder they went with that, you can do a Troubles connection AND a Dark Tower connection. I hate everyone. That SAID, I am still curious: was Walter Raleigh Troubled? Because he survived the Roanoke colony's loss/abandonment/whatever. Did he exist in this world? Signs point to yes, given they haven't deviated that far from our world except for Secret Supernatural History reasons. (Also let's not forget that Walter Raleigh got shut up in the Tower of London several times, eventually leading to his execution. In case you wanted more towers in your life, because you're a Very Important Person.) Ahem. One of those things I'm curious about is that Walter refers to Croatoan, but does he mean the original Croatoan, the Croashatner combo meal? Does he know about the Croashatner Combo? Or does he mean the original Shat who he's calling Croatoan because that character's original name isn't meant for us to know yet? I'm also curious about how the hell Haven got founded, if the Roanoke colony was actually implied for the Troubled to escape persecution, and not as a religious offshoot colony. How and when, and when did it become a haven, as noted. Was it before or after this?

The reveals just keep on coming: the first Crocker was made neither by William nor Mara, but by Croatoan himself. Out of a young Powhatan man, Walter tells us, which just fucking figures into the history of violence and colonialism that seems to underlie all of Haven's history. He can't do for himself being not strong enough to escape the Void, so he gets a Native to do it for him by force! Asshole. (We'll have to see, as the season progresses, if this is latent/benignly intended racism that turned misguided, or if it's really trying to say Colonialism Bad. Hard to be sure, but let's not forget the Mi'kmaq connection up north in Haven proper.) So the very first Crocker, who Duke refers to as an ancestor but I'm… less sure of that, collected Troubles for Croatoan by killing every single person in Roanoke Colony. That's one way to get a lost colony. That's also at least twice as many Troubles as the Crocker journal says the Crocker bloodline had in him, in which case were all those Troubles that came out of Duke mixed new and original, or were those all original? Ugh. Ten kinds of ugh. Skipping back a bit, the reason I'm unsure if this unnamed Powhatan man was a direct ancestor, or even an ancestor at all, is because it's heavily implied that Croatoan doesn't have the ability to claim Troubled aether for himself without killing the person holding it. So unless he already had kids and some supernatural inheritance happened, or Croatoan decided to keep it in the same bloodline because that worked well and then he could just kill the last Crocker and scoop up everything, or there was a way to claim the aether without killing him, or in fact Croatoan failed to get the aether that way either… too many fucking options, too little fucking data, fuck you VERY much, Walter. But the point is that we don't actually have proof, we just have glaring omissions in the historical record, no thanks to Walter.

Oh you know what notes we DO get a closeup on? Charlotte's notes! Yeah you knew we were going to go over those in epic detail, right? The first page looks like it may be a specific Trouble type, possibly the poison gas? "Concentration of item cloud is the main factor that leads to the incident." ... Incident? What the fuck incident, what are you talking about, incident? Incident is a very different word from phenomenon, it implies one incidence, rather than a semi-predictable thing that happens. Grr. "Once the powder particles and air are mixed as well as the powder. [line break] Particles are suspended in the dust cloud." Followed by bullet points under the particles suspended line: "slow decomposition" and "exp. will spread" are all we can see, though there's at least a third note under that. The second page: "Symmetric suspension is what the particle retention will spread in. [line break] Electrostatic force can also influence the ability of particle retention." Noted below the second line again is "materials: electrostatic / dust cloud / dispersion," with the /s indicating a new line. Oh and there's what looks like a bloodstain on this page. Then, somewhat blurry but here's what I got around Nathan's hand: "Electrostatic force will [???]der or help the [dispensation?] [something] of dust in the air." No, okay, this looks like discussion of aether, probably coded so that Charlotte's the only one likely to make sense of it just in case. I'm having His Dark Materials flashbacks here, but okay, dust, we'll go with that. It's not like King doesn't have his share of magic dust, too.

Anyway. Vince don't fucking sneak up on Nathan that's how you get shot let him demonstrate! Well, half-demonstrate. He is at least, assuming that's a fingertip I see, maintaining trigger discipline but I wouldn't put that to the test anytime soon. He doesn't finish accusing Vince of acting like Croatoan, because that would be fucking insulting, but everyone understands the impulse. Including Vince! Who has never seen Dwight so angry. Yes well he hasn't been broken this many times in a row that you've seen him, Vince. Nathan points out that Audrey's just as bad, and I love this next exchange in which we pull back some of the layers of bullshit and Vince and Nathan are upfront about, this is how Audrey's behaving, this is what it means. In other words, yes, she's shut down externally because everything inside fucking hurts, Nathan thought his family was fucked up (it's not a competition, Nathan! and yours is! was! both the biological and the adoptive!) and Vince is here because he claims not to be much use getting Dave to have another vision. I think the more accurate answer is that he doesn't want to watch Audrey and Dwight talk to his brother like this might be his fault, but he sympathizes too much to stop them, and also there are way too many feelings happening in that room so he's escaping to see if Nathan could use any help. Nathan! You're communicating again! Good for you. Once he's passed along that Charlotte figured everything out and he's looking for her notes, but her go-bag is gone and there's nothing in what's left, we move along to, so Croatoan took it? Yes probably. A bag that large would need to be hidden somewhere fairly clever, and we know she didn't and the crime scene pretty well told them she didn't have time. Hang on, I have to go laugh my ass off some more. So many unanswered questions, Vince? SEE HOW IT FUCKING FEELS. But he'd like to talk to Charlotte one last time! And Nathan has a hail Mary for that. It would be nice if they could have gotten to the resurrection sisters we saw in season four, but presumably they're outside of Haven by now. Alas.

Instead we get Lainey the fortune teller who has a sister who talks to the dead! Yeah this can't possibly go anywhere bad, especially not with the ep title Perditus. Nathan brings this over to her on his own, since he has the best rapport, and apparently he will be Officer Puppy Eyes Wuornos for the duration of this scene. Awww. I'm amused at the demonstration of how people will look for meaning via anything with the miserable randomness that the Troubles actually are, but yes, her sister has a Trouble now too and no, Lainey, I'm sorry but it probably doesn't have a damn thing to do with always being into the occult. She goes on to tell Nathan that yes it's real and here's her proof in the form of Ona coming over shortly after Herb's death in Trouble Alley with a message. Okay, that's nice and all, and it gives us information about the circumstances of their marriage, Herb's death, the car accident where Herb almost lost his arm that was Lainey's fault or so she believes, the location of Herb's scar… but none of this is information that a sister wouldn't have unless she was also estranged for some reason. Just putting that out there. And Lainey certainly doesn't say that some of this is stuff Ona had no reason to know. Trust me, we were waiting for that! At any rate, Nathan gets a location and it turns out Ona's squatting in the old HPD. Ah, conservation of sets. Lainey's hesitant to tell him, presumably because she thinks Nathan would object to his old place of work being used as living quarters and potentially destroyed by a bunch of strangers. No, I think they're a bit past that as far as pragmatism goes, though knowing that going in is a good idea so Nathan can brace himself for it.

Meanwhile Dave is very drunk and still not having a vision. Also he's able to say Croatoan more, which implies that Vince saying it in his ear and triggering a vision was a one-off, on the grounds of being so terrified of the name. Now you have to find something else to punch Dave in the adrenal glands, you guys. Dwight and Audrey are less than pleased, though Audrey's calmer and more inclined to think through it, whereas Dwight seems inclined to give Dave alcohol poisoning. Dwight, you don't want him slurring so much you can't understand the fucking vision. However! Dave thinks Croatoan knows how to block him out now, much like Harry and Voldemort, I guess? Audrey points out that Dave is fucking terrified and entirely capable of blocking himself. He's very good at standing in his own way. And to be fair, assuming that Dave's been telling the truth and that the visions we've been seeing are also truthful, he's getting the full force of emotional content when he goes along for the ride. Considering he's also complete shit at the kind of mental control that would allow him to delineate "this is how Croatoan's mind felt and I felt it too" from "this is who I am/am becoming," yeah, he's got reason to be scared shitless. I've got a question, too, how does Dave or how do we know that Dave and Croatoan haven't slipped together already without possibly even Dave knowing it, given the depth of the connection here? The answer, which will become relevant later but which I would have liked someone to have brought up now, is we don't know. Dwight no. Yes we know you're cracking, the answer is still no. I really, really love all of Audrey's Pointed Looks at him in this ep, they're great even if they're not exactly the kind of relationship we were so hoping for them. (Haven. Stop killing your women. Ahem.) So, she chases him out and starts talking Dave through it, starting with Dwight's right about being our only lead. Dave is drunk enough to babble about how he doesn't understand how the monster could be related to Audrey. Oh honey. Cue rueful snark about Mara, and I don't actually accuse Audrey of emotional manipulation very much, mainly because the times she uses it are almost never on her own behalf. Except here it very much is, and it's very much manipulating with the truth: they've all lost something, Charlotte's dead now, and if there were another way to do this she would. And I believe that! Even the last one, because dealing with Dave is frustrating for her and Dwight at the best of times, so no, she would be tracking some other lead if it were available. It's not. So. For her, Dave will try! This can't possibly go badly.

Over at the station, Lainey's sister Ona is all set up for the séance that's going to go badly. Well, some part of this is going to go badly. Wow this is a really blatant show with absolutely nothing backing it up. And her Latin is bad and she should feel bad. (Perditus, lux, latem? Really?) Sigh. The music suggests something's going on, but not what Nathan wants, and specifically no, she can't reach Charlotte, she "must have already crossed over." I'm still stuck on facepalming forever, the cheese, it burns. That's not even good scenery chewing (which is a good performance from the actress herself, it takes skill to chew the scenery badly and do well at it). Looks like they did the séance in the old interrogation room, for maximum appropriateness. Ona apologizes for not doing more, and oh hey the station is full of people. I see dead people. He teases her gently about not kicking them out and no loud parties until the police station's needed again, so yes, he's made as much peace with this as he's likely to. Also, aww, Nathan! This is a Nathan we haven't seen in an age, he has hope, he's interested in making amends for past actions, he's empathizing with people in the course of his duties… oh hello Herb. Ona. Nobody ever replies "peachy" when everything's really okay, not in decades at least. Nathan has a Suspicion. Actually he has probably a certainty, but he goes ahead and does the handshake-check-for-scar thing to confirm, because he's being a good cop. A smart cop, anyway. Nathan confronts her with it and she gets about two seconds into denying that she raised her sister's husband from the dead and then didn't tell her sister that she had done so before Nathan waves that away with sure, let me just bring Lainey down here. Yeah, that wasn't going to work, it wasn't even believable at the outset. Okay. So she has a resurrection Trouble, I'm glad you specified a and not the, Nathan, because we know that there's a resurrection Trouble out there with somewhat fewer drawbacks for the resurrected but Moira and her sister haven't been heard from in an age, and see also headed out of town the last time we saw them and therefore on the other side of the, heh, we'll call it a veil in this set of circumstances. This one has all new and unknown drawbacks! Apparently Ona revived all her friends and loved ones, which is… everyone in the police station. That zombie outbreak's not going to be any fucking fun, you guys. The music agrees with me.

Dave's vision, now that he's finally having it, consists of a monster-cam replay of Charlotte packing up, and then an immediate cut to her body on the floor with mocking commentary about Dave liking to watch. Complete with his name. Okay, I'll allow as how that's freaky, though given Croatoan's been fucking with your memory… Dave do you actually remember that at this point, though? I feel this is a valid question by his reaction. For that matter, Dave, is this really you Dave, or is this Croatoan riding you like a carousel pony and us getting the voiceover for Doylistic misdirection and Watsonian torture? I would also be curious to know if Croatoan can whammy him mid-vision, and that's why he's been allowing it. That or Croatoan's just a sadistic fuck, which we have ample evidence to support! I'm furthermore curious if Croatoan can't keep Dave out of his brain, particularly given end-of-ep reveals. But we'll get to that. On the upside, Dave did remember that Charlotte had an aether fragment in her go-bag, which makes it trackable, which means they have her notes. Whether or not they're in any kind of comprehensible format, nobody knows! Including us. Isn't it great. Audrey brings up the very real problem of needing Charlotte's guidance and instruction in order to build a second barn, which is Nathan's cue to drop in all excitedly saying they might not have to! Do without it, that is. Excuse Audrey and Dwight, they have to find their jaws on the floor where they dropped them. Nathan please stop making pronouncements like that when you know fucking well that all Troubles have a downside and you don't know what this one's is. Dwight looks like he's wondering exactly what the downside is, and given his Trouble I wouldn't blame him for being the first one to go there.

Duke stop making assumptions and leaps of logic without asking it in the form of a question or Walter will just allow you to continue on in whatever degree of wrongness you possess. Even if they are pretty reasonable leaps to be making: Croatoan created the Crockers so they'd collect Troubles so he could eventually have them, why is a great question. The same reason he wants them now is a shitty answer that informs us not in the least of anything, Walter, not that we expected better from you but fucking still. Duke may not expect better at this point, but he also has zero patience. I feel you, dude. He grabs onto Walter when he gets up all wait a fucking minute here don't walk away this is not enough information! I love you Duke. You are currently our audience identification character. Though I think I would try biting Walter's fingers off if he were whammying me with weird light in the third eye. Fuck you, asshole. Oh hey, it's time for some visions of possible!future!Haven. In which everything is blue-filtered and wavy and also destroyed. Given the massive lightning sheeting through the clouds without touching down, I'm not 100% certain the wavy look to the environment is just Oh Look A Vision, but on the other hand this looks an awful lot like when Dave has his visions, only with somewhat less Evil Dead first person POV cam. I'm pretty sure the background noise is the same, too. Well, when caught in a fucked up vision-inside-a-vision, you go looking for clues! After swearing a bunch. Or while swearing a bunch. We're clever, we can multi-task.

Nathan, Audrey, and Dwight are having a meeting about what the right thing to do is, and Dwight asks how this is even a question. Because you're emotionally compromised, Dwight. Arguably worse than the other two, because he runs hot where Audrey and Nathan tend to run cold, under extreme stress. Notably, the guys are facing each other while Audrey sits in the middle, both as a bridge and, in this case, as the divisive cautious one. She's not sure they should do this, they have no clue how the fucking Trouble works, no Dwight it's not the same as bringing Nathan back because there they actually know how Moira's resurrection Trouble operated and what the downsides were, that it was painful for the Troubled person and there was a time limit, and that Ona hasn't said there's a downside indicates she hasn't run into it yet either. Actually, come to think of it, I'm pretty sure that the sooner the downside of the Trouble is made apparent, the less dangerous to other people it is. I'd have to go back and tally them all up (and we might, don't think we wouldn't), but Nathan and Dwight are really obvious examples of the theory, and the guy from Ain't No Sunshine is an example of the converse. So's Vicki, for that matter, since we see her again this ep. As the most level-headed person at this table, Nathan first acknowledges Audrey's concerns, leading to one of the most petulant outbursts we've ever seen from Dwight that of course he'd take her side, and then says that they have to take the chance. After all, he has seen the resurrected, he knows that for now everyone's still themselves or at least not Wrong in the way most people come back, which he'll reassure Audrey with after Dwight leaves to go get Charlotte's body. Body, Dwight. You're losing your detachment really a lot. The only concern she'll admit to is that it seems too good to be true. Accurate! And not at all complete, Audrey, how much do you want to just move on and not have to grieve for her twice? Is it a lot? I bet it's a lot. I don't blame her, either, considering to an extent she already went through that with James. Let's have the world's most blatant subject change instead and play hot potato with the aether core. Nathan's turn to take it and hide it somewhere nobody else can find it and thereby theoretically prevent Croatoan from getting hold of it, now that Dave's coughed up that he's looking for the stupid thing. Oh yay. There is no possible way this is all going to end with a lost aether core, is there. Or a tortured Nathan and a lost aether core. Tortured someone. Nathan doesn't really have anyone to pass it on to, though.

Going to get Charlotte's body means going to see Gloria, who has apparently changed blouses? Well, autopsy. Gloria doesn't need to do more than take a look at him to know that he's found a way to bring her back, yes, of course she guessed, Dwight, she's been around the Troubles how long? I'm going to go ahead and guess three cycles. Also because Gloria is The Best, and she doesn't bother with a lot of the obfuscation and self-delusion that everyone else in Haven seems so keen to stick to. She does want to know if he's sure about this. While I'm not sure about the timeline of Dwight's whole emotional arc of in-love, betrayed, falling-in-love again over, what, six weeks? Two months? There's more than enough weight here in all that he's lost, which he touches on, that he's ready both for them to be over and for the Troubles to work for them for a change, I like that choice of phrasing rather than the typical and somewhat expected I'm-not-going-to-lose-her-too. Also it's an argument oh, there's the thing. Though still phrased more as what gets taken from Dwight, rather than what's important to him about Charlotte. Slightly. Anyway, it's an argument that holds some resonance with Gloria too, who, let's not forget, watched a guy she loved end up being tortured when they tried to literally make the Troubles work for them. (4x12 and 4x13) Fuck you too, William.

Back to the police station there's a whole lot less fanfare with the actual bringing back of the dead Charlotte. I have absolutely no idea what to do with Dwight and Audrey holding hands, except that I know the general idea behind it is bonding over their shared loss and I know that the cinematography is ... off, somehow. Seems off. There's a weight on it that I'm not sure will come back to haunt us, so to speak, in a later episode, but for now, yeah, the emotional resonance is definitely there, both of them clinging to the idea that this could work and have no bad side effects. You poor bastards. And at first, yeah, Charlotte is disoriented and she seems to not remember anything from after they were about to go into the deathtruffle mine and collect the aether. I am and remain deeply amused that her first question is what happened, her second question is where am I, and at no point does she ask why is she naked and wrapped in a sheet. Apparently this is not a thing to her. Well, Dwight, but that doesn't explain her daughter and this other woman and speaking of this other woman why are you talking about purifying aether in front of her. Oh my god everyone, have you never heard of operational security? Dwight, I am looking at you Mr. Ex Ranger. No, the last thing she remembers is starting Audrey's training and you're still talking about it in front of the stranger! And she's still not asking where are her clothes. heh. Outside of the room this apparently is not Ona's first rodeo either, spouting off a number of good points about traumatic amnesia and so on. Dwight's just going to babble about catching Croatoan, operational fucking security, soldier. Oh, never mind. I do find it morbidly amusing that they were going to such lengths to keep the No Marks Killer a secret, but now that it's Croatoan apparently everyone can know. Go fucking figure. Meanwhile in the office where Charlotte's getting dressed she is remembering her death now, and either someone got a really good angle on Laura Mennell's pupil action there or someone in post is fucking around with the predator slit eyes. I would honestly buy it either way, given the whole being from another dimension thing and the depth of the fear and emotion we see in Charlotte. Outside, Audrey wants to know how long it took Herb to remember his death. A couple of days, apparently. That'll be important later, but for now the upshot is they need to give her time, help her remember who they are to her, where she is, etc. They will now go into the office to do just that and... no. No, she's gone.

Where is she? Where is Duke! Still in the second layer of the vision, still annoyed with his life and his choices, still looking for anything at all that'll tell him what the fuck is going on or, probably a distant second, get him out of here and back to beating up Walter for information. Sorry, no, that won't work, this is all the information he intends to show you or us. Some trash goes floating by, followed by what looks like a plastic version of a lobstrosity in case we needed further King references however oblique today... no, no that's a horseshoe crab. We all remember the last time we saw horseshoe crabs floating down Main Street all 'yo whaddup', yes? The distortion's making it hard to tell if there's human eyes on the fucker. (The relevant episode is 4x08 Crush, where the damn crabs were harbingers of opening otherworldly doors that were never supposed to be opened, etc, according to Mi'kmaq legends and the journal of Sebastian Cabot. Still fucking creepy.) As a point of order, the last time these things showed up I don't believe it was ever verified that anyone other than the children from other dimensions/half-breeds? from other dimensions? This is getting messy, non-humans and not-entirely-humans could see these freakyass horseshoe crabs. So the fact that Duke appears to be seeing one now is indicative of Something. He finally finds Vicki drawing on the sidewalk in chalk, which is about the most color we get out of the whole thing, but it's too vision-wavery and whatnot to be clear what it is until Duke gets up to her. Which is highly indicative of how much this doesn't exist until he gets there and sees what's up, and and what's up is a rather crude drawing of buildings in child's bright colors. Vicki's trying to put everything back the way it was and can't, oh honey. Duke asks after Audrey and Nathan, like you do when confronted with someone you really didn't expect to see in your weird vision thingie, and gets informed that they and everyone else are dead now. Well. That's a shitty future! Let us not go there. 'tis a silly place. I wonder, too, given that she's saying she can't put back everything the way it was, is that because her Trouble is gone somehow, is that why everyone's dead? Or is this They're All Dead, Duke future because of something else? Signs Hazy, Try Again Later, I suppose, though some mixture of the two would fit with Croatoan's known activities to date. Anyway, Duke takes a second to process that, vision or no he would like to file a motion for his life to stop sucking, I'm pretty sure, and okay is anyone NOT dead? Yes, you're going to have to prompt the traumatized and/or half-real iteration of Vicki with a list of people, starting with Dwight and going through Dave, Gloria, and finally Vince, who's apparently alive for certain values thereof. Considering what he said about the Teagues line being guardians of the town for generations, I would not be surprised if that were very limited values thereof, with everyone dead and Vince's raison d'etre gone. So. Off they go!

And off we go back to the really real world, or at least to Haven, where they're updating Nathan about Charlotte running off. Dwight, I know you're hideously upset but punching walls is not going to help. Guaranteed. Okay, they split up, Nathan'll take Charlotte's lab and Dwight is going off… somewhere unmentioned but probably special to them, with dire declarations about Croatoan getting to repeat history. Oh come on, Dwight, it's a running theme in Haven, are you really sure you can avoid that? Okay, Nathan gets to check up on Audrey on their lonesome for a bit, starting with checking on Dwight so it can seem more like the steadier person is checking on both the unstable ones. Well, yeah, of course Dwight's blaming himself. That's what Dwight does. Hadn't you noticed? Audrey brushes off Nathan's question with thoroughly bleak humor in one of the best lines this season, but at least this time she doesn't expect him to believe her. She confirms he's had a chance to hide the aether core, looks like out in the woods somewhere. Maybe at Nathan's house. I would LOVE for that to be our chance to get a good look at Nathan's house. Audrey plans to go after Lainey and her tarot cards because if that's what got them into this it can get them out of it! Maybe! Um. Sure. Now you're really grasping at straws, but this is important for Plot Reasons, so I'll take it.

Dave is apparently packing a six-shooter now, I'm not only twitching because the idea of Dave pointing a gun at someone is terrifying on so many levels although that's a good part of it, but also because a six-shooter revolver around this many Dark Tower/Gunslinger references is making me jumpy. And a stake, which brings Vince and his associated commentary about vampire Troubles. I'm also jumpy because Vince missed Dave putting the gun in the bag although with any luck he's going to assume that's there as well. And he does have a point, you never really know what you're going to run into at this point.  The box of widdly-wee that goes ding when there's stuff, on the other hand, is to find the vial of aether that was in Charlotte's go-bag. Vince would like to question Dave's everything to do with this plan, it is a bad plan, and he should feel bad for having it. Dave thinks this is an awesome plan now that Audrey's forced him to confront the fact that Croatoan can see him and knows he's watching him and it's only a matter of time before he comes after, um, Dave? Are we forgetting the creepy-ass tentacle marks? The blackouts? ALL THE OTHER TIMES CROATOAN HAS COME AFTER YOU? Dave, here's your sign. Shut up. Vince agrees with me, don't you, Vince, he thinks going after Croatoan first is a stupid plan. Seriously, I love his IT'S A TERRIBLE PLAN, it sounds like something we would say. Only with more swearing, but you can't do that on the SyFy channel. Dave has cowardice issues, so, fine, Vince will go with him.

Lainey is not in immediate evidence in her shop, which means Audrey starts calling out and oh look, a chewing noise. Those are never good. Especially when it sounds like raw flesh. Kitty is so glad that this is one of mine to post I cannot even tell you, I don't have her zombie squicks. (Actually I rewatch the Resident Evil movies because I find them comforting and great crafting fodder. Nobody ever said I was normal or sane.) (K: Fucking zombies. Even headshots won't kill them.) Audrey, by contrast, seems to have at least a little of the squicked terror, though I admit I probably would too. It's the smell, you see. Anyway. Yes, that's Herb chewing on his wife, yes, she's dead, no, they're going for the gore route of showing us body parts that aren't the death wound. I guess that's LIKE small blessings. After some very halfhearted attempts to do the standard cop routine of stand up, hands over your head, stop playing with your food, she gives in and plugs him two in the chest, one in the head, and even THAT doesn't kill these zombies. Well fuck. Time for the chair-jitsu attack to shove zombie!Herb into a closet? Small back room of some kind and shut and jam the door. Good reflexes! Her next reflex is to call Nathan, which is definitely a superior choice to Dwight in this case, since Dwight would either snap and just shoot her rather than wait for her to zombify, or deny that anything was ever happening and make the same argument I'm about to make. Which is that Charlotte's not actually human. You don't know that this Trouble works the same way on interdimensional aliens as it does on this world's humans! Plus they have plenty of time, comparatively speaking, though the station not so much.

Over at the surprisingly empty police station Audrey is delivering some cold hard reality to Ona about what she found, and how long has Herb been risen? Only a couple of days. He was the first. By which Audrey deduces that Ona loved him very much, and we get almost an admission of an affair in so many words, though I find it interesting that that's never explicitly stated. A lot of things aren't getting explicitly stated in this episode. Anyway. When Herb died she couldn't stand it, her Trouble kicked in, she brought him back and can I just say it's real interesting that she talks about bringing Herb back again but makes no mention of, if she can make her Trouble work, bringing her sister back? I'm just saying. It might as well be an admission. But she's still focused on bringing Herb and the others back and speaking of the others, um, where are the potential ravening zombies? Oh, visiting their loved ones. That's going to end well. Yeah, Audrey's going to need those addresses, and she doesn't give a damn about Ona's intentions, there are motherfucking zombies in this motherfucking town. Nathan kind of comes to the rescue with a note in the Crocker journal about a Crocker asking a woman about her death and getting snarl rarr brains chew for his (his, primarily and/or solely, I'm assuming at this point) pains. So, yes, asking Charlotte about her death was probably the directly wrong thing to do. And then she'll turn, and she'll come after Audrey and Dwight. The same Dwight who has gone out to look for her! Oh joy.

For extra bonus joy we get the ominous music and the shot of Charlotte from the back that outright waves a damn sign of I'm Going To Turn Around And My Face Will Be Blue And Falling Off. Apparently Dwight's idea of this is their spot and he knew she'd come here is because this is where she shot him. Aww? And then he puts a hand on her shoulder and she turns around and no, no she is not slavering undead yet. She does have a sense of humor about the whole thing though. About shooting him, and regrets about lying about being a CDC doctor, and for that matter Dwight has a good sense of humor about her shooting him, although to be fair he was wearing a vest and had pretty much prepared for that. Set it up, even. This is one of the better scenes between them, with less falsehood and mistrust and more genuine emotional bonding. Also, given that he doesn't have to remind her but only to ask and she flat out says she died, a damn good indication that she was never going to turn due to being not human, immune to the original Crocker Troubles, who the hell knows. But if she does remember everything and she's still fleshy and smiling by now? Chances are. Or at least that they have a few more hours, maybe a day, before she goes all Romero. Dwight, of course, wishes he could have/thinks he should have been there. For the record I don't actually think he thinks he could have done anything, but rather feels that he should have been able to, and is smart enough to tell the difference even as he says it anyway because that's what you do. Charlotte is more than likely sure he would have died too, and says as much with no uncertainty in her voice, not just for his reassurance. She doesn't entirely remember what happened, so, okay, I will allow that maybe she's not entirely immune. Trying to see underwater is a good approximation of how Croatoan-vision appears to us at least! Dwight also brings up the fact that she said Croatoan was Audrey's father, which does rattle her even if she tries to pass it off as she must have been confused. Not even Dwight believes you, lady. Though he's willing to buy there's more under that that she hasn't said yet, didn't have time.

The Teagues took themselves over to Charlotte's murder scene so they could pick up the crumbs of an aether signal. I have not so much a question as a pointing at the gun on the mantel: that is so totally going to get used to track down the aether core some ep very soon that it's not even funny. Though I do find it curious that Nathan managed to hide it such that the Teagues could track the single ball o' deathtruffle rather than the giant purified mass of nuclear doom. So now they should be able to track the aether to wherever the killer left it! Yay. Dave's yay is very subdued, having lost his buzz. Dave what in the name of god and little fishes IS your alcohol tolerance? And how long has it actually been since you got drunk? After some weak joking about bringing the booze along to up Dave's courage again, Vince flat-out tells him to go home and let the professional handle this. Professional WHAT I'm not entirely sure, but professional Guard leader I will accept. Accustomed to handling the weird shit. Dave blows him off with brotherly rivalry, and Vince seems to think there's maybe something more but fine, they'll do this together and he'll even make noises about together until the end of all things. Vince. When you say that shit, it ALWAYS GOES BAD. Why would you do that.

See, we'll demonstrate one of the ways right now. Vision!Vince is sitting in the chief's chair down at the station, all symbolic-like of the heart of Haven that's now empty of all actual power. Vicki's disappeared off somewhere. It's probably just that the ep aired on November 5 that we're having V for Vendetta flail over all the V-names being in town, yes? Yes. Duke's trying to joke about this because Duke would like this all to feel less real and plausible. Also that office is empty of almost eeeeverything. Vince would like to know how the fuck, which only gets more cheap jokes and oh look, Vince's eyes are occluded in traditional Hi I'm Blind Now And Possibly An Oracle/Prophet. (Often as a result of the blinding.) Which is very much one of King's massive, massive tropes of the disabled being somehow special and/or the sacrifice for wisdom. Okay, maybe that second one isn't only King. It does, though, put Vince in a somewhat similar thematic role to Abigail Freemantle, who made of Hemingford Home a haven for the survivors of the superflu and then lived to see it all go sideways and despair. She then, like Vince, returned to the page/screen just long enough to be near-death and infirm at people with some ominous instruction and wisdom before she died. Anyway. Duke is getting really fucking sick of people naming Croatoan like he's supposed to know who that is. Hey, you're doing better than most of them were until just a little while ago! They got stuck on the myth and it being a warning and forgot it could be a name as well. The point is, he won and Vince is our voice of nihilism for the evening. Cites a game played and lost, to which I go OH REALLY and also WALTER YOUR INNER VOICE IS SHOWING. But apparently this vision, whether it's Walter sending a warning or a genuine possible future, is caused by Nathan going into the void and not coming out again. I would like to emphasize that both of those things happened, so we don't know which is the worse problem. Duke starts to demand all the answers ever, starting with why Nathan went into the void, but they will of course be interrupted by a loud shout of pain. Male voice. Vince asserts that that means Croatoan's here, which begs the question of if that's him shouting in pain or rage? or some third person getting eaten for their aether. I would also note that it seems a reasonable bet that Vince's eyes are occluded like that because he's been Trouble-eaten, though why Vicki's eyes weren't I don't know. Anyway. Give in to your fate of dying in the vision, Duke! Fuck no, says he, and picks up a… cricket bat? Or something similarly shaped. I'd say hockey or curling based on location but neither of those fit, either. (K: If it had jagged edges I'd say it was a macuahuitl.) But he's going to go confront his fate with a weapon in hand. Have I mentioned lately that Duke's our audience identification character? He so is.

Often running him a close second is Dwight, except Dwight breaks in a very different direction. Ranger training, you see. Not something either of us has any inclination toward. He's freaking out at Nathan that he just asked Charlotte to remember and he just got her back and this is his fault. No, Dwight. Dwight no. If he were being honest with himself, he'd've admitted that he had every reason to expect this to be a short resurrection, long enough to say goodbye and not much else, but he's buried in the longest river in Egypt. Thoroughly enough that he doesn't make the argument about her being other-than-human, although that may just be that even as fucked up as he is, he doesn't really want to have a horde of unkillable zombies in exchange for Charlotte maybe not turning. Nathan argues, in his role as The Stable One this ep, that Dwight did exactly the right thing and Charlotte has to remember so she can tell them all the things about fixing Haven and who or what Croatoan is and all of that. Dwight has an excellent point that Nathan would never, ever, ever fucking give up on having Audrey, but he's supposed to just accept that Charlotte's going to remember, zombify, and need to die or Ona's Trouble will need to be solved? Unfortunately the resultant argument and/or acknowledgement of that point (hey, Nathan's been doing some growing this season, it could happen) has to be postponed because zombies attacking the station, having returned from eating their loved ones. Oh yay. Or at least, we're not being told they did anything other than eat their families! Assuming their families didn't barricade themselves in their houses somewhere until the shambling undead shambled away, which, we can hope. Poor everyone. On the bright side, this seems to be a more classic case of zombi rather than zombie, where it's not transmissible via biting, and it takes focus and force of will to raise them in the first place. Look, in the middle of a zombi(e) attack, you take all the upsides you can get. Like having two combat-trained men to yell at to stop talking and come help, since Ona's being fucking useless and cowering with a blanket around her. After the ad break, Nathan picks up the same damn cricket bat/macuahuitl that Duke grabbed in the vision, which means… what? We're not precisely sure, but there's some parallels going on here, and I seriously doubt it has anything to do with the props department getting lazy about their placement of items, both because they've never been that lazy before and because that's a pretty specific camera focus. At the very least, it means that the vision is near-future enough that no one's toted the damn thing out of the police station. It may also mean something about the shallowness of the sideways step between the world Duke's seeing and the one everyone else is in right now, in a very go, then, there are other worlds than these sense, but we just don't know for sure. More important things! Like Nathan hacking off a zombie arm with it and being surprised by how easy that was, which would seem to indicate it's nominally a blunt weapon in addition to being, you know, made of wood. Solid-looking wood though. Charlotte and Audrey got the door barred, but it's not doing much good without additional barricade material, and then there's the windows to consider, so Nathan will run around thwacking zombie arms since he can't feel it if he gets bit, while the other three keep working on barricades. To absolutely no avail.

Dwight doesn't want Audrey to try and get Ona to fix her Trouble. Ona probably doesn't want to try working on it that much either, considering she's fucking terrified and acts like she expects to be yelled at. Lady what the fuck is your backstory, since you're acting like an abuse victim in some respects, not to mention the attachment issues going by the way she fixated on Herb to what seems like the exclusion of everyone else. Or maybe that was simplified for time and dialogue? Anyway. She has a lot of protests about only wanting to help and doesn't understand at first that she raised all her friends of course they're coming to eat her. We don't know, either, if this is a Trouble that would end on her death or if the unstoppable unkillable zombies would just keep going until, I dunno, could you burn them all? Explode them? Hack them to pieces? You'd have to get pretty gory in order to stop them from trying to eat you, is the point. And they have neither time nor resources, so the best plan is indeed to get Ona's Trouble under control. Nathan is full of disagreeing because they need to know how to build the new barn thanks that was HIS whole reason for being willing to bring her back in the first place. I so, so appreciate that Charlotte steps up to bash them all in the head for being overbearing assholes all HEY THIS IS MY LIFE AND DEATH SITUATION. Unlife and death. Whatever. She claims to've remembered everything, which means they're probably fucked pretty soon anyway, and that part of who she is, is not letting other people get hurt or killed so she could live. I, uh. I question this considering her early behavior with trying to break out of the shroud via a thinny? Not to mention a distinct sense of you all are very fascinating lab mice in her treatment of the townsfolk even when she was being a CDC doctor. But I believe in her using that phrasing in the sense of, this is who she's choosing to be at the very end of her life, and fuck you for trying to choose otherwise for her. Audrey apologizes for wanting her mother back, which, really? Nobody here is blaming either her or Dwight for their emotional responses, just their actions on those responses. Also she was the one trying to talk the guys out of resurrecting Charlotte. Okay! Audrey will take Ona off to talk her down and Charlotte will… give Nathan instructions on barn-building while they put their backs to the door. And we, of course, won't get to hear a goddamn thing about it, so we can't tear the data to shreds for our very own. GodDAMMIT.

And then Duke wakes up! In the middle of the field where he got whammied by Walter, with nobody else in sight, and at first he'd like to know if he's proper-awake and Seth is around? No? No. Instead, have this bleeding tree! That can't possibly go wrong! Duke. Duke you know what your fucking Trouble is don't touch the fucking blood. I'm blaming this on vision!logic of suck and hate. He touches it, his eyes go black and he would like this not to be happening to him. I would like to know if this is the tree of knowledge of good and evil, or the tree of immortality, or the tree of life that was on William's little black box, or the tree that mirrors King's rose that's the center of the universe at the heart of the Tower and the Beams. Any or all of these together seem like good bets! Duke goes murderous and kills… himself? HAH I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THAT PROMO PHOTO. Walter stop fucking around. Dead-not-dead-not-Duke!Walter opens his eyes once Duke realizes he's still in the vision and informs him that he is "the fulcrum" who will "either kill [his] friends or save them all." Well. That's certainly shoving him toward accepting his fate as being of the Crocker line, but it also doesn't tell us a single fucking thing that the current iteration of his Trouble couldn't have, and wasn't already pointing at. On the other hand, it serves to push Duke into going the hell back home, ending the road trip plotline, so I'll take it thank god. (It hasn't been a bad plotline? But I feel like the writers knew at what point Duke needed to get back to Haven and had to backfill some along the way in order for Balfour to meet his quota of screentime each ep, which made for some pretty slow bits. Despite us wanting Duke to have a fucking vacation.) And now he will finally wake up, the he who wakes up being the one on the ground for some extra brain-bending ow, yes thanks for reminding us that Walter was in Duke's HEAD. And Seth is standing over him all uh, dude, you okay, you were having some fucked up dreams. Yes. Yes he was. No, it was not the tacos. (Duke and tacos, I swear.) (K: The trippiest thing about this entire scene is that the music that starts up before it goes into traditional Haven background music sounds faintly music box-y.) No, Duke, Walter was not actually there, Seth didn't see him, if in the unlikely event he was physically present rather than metaphysically present he wiped Seth's memory of it. Which I am not discounting as a possibility because fuck you Walter and whatever your connection to Croatoan is. With a rusty chainsaw. Duke go have some coffee before attempting more explanations of your weird visions. You look like you need it.

I still want to know if Mara made new Troubles when she turned Duke into a Trouble bomb, but we do have confirmation now that she slammed at least some of the old ones back into him. Which makes sense: if they're already there and she knows the shape they take, or if they're still somehow floating around waiting for her to gather them up and stick them back in a Crocker, that's easier than coming up with all new ones without William's stash of deathtruffle balls. Or her daddy's. (Is now a good time to remind everyone that a crock is both a vessel and frequently used in colloquialisms as in, crock of shit? I'm just saying. Duke's reaction to being the former is generally along the lines of the latter.) They have ample evidence from the journal that the only way for Ona to resolve her Trouble is to let Herb go and admit he should stay dead. I appreciate how much Audrey is not saying in response to her flailing that they could find a way to fix him and this, yeah but I put three bullets in him, I don't think he'd stay alive if we did. Besides, even if they could fix the Trouble, the former zombies would still all have exciting traumatic memories of eating their loved ones. How about not doing that to them. Audrey and Charlotte exchange a look of well shit this is it, the moment of truth, while the guys banter about Trouble-proof doors. Aw boys. I could wish for a bit more banter like this in other eps, because it really stands out as a particular writing quirk here, and I quite like it. It's appropriate levels of gallows humor to the situation. Okay, Charlotte's turn, now Ona's protesting that she's trying but she can't stop thinking about Herb being alive and then dead and no do not want. I'm so glad it's not Dwight with this Trouble, can I just say. We will all try not to die of the irony of Charlotte looking at Audrey when she says that memories are a good thing to have. I hope that's meant as a sidelong apology? And then the irony vanishes under the weight of wow I have no fucking sympathy for Ona anymore. Crying about how Charlotte doesn't understand and Herb is the only person she has left? Well, one, that's YOUR FAULT and two, YOU CAN GO MAKE NEW FRIENDS. In fact, crisis situations are a great time for building camaraderie if you stop isolating yourself. While I understand the fear of being all alone forevermore, my god, woman, you would rather your zombies eat everyone including YOU than FIX YOUR TROUBLE and never see Herb again? Let's also note that apparently her friends, the ones outside the doors right now, they don't count as people she has left, which does not say anything good to me about how she views friendship. See the aforementioned attachment issues, etc. Fortunately, Charlotte has the Excuse Me I Lost Everything Too button to hit, along with But I Gained A Daughter And Now I'm Willing To Lose Her In Order Not To Get Her Killed You Complete Asshole. This might be the most openly maternal we've ever seen Charlotte, and it's kind of really impressive. I would not want to be standing in her way. Because the narrative says so, the zombies break through and start stalking Nathan and Dwight juuuust as the message of love and grief and hate and what should be let go versus hung onto gets through to Ona, and the zombies start dropping. Not all at once! Slowly enough that Nathan can identify some kind of a pattern, and while it might be a last-ditch hope for a few more minutes it also follows with the rules of the Trouble that they de-animate in the order they were brought back. Yes, Dwight, but you get a chance to say goodbye to her now.

First it's Audrey's turn, though, with a long clingy hug, oh honeys. They really do work amazingly well together, I actually buy the mother-daughter relationship on this little time. And now Charlotte needs to tell her about her father. Of course we also don't get to hear about that, because why the fuck would we. Helpful hint to network execs: if we're hooked on for a mystery already, I promise you do NOT need to drag out the reveals like this unless you're cutting for time. (Here, I suspect that's more the case, because we need to hit up two longer goodbye scenes and also get Duke on the road back to Haven.) (But still.) We will stay hooked after the reveals and speculate wildly about what it all means! Promise! Whatever she tells Audrey, it's unsurprisingly heavy and informative enough that she's blatantly in emotional shock when she comes out and tells Dwight it's his turn. Yeah, I'd be hesitant if someone came out looking like that too, not just out of bracing for being the one to hold a loved one through dying. That part's… relatively simple, in the scheme of things, considering Dwight's background. He might hate it, it'll make him hideously sad and he might well break some more and I'm kinda terrified how far that could go, but he knows how to do it. It's the information and responsibility Charlotte could drop on his head before she dies (again) that he's worried about. And rightly so! On the plus side, oh thank GOD she's using her available time to pass along as much useful information as possible. This is exactly what Nathan hoped for, and exactly the trope we were hoping to see averted, though I don't know how I feel about bringing Charlotte back for the purposes of plot coupons and angst, once we take the show's entire history and tendencies into account. Then I get kind of irritated. There's a fine line to walk, in other words, and it's a hard balance to hit, but when you have a habit of killing off all your women who aren't Audrey, keeping them alive is generally a better idea. This time, Audrey doesn't flinch back or go stiff at Nathan trying to comfort her, even initiates engaging with her grief because if anyone would know about losing a parent and how fucking unfair it is, he would. And she's at least temporarily for maybe twelve hours or less, out of immediate issues to deal with in lieu of dealing with her grief. And Nathan's is somewhat older grief by now for constructive comparison and relational purposes, he's had awhile to come to terms with it and had his opportunity to talk to Garland post-death. Talk to, fight with, get respect and praise from, so at least there's THAT much. The upshot of what Charlotte told Nathan about the barn: they need a "controller crystal" from the void, but they need to be able to get into the void, which means opening a thinny, which means get rid of the fucking shroud. Yaaaay. Maybe Duke can bring people with him if he's holding their hand across the shroud? I don't know if they want to risk that, it seems like the kind of thing that might lead to amputations and/or death. Also, controller crystal? Is that what the barnvatar/Agent Fuck You were? Or were they just the… user interface for the controller crystal? What's the thing even look like, is it another chunk of aether shaped differently from the core? Is it a chunk of something else, like, say, the stones in the family magical rings? INQUIRING MINDS OKAY. And no fucking answers.

But a lot of different answers! Charlotte has already told Dwight a thing that we didn't get to see, in favor of seeing the results of it later. I have all of the wary. Now we get to see the emotional part of the goodbye, where she admits that she was "not the best person" before she came to Haven. We've argued at pretty substantial length that she was in fact a pretty terrible person before that, so I'll take that as dramatic understatement. But he changed her, the town changed her, falling in love changed her, and she got to be happy for the first time in a very long time. Say, probably five hundred years or more? Just at a guess. Now, I'm guessing most people know the Healing Cock trope, and I'd judge it here, except it's less about Charlotte's emotional fragility and more about allowing herself to be vulnerable again, and about allowing other people's opinions of her to matter. Again, if she got to live I would love this scene a whole ton more, because it gives us a couple different narratives for women and when you have more than one woman you can do that without it carrying the weight of all the incredibly shitty miserable narratives women have done in Hollywood for ages. As it is, ehhhh I'm mixed. But she's getting to say goodbye and I love you on her terms, with no expectation of reciprocity, though I think Dwight's going to kick himself for a long time over being too stunned-mullet to reply. Or too wary of her manipulation to be able to return the sentiment honestly, while still deeply caring for her. I also really appreciate a few other things about this scene: Charlotte initiates the kiss, not that I noticed it at first but they found a woman who didn't need a Scully box for Adam Copeland's love interest, and Adam himself does a fucking incredible job of acting this whole scene with nothing but body language, and a lot of that facial expressions. Grief, regret, relief that he gets to be there for her this time, tenderness as he lays her body down, the sort of very brief chaste goodbye kiss that doesn't make me go 'ew necrophilia,' it's all very much present. And as dubious as we are about how fast this arc went for both Dwight and, in her redemption, Charlotte, Adam Copeland and Laura Mennell are selling the everloving fuck out of it.

You know one of the more unexpected, yet entirely believable things to come out of this? Also a high point of Adam Copeland's acting growth, is that apart from looking like he's wrestling with equal portions of anger and grief, he looks at Audrey as though seeing her from a new perspective, and a fond one, now. It's one glimpse of one glance, but I'm seeing a million dad jokes around the police station, mock threats of grounding, teasing commentary about 'old man' and so on that we could have had. Argh. Argh for an alternate timeline in which Dwight became Audrey's stepfather and they all laughed over the weirdness of it. Anyway. So that moment of bonding happens, or continues to happen since to an extent it's been going on all episode, and we find out that Dwight's tidbit of information was that she remembered how she died, and what happened then. On the one hand it seems awful plot-coupon-y to be handing out different pieces of information to each of the three of them, and on the other hand it's also a very efficient way for Charlotte to maximize her quiet time spent with each of three people who matters to her: daughter, lover, and daughter's lover, and for her to also make use of it to convey information that will help them. It's actually a very tight piece of writing that I appreciate more as we go back over this. Do we, however, get an actual straight answer and if not her own words, a verbatim repetition of what she said to any of them? Do we, bollocks.

Instead we get Duke and Seth discussing what to do and where to go. Seth votes for Roanoke but is easily overruled by Duke's No Must Go Haven Save Friends. So, all right, he'll go grab some snacks, and by that comment it seems like the interdiction field is more distance based than line of sight, since Seth feels comfortable going into the store when his van's parked much closer to it and Duke's in the front seat. And they've probably done this often enough that Seth's comfortable cracking reboot my memory jokes. Aw Seth. Double aw because when he comes out, Duke's in Not His Car. The tiny part of me that remembers Supernatural at all fondly wanted that to be an Impala. No, it's a Chevy Camaro, and Duke's going to take it up to Haven, and Seth's going to go his own way. Seth has one very weak threat of following him before he's forced to admit that once Duke drives off he's going to forget everything about him. I really do feel sorry for Seth, it's clear from his voice and his words that he's really gotten into this whole quest thing with Duke, and if his previous appearances are anything to go by, because Haven and its Troubles are the closest thing Seth gets to both the supernatural and the exciting, and to dealing with whatever strange encounter he had with a Glendower in his childhood. On the other hand, at least this time once Duke drives off, all of that will be neatly tucked away, folded over, and hidden by wacky extra-dimensional magic. As we see by Seth turning away, blinking, possibly wondering why he has this many groceries and road snacks, and blithely gnawing on a tube of super-processed mystery meat. Ew.

Vince and Dave are following the bleeps, the sweeps, and the creeps up the road to the Herald while Vince berates Dave for not keeping the door locked. More for the banter and humor value, I would expect, since I'm entirely sure a locked door isn't going to stop Croatoan or anyone from breaking in if they really wanted to get at something in there or make a point or example of the Teagues. Even with all of that, Vince is surprised at how strongly the sensor box is beeping, and Dave gets more and more agitated the closer Vince gets to the door. I use the word agitated very advisedly, because I'm not sure if he's actually scared or if he's using fear as a front for something else that we'll get to in a minute. I mean, not that calling for backup is a bad idea, but. Once inside it takes Vince a second to pinpoint the source of the beeping but the trunk/case isn't even hidden, it's just tucked under a desk. Ffffffffffff-- okay, who put that there and why, is more the question than the how Dave asks. See also Vince wondering why even as he's assuming who, which Audrey is quick to correct as the threesome not so much come up in the doorway as appear. Dramatically. Because we're down to the final reveal: Croatoan didn't put the bag there, Dave did! Because Dave's the one who killed Charlotte. Dave has no immediate response, just a lot of head-shaking and opening his mouth to say something before he's interrupted by the closing credits. Before we get into concluding statements I may also point out that as far as Charlotte knows, it might just be something Dave-shaped or something (Croatoan) wearing Dave like a cheap meat suit.

Theories! Thoughts! We continue to have a lot of confirmation about things and how things work, most of them having to do with Dave and his possession. We also have a lot of thoughts and feelings about Walter, most of the former and all of the later hostile and suspicious, but we have so little data on that front that it's not really worth it to speculate, except that it continues to make us suspicious that Charlotte, William, Mara, et al, come from ... I don't know, Gilead or something. Mid-World or End-World. Those other worlds than these that are propped up by a Tower and its Beams. Dave and his possession, though, we have at least some theories on that. The primary question we have is how long has he been this way, if he's possessed? Just for the day? Since Duke exploded and the shroud came down? Since the door opened and whatever was pulling him went or came through? Since before that, since the door on the beach opened? Realistically, Dave's been acting squirrelly since at least then, although whether that's trauma and fear or confusion because of the mess in his mind or some combination of all that and intermittent possession, we have no idea. That just brings up the issue though of why did Vince never notice? Why did Charlotte never sense, although that's the far lesser of the two. In the first case, was the possession intermittent because it was waiting for Vince to be away or go to sleep, or what? Secondly, what is possessing Dave? Is it Croatoan? Is it Mara's father? Is it the combo meal of both? There's a big problem there too, because if it's Croatoan we have so little data on the pure Croatoan creature, given that everything indicates by the time it came to our world it was already merged with Mara's father. We have slightly less of this problem because Mara's father is more shaped, is depicted as driven more by need to know and love of science than almost anything else, he might have the patience to lurk and wait in Dave's subconscious to see. The combo meal of both is the most likely given, again, the length of time that they've been melded and how long Dave's been possessed. Or not possessed. There's another theory that we had based on the tentacle-like spiral wounds on Dave's leg that appeared to be from an octopus or squid. Science currently indicates that octopodes at least have a primary brain and a vestigial brain in each limb, so what if Croashatner is the primary brain and Dave is being ridden by a vestigial brain, to simplify it a lot? And finally, how does this tie in to the greater plot, is it an obstacle or is it going to be incorporated into the solution? Right now we're kind of leaning towards obstacle and antagonist, but it remains to be seen, among other things, how responsible Dave is for his actions and which portion of the consequences are deliberate, obfuscated from his original intentions, or just plain fear-based and fear-driven. Let's not forget that this is the same man who brained his brother and threw him in a trunk, partially out of disagreement with the proper course of action but also very much out of fear.

Next week! HOLY SHIT WE GET TO GO VISIT THE 1980S. Via the convenient continued existence of Mosley and his Trouble. Note that we get absolutely fucking nothing in the sneak peek about where Dave is and what the solution there is, so we can safely assume they're picking up pretty close to right where we left them. Nathan and Vince are the ones going back in time, Nathan out of experience with time travel and Vince out of experience with the era, presumably? So if we're very lucky we will FINALLY get a bunch of FUCKING ANSWERS about Lucy Ripley and maybe Simon Crocker and a bunch of the Troubles and what happened that day on the beach. The synopsis suggests this is the way to fix Croatoan somehow or another, whether that's kill, jail, de-power, or what. So. Yay? Also I would bet you a lot that the kid with the Polaroid camera all OH HEY THAT WAS COOL is either ickle!Nathan (likeliest) or ickle!Duke. Feel free to bask in the fucking adorable, since we're liable to get screwed over on it sooner rather than later. This is Haven, after all.