Remember To Forget Haven S5E20 Just Passing Through

We have written a new verse to the song of our people. It is called STOP FUCKING WITH THE TIMESTREAM. Previously on Haven, we have a brief summary of how Stuart Mosley's Trouble works (Nathan's fault. Because of the aforementioned fucking with the timestream. Or IN the timestream, NATHAN.) and another summary of Dave telling Vince he's terrified he killed the Colorado Kid. More interesting: Hayley! Huh. Hi Hayley. ...Hayley Coulton. Well that'll be significant later! And then the reveal that Dave killed Charlotte from the end of last ep, as if we were going to forget THAT.

Rather than starting exactly where we left off, we pick up down … at the school? Is that the school? No, that's the Chief's office, upon further/closer inspection. And who knows where Vince is. Probably off pretending that he doesn't need or want support from Dwight or Audrey in the revelation that his brother's been getting possessed on a regular basis. Oh don't worry, Vince! There's worse to come! Nathan's questioning Dave and trying to pry answers out of him, which boil down to he swears he was being possessed and he doesn't remember anything or know why Croatoan would want Charlotte dead. Uh. Nathan? You've previously established that he knows more or less what the hell you're up to, and what her proposed plan was, Croatoan does not appear to WANT to go back into the void, would you like to ask another stupid question and get another dumb answer? Dave is rattled enough to cough up the story of waking up on the beach near James Cogan's body, which Nathan pretty much knows is going to happen the second he asks the question but he's being very, very restrained and trying to hold himself to cop questions. (I find it interesting that the order here goes "James Cogan, the Colorado Kid, your son." Particularly since the poor bastard's been known only as the Colorado Kid for so long.) Dave claims not to remember much at all, except there was a woman on the beach opening? or passing through? a thinny right before he got sucked into it. I have so many questions about whether this is really all he remembers or if he's just trying not to fuck with the timestream, or if for that matter this is due to time paradoxes. Or what. Insufficient data. The important part is that there's another way into the void, which is where they need to go next! Yay! Dave does not think yay. Dave thinks oh fuck my life also you're scary when you're intense, Officer Wuornos. Just count your blessings that he's NOT blaming you for this, Dave. Yet. We're certainly considering whether or not we blame you or if that really is all trauma.

Down to the beach they go! I have some eyebrows for how they're walking all arm-in-arm, but turns out that's going to be a deliberate callback to 1983 in a bit, so that makes sense. Besides, to be fair, the last time Audrey went near a thinny, Mara showed up and possessed her (or perhaps the better term is repossessed), so I can understand Nathan being jittery about it. Nathan. Audrey. Both of you. Charlotte sealed all the thinnies so Mara couldn't get across in this month, year, however long it's been. Although I will accept that she likely also sealed several of them 500 years ago, too. Also the shroud appears to have made the thinnies inaccessible, though it was never clear if that was due to where it landed or due to something in the very nature of the shroud. Regardless, it's not really a surprise that Audrey can't see a shimmer or sense anything. Also of interest: Nathan called her Parker more often when he has a purpose and feels like they're secure in their relationship, which is kind of adorable. Audrey questions this whole controller crystal barn rebuild crap, how the hell are they supposed to be able to do this without Charlotte. And she hesitates over calling her her mother, but it's a title she seems to have accepted. Made some kind of peace with. We get another recap for the folks in the back as to how this is supposed to work, remove the Troubles and the evil Trouble-eating monster formerly known as Mara's father and send them back into the void whence they came without killing everyone. So far it doesn't sound like that's gotten distorted by memory from when we first heard it, so that's good. We hope. Okay, so no thinny, so… what. A Trouble? Caused by this unknown element of the woman on the beach? Nathan this seems like an awfully fast leap from woman on the beach to LET'S GO 88 MPH BACK IN TIME, I'm just saying, but it is the only place they know a thinny was and therefore it's their best bet to do anything. Plus he's gone back in time and returned successfully once before! I still think this is not a thing you fucking gamble on, even when you know that fucking IN the timeline previously caused the Troubles to have a particular new shape for the two cycles after, which seems to be more fruitful in reaching an end to the Troubles. Maybe. Roll credits and let's go find out.

That police station looks like it's been rather thoroughly cleaned up since it was the Last Home for Zombies. And very quickly, too! Actually that whole street looks very… calm and non-threatening considering the whole downtown stretch used to be Troubles Alley. Uh. Guys? Is your continuity suffering or were actions taken that we didn't see? Okay, so, Vince gets filled in on Nathan's plan to use Mosley, he confirms that he recognizes the woman (presumably that's his sketch) but he doesn't remember a name, it's been a long time, etc. Nathan has on the 80s version of his usual clothes, which are at least always somber enough that the only thing we have to facepalm at is that tie and the jacket. I'm not sure why we need to have another litany of the reasons Nathan's risking traveling back into the past, but he fills Vince in and we learn that Vince was actually laid up in-hospital that day. Why? We don't know! Fuck. I wish we did know, I have the suspicion that might be important later. But we pause now for Audrey to give Nathan shit over the nylon jacket (he raided Goodwill! aww!) and admit that she's glad she's immune to this Trouble. So are we. As much fun as I think it'd be watching various versions of AudSarLu interact, I don't think that would be a good idea here. Yes, Nathan, you switch on his Trouble because you KEEP FUCKING WITH IT. The poor guy. At least they have the reverse switch in the form of the photo all ready to go this time. Vince offers to go with him because he knows 1983 and his other-self is in one place and they can at least avoid that piece of paradox. Well. I guess that's fair, though I have so many questions about why he thinks it's necessary he goes. Is it because he wants to protect Nathan from Simon Crocker Just In Case? That'd be my inclination. Plus it turns out he thinks he can save his brother. It also paves the way for the hilariousest exchange over Vince's clothes and him pulling his hair into a ponytail. Audrey feels it's necessary to deliver the No Timeline Fucking You Guys speech. I don't blame her, but I don't know why she thinks it's going to do a single fucking thing, especially with that look on Vince's face. She also has a fake ID for Nathan! Awwww. He thinks this is adorable and hilarious. Not at all hilarious and less adorable is the reminder that he can't change what happens. He can't save their son. Even if they both wish he could.

I'm not sure what Duke has to do with Don't Fuck Up The Timestream, except for the part where he went off and did not, fortunately, kill his grandfather the last time they got blasted to the past. He's asking for a wake-up call at something that looks about as good as the Winchester brothers' default no-tell motel, which is adorable. Duke you're really severely out of practice with being on the run, aren't you. Which does also speak well? I guess? To his ability to form and practice new habits. But still. (In therp-speak they call that emotional resilience. The More You Know.) This is, of course, a cue for something big to happen; given the previouslies I kinda expected it to be Hayley tracking him down all WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT, having spied from afar to be sure he's no longer aiming to kill her. It's… not. It's a bunch of guys doing a very bad impression of being from the government. Guys, this is such an oversell I cannot even begin to tell you. I lived in From The Government for 18 years, I have experience in I Am From The Government, and this is the absolute least convincing and worst oversell of Ma'am We At The Alphabet Soup Agency Have No Sense Of Humor Or Personal Space. Though I guess their suits are ill-fitting enough! That's like the one detail they got right, though they don't appear to be packing enough weaponry and earwigs for that to be the reason for the bad tailoring. (Concealed holsters and comms make bad seam lines, unless you get expensive and specific modifications made to your suits.) (A: Ask me sometime about playing spot-the-shoulder-and-ankle-holsters at the Dalai Lama's talk because the sound system was so bad I couldn't hear his speech.) And I also don't understand why we've got all the drama for this thing. I am, however, going to giggle madly over Duke's alias being Skip McMannis, with a DL issued from Massachusetts and oddly dated like it's a Canadian date of birth, day first then month. (May 22, 1978, which is actually NOT Balfour's DOB at all so I think we can safely say that this is anywhere from very carefully arranged or semi-intentional on the part of the writers and props department.) Interestingly, that's also a Class C license, not the normal Class D, which is to say that it's a commercial license, it specifically disallows Duke from driving a semi or most buses, but it does allow some fairly heavy-duty hauling. Good for smuggling, in other words! Also allows him to carry more than 15 people if the vehicle meets all other regulations, y'all can go look up the super-specific numbers, but it sounds an awful lot like specifically for that monster of a yellow truck he's got. Issued in '07, so yeah it's a few years out of date but you do want a nice padding of backstory to a solid alias. So the asshole in charge of dumping all his stuff on the bed is wrong and stupidly wrong, but he does provide useful data in the form of implying that they've been keeping tabs on Duke since (at least) 2007! He is officially very fucking confused now. And tired. And would like his fucking life to stop having random assholes barging into it, or not so random, on account of these guys shouldn't even remember him. Interesting: he also refers to it as the shroud, though in this case I'm chalking that up to consistency for the sake of not confusing the audience, not any greater meaning.

That police station continues to look busy and active like it's a normal station. Um. Guys? What the fuck. Seriously. Also where's Dwight? Is he off running the place? Inquiring goddamn minds. Anyway, the benefit to having Vince go along with Nathan is that it allows a second person who's not Audrey to go in and talk him through do you remember this event? And where you were on that day? Vince stop drawing on your authority as former leader of the Guard, that's creepy as fuck. I assume he's doing it to start agitating poor Mosley, but stoppit augh. The poor bastard apparently also spent the whole damn day in the station fighting about parking tickets, so hey! They know where to find him when they want to go back, and as long as the station layout hasn't changed so much they get sent back in time halfway through a wall they'll be fine. (Seriously I feel this is a potential downside of that Trouble as yet unexplored.) One downside they do get this time: a witness! With a camera. Lucky for them it's a Polaroid camera so Nathan can just confiscate it after the ad break with unnecessary 80s clothes. Some nice details in the station house, though: the Challenger did indeed first launch on April 4, 1983, and Reagan was indeed promoting the everloving fuck out of SDI, also known as Star Wars, after announcing it March 23, 1983. How convenient for such extremely well-known events to occur early in the year! Also cigarettes, Twinkies, and other snack foods all over the break room. Yes, Nathan, you and Vince should both have come up with a cover story in case of witnesses because you knew you would be transported to the goddamn police station. Where there are people. What a shock. Fortunately Nathan can pull off We're From The Government We're Here To Help better, largely by dint of being a lifelong cop in the first place and partially because taciturn and carefully contained is his natural state. While he may not remember a ton about the fearmongering of the 1980s, he remembers enough to pull off "your country thanks you for your help," which just makes me laugh. I'm so disappointed that this isn't ickle!Nathan or ickle!Duke, but I suppose we had to avoid having that level of timeline fuckery. And the kid turns out to be important later. So! May 22, 1983, as it turns out, because they keep a calendar on the wall. Because not everyone has a smartphone! In fact nobody does hello tape recorder for confessions. Yes, Virginia, we really are in the 80s. And they've found their ticket home, pun intended, so now it's time to… split up? No Vince. Vince. No. Nathan would like to tell him no in much stronger words except this is Vince and any Do Not Do The Thing, Vincent Teagues will only make him increase the fucking thing. Goddammit. Nathan has bigger problems on his plate, though he hopes they'll meet up on the beach later. Look at him not discussing how they're going to go see horrible things happen to their loved ones.

He'll deal with the problem in front of him! Which is, namely, how to go talk to his father without giving away the homeworld. Good luck with that, Nathan! Oh my god young Garland was kinda hot, in the Stereotypical Rugged Cop way. I'm so disturbed. They did find a good actor for him, too, having gone and looked for younger pics of Nick Campbell oh my god. That's actually kind of freaky. About the main difference seems to be that Nick Campbell was a brunette before he aged into salt and pepper. I'm going to hide behind the couch now. And it's Lucy! In the office. Holding hands with Garland. WHO CALLED A ROMANCE OF SOME KIND. DID WE. YES WE DID. They're so wrapped up in each other, in fact, that neither of them notices the door opening until Nathan makes with the awkward throat-clearing. Guys. Situational awareness, dammit. Nathan you really should've seen that coming, though I admit it's reasonable to have a huge filter of NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPETOPUS over thinking about your dad being involved with the same woman you love now. Be a little more weird and awkward about it now, though, why don't you, that won't tip them off that something's wrong at all! Lucy obviously knows who the woman is, Garland would like it known that he's not welcoming random idiot strangers into his office what the fuck. Nathan BUTTERWORTH? BUTTERWORTH, AUDREY? THAT'S WHAT YOU WENT WITH? This is about the pancakes isn't it. That explains everything about those glances they exchanged of "oh really" and "I had to" when she was handing him the IDs anyway. But BUTTERWORTH? Okay, okay, calming down now, enough with the giggling. Except then we have to capslock all over again over SHOW MY LADY FRIEND OUT. Both for Garland calling Lucy that to Nathan's face (and not knowing why it's hilarious) and for the idea of AudSarLu as anyone's "lady friend." She's not laughing, or having to hide it, though, she's too unnerved as Garland walks her out, passing along that she recognizes the woman, it's Barbara Coulton. HI HAYLEY'S MOTHER. Lucy is planning today as her last day here, she's going back into the barn and wants to talk to James, see him one last time, Garland will get rid of the feds on their back so they don't draw the wrong kind of attention. Good luck with that. Aww honeys. There's something kind of weird underlying Lucy making sure James gets out of town, and I don't think it's just Mom wants to be sure her son doesn't see her disappear into the personality-eating barn for 27 years. I suspect it has as much or more to do with the Guard and/or Simon Crocker. And/or Arla, if Lucy sensed something off about that woman even then. And/or James' Trouble. (Did he inherit Nathan's? WE HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS but we'll save some for the beach.) It's nice, too, to see Garland at least trying to be emotionally supportive even though he's also apparently emotionally stunted sort of by default. Less with women than with other men! Yay toxic masculinity.

Duke appears to be handcuffed to the bed. Well, with those bars who wouldn't go there. He starts trying to find out what they know, what the shroud's taken from their memories, because hey! First people who know who he is outside of, well, Hayley and Seth, and Seth only after he essentially inoculated him against the memory-fuckery. So far the two points of difference there are that Hayley and her parents knew Duke well before this round of Troubles started and presumably from interacting with him in locations that were not Haven and therefore not obfuscated, and as far as we know Seth is not Troubled. Still, it'd be a bit odd to have at least five mooks in suits who don't have the right bearing or knowledge to be of the Guard (they're not nearly scared enough of him for that although I suppose it's possible that taking away their knowledge of Haven would also take away at least some of their reason to be scared/wary of Crockers and this is why I fucking hate mind-magic. and time travel.) but also be Troubled at this late date in the game. He goes on to prod them into coughing up that they're not from the government, which by that look serves pretty much as confirmation. I'm not sure what anyone thought was going to happen as a result of that information, either the mooks with Duke yelling for help or Duke with getting knocked unconscious and possibly gagged. I mean, you already handcuffed him, guys, might's well bring out the gimp suit.

Meanwhile in 1983 Garland returns with the coffee, black, with a touch of head-explodie. Nathan keeps giving him these quiet looks of incredulity and amusement, it's a very nice touch from Lucas Bryant, sort of the Nathan Wuornos version of WHAT THE FUCK. THIS WAS A BAD IDEA. Because that's damn well what I'd be doing by now. Of course Garland has to bring up that he has a kid named Nathan, because that's what you do when you're proud of your kids even if Nathan didn't always hear it as much as he wanted, or feel it all the time. He does know this now, though, so his only response to the jibe about butts on desks is to make a not at all veiled to the viewer comment about a kid wanting to be close to his dad. Oh sweetie. I wonder if that'll come back to haunt Garland in a bit. Anyway, to business. Which is confidential, of course, what he wants with Barbara Coulton, but Garland will totally put every available man on it, and it just so happens that the only man available is him. He's not saying that last part but I'm inferring it from the skepticism. And the outright lying. Not that I can blame him, Nathan is an absolute shit undercover operative, considering that when he tries to direct the conversation over to the Teagues by asking very not at all nonchalant questions about the local paper, well, first, it's clumsy as hell, and second he's referring to a local hospital by its local name. Which an FBI guy who didn't come from this particular small town would never do! Gee. You think that aroused some suspicions? Garland has a much better poker face and is going to go check on one thing, letting Nathan infer it's to do with the case and in actuality having to do with Nathan's utter shite cover story. And in the meantime Nathan will sit here gormless and clueless. Or are those the same thing. Clueless squared.

While Garland checks on Nathan's totally fake credentials, the kid from earlier wanders in! Hi kid. Who must be significant somehow but isn't anyone we've met before, although if he's in Duke's grade he's presumably in Nathan's as well, so I guess Nathan just… never knew him? Argh details people. Anyway, Duke stole his good camera and now he wants the nice outsider's help, probably because he is an outsider and therefore an object of curiosity and less likely than the other cops to tell him that they're just being kids. Particularly with the possibility of blackmail, at a guess. Nathan doesn't do any of those things, though, he beckons the kid closer and tells him the secret of Duke's hiding stash. Oh Nathan. Stop fucking with the timeline, Nathan. Though at least it's minor comparatively. Also this is definitely by way of putting the fear of "I work for the government" in the poor kid. Which, come to think of it explains a thing we find out later. Never mind.

Lucy's using the payphone in the station to say the beginnings of her goodbyes to James, which is arguably weirder to us than the tape recorder and the polaroid camera. I mean, apart from the issue of when was the last time you used a payphone (I'd say when was the last time you saw a payphone but there was actually one near where I work until a couple years ago), do you see how old that thing is? It looks like it's made out of cast iron instead of the bakelite phones that were showing up at that point. No, that's not the weirdness, that's just what distracted me for a second there, here's the weirdness. First of all, Lucy and James who we barely know. Second of all, the way she says she has to go away for a while at least at that time implies that she hasn't told him about the barn, the 27 years, and so on. On the other hand after they have their moment of cling and arrange for the walk on the beach he tells her "I love you, Mom," which only makes sense if she's already told him about the 27 year time jump because otherwise, um. They are kind of the same age. That's impossible in the extreme or at least highly improbable in Haven without a few very specific Troubles. Arla's being one of them, but he doesn't know that yet. At any rate, one can assume several contradictory things from that about a minute's worth of conversation, so, yeah. We're confused! I'm going to go with Lucy's obfuscating not because of James specifically, but because she's in a police station surrounded by people who might be passing and wondering why she's going to have to be in a barn for 27 years. We do yell at people a lot for talking about secret things in the public haunt of men, but it damn well does make things confusing when it hasn't already been established who knows what. At any rate. We can guess that James knows the basic shape of at least some stuff given that he's calling Lucy "Mom" and put a pin in that for now. Garland's coming up to tell Lucy that alarm bells are ringing, can she go stall him while he checks out this alleged FBI guy. Yes, sure she can, because hell no FBI coming stomping all over my town. Come to think of it, with the exception of the real Agent Howard, has legit federal presence ever come to Haven? Or has it always been Our Heroes or people from other dimensions in disguise. (A: While she's screaming below, no. Apart from Audrey II and the real Agent Howard, no legit federal presence has been in Haven. Barnvatar Agent Fuck You and Charlotte.)

I was going to think back and count up all the federal presences but now I have to go OH FUCK YOU ALL OF YOU. WHY DO VINCE AND DAVE LIVE AT 19 WHATEVER WHATEVER. WHY. Because Stephen King, that's why, but I'm still going to scream. A lot.  Also at some point the Teagues repainted their house, though it being blue I guess is the least of my continuity concerns. (We saw their house in 1x06 Fur for those of you who are all "But wait, when did we see the Teagues' house?" There was a bear. Someone made a bear.) (Yes, I in fact remember that their house was white and not deep blue shut up.) I'm more concerned with the continuity of VINCE WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO YOUR BROTHER. LEAVE THE FUCKING TIMESTREAM ALONE. Not to mention why are you also a terrible liar. It's not so much the details which I'm sure he's pulling from bits and pieces of conversations with Dave over the years as the drastic oversell. Because the Teagues all do things dramatically. Apparently he's trying to get Dave out of town under some pretext of wanting to hire him or buy his story, it's unclear in all the giggling and mania and lobstering. No, no lobstering, leave the lobstrosities alone. Vince's persona would like Dave to explore the dude ranches in New Mexico, which I guess is very far away from both Colorado and North Carolina and Haven, Maine, so I guess that's as far away from Stephen King country as you can get? And he keeps selling it and he should have just stuck with a dude ranch in New Mexico or better yet, not actively gone after Dave because we all know that trying to fix things in the past only breaks them further. Ahem. But he should have kept it simple and not gotten carried away, is the main point, because when Dave starts trying to figure out where's the catch, that's when he figures out it's almost 30 years older Vince. Yes, Vince, you've been made. That's because you're a moron. Having established that, I give you a random outburst of HOLY FUCK IT'S GILBERT FUCKING BLYTHE WHY IS GILBERT BLYTHE YOUNG DAVE TEAGUES. Sorry, I had to get that out there, it's been bugging me. You're welcome.

Back at the police station no seriously what the hell is that ugly-ass lamp thing on the Chief's desk that looks like it's a popsicle stick model of the damn lighthouse. Better than what is why. Why is that. Nathan shove it off the desk so it doesn't give young!you nightmares, it's going to give me nightmares. Nathan's too busy going through his father's desk and his father's files and generally being stupid as he lingers over the files long enough to almost get caught by Lucy. Okay, actually get caught, but she's not calling him on sliding a file underneath the desk blotter, she's just going to pretend she didn't see that and give him a chance to be honest by asking him what he's doing behind the good detective's desk. He was just borrowing a pen. Let me give that capital letters because it's so cliche it should be trademarked at this point, he was Borrowing A Pen. Lucy counters with Oh Here You Can Use Mine, because yes Nathan she saw what you did there. And they don't shake hands but their fingers touch enough when she hands him the pen that she knows something happened, and immediately comments on it. Not necessarily because of something she felt (although we don't know she didn't feel anything) but because of Nathan's reaction. And her immediately commenting on it is why out of all of the AudSarLuMar incarnations Lucy is totally our identification version. Ahem. Nathan has no idea what she's talking about and he's just going to go now. Garland or no Garland, not that Lucy is supposed to know he said he'd be right back. Lucy recovers quickly, though, enough to stall him with hey, I was supposed to help you, maybe I know this person you're looking for, all sly and poker-faced. Mostly poker-faced. Nathan even stutters over his answer to her. Partly because that's a very Audrey sort of a thing to do and say, and, well. How many incarnations has he met now? Audrey, Sarah, Mara, Lexie if Lexie ever existed, and now Lucy. Poor guy's head must be spinning. No, he's just going to go, the last time he was fucking around with an Audrey incarnation in the timestream he really was fucking around with an Audrey incarnation in the timestream, and how that ended up is about to die on the beach. Also it looks like his dad is sleeping with or at least romantically entangled with this version. Hawkward. Lucy does call him back to get her pen back, but rather than risk touching her again he's just going to leave it on the sill. Yes. Nathan looks so pained and so tired, poor bastard. Lucy's look in his direction is some bizarre mix of, I don't trust you you are up to something and I'm going to shake you till it falls out, oh you poor boy, and all right you amuse me good night sleep well and I'll most likely kill you in the morning. And of course the second he's gone she's going and pulling the file out from under the blotter where he stuffed it and seeing that he was looking up Barbara Coulton. Now she really is going to kill him in the morning. After she calls Barbara and tells her that there's a Fed looking for her.

Barbara's house is terrifyingly yellow. Were all houses in the early 80s these bright vivid scary colors? Is this just a Maine thing? I know a lot of the New England Victorians I've seen have been absolutely scarifying bright colors. Never mind. Nathan's approaching Barbara with all the tact of, well, of a guy who thinks going into the past to scare up a thinny is a good idea, so I guess there's that. He's about to tell her some kind of a story even as she tries to brush him off with Now's not a good time when he notices the ring on her thumb. Uh-oh. Double uh-oh. Because it's not until Nathan comments on the ring that she freaks out. Triple uh-oh because she just ripped a thinny through in her living room and there it she goes! Well, fuck. Says Nathan's expression, doubly so as he sees her come out of another thinny in her yard and go running off. He starts to give chase, too, except there's a six-gun in his way held by a very angry Garland. There is no Nathan Butterworth, he's got a strange Fed in his town going after a Troubled person, and no, he is not letting Nathan go until he gets some goddamn answers. He's even looked into the staties and other police agencies and he can't find any record on Nathan. Have you looked in your filing cabinet at home for an adoption certificate? Okay, I'll stop. The funny part of this is on first viewing I was shrieking about how Nathan should just tell him the damn truth, and then Nathan proceeded to do just that. Well then! A novel approach. But, really, when you're used to a town like Haven, weird truths suddenly become a lot more of a sliding scale and a lot less of a stepping outside a rigid set of boundaries. We get a few pieces of concrete data such as when and where he was born, and a repetition of his bio-parents' name(s). Not that any of this is useful, but it's nice to go in our little indices.

Garland is incredulous after the break. As anyone would be, really. Nathan tells him how he got there and whose Trouble it is, and while Garland knows the family he also points out very reasonably that anyone can pick a name out of a phone book. He did lower his gun though. And, smart man, he pulls out his badge and pokes Nathan in the back of the neck with it to see if he feels it. Back of the neck, so Nathan doesn't see it coming. Not that Nathan doesn't know what he's doing and have I mentioned I love how quick on the stick everyone is here? Not wasting time asking what are you doing and why, not bothering to deny what at least is possible given Fucking Haven, just boom, information, discussion, information again. It's so glorious. I want all of the Garland-Nathan buddy cop show. They have a further laconic exchange about the prick test, which Nathan totally knew he was going to do because he knows him, how he thinks, and Garland's visibly and audibly taking this information in and wrapping his mind around it. Pretty damn quickly, too, this is not a small thing Nathan's asking him to accept. But he's managing it. Enough to crack a joke about making Chief when Nathan calls him by that moniker. And an even better crack about the ears. Oh boys. I think the hardest part here is watching Nathan's eyes tighten and become strained at the 'son.' Because ... well, because. Years more baggage, and a few more months to a year plus with Garland gone. Oh sweeties.

I have some, I will admit, oh-sweeties sympathy for the Teagues. Not a ton. I'm going to keep yelling at Vince, we can just take that as written? I'm also going to yell at Dave, who's trying to pry stories of the future out of his future!brother. (I still want to know why the fuck 1983!Vince is in hospital besides getting him out of the way for this episode. It could just be that! But we have finely honed suspicious as hell minds about "coincidences" on this show.) Vince is not here to tell you about flying cars, death rays, or the end of the Cold War, Dave, stoppit. I am, however, incredibly disappointed that he doesn't use (probably due to copyright reasons) "I'm sorry, Dave, I cannot do that." This Dave is also much… sharper, in some ways, much more reckless and confident in his abilities than the one we've come to know and who's been tossed around like the Troubles' plaything for at least a few months. Up to and including snarking at Vince over the terrible danger he's supposedly in. Once he plants himself in a chair with clear intentions of going nowhere until Vince shares details, Vince coughs up quite a lot about Croatoan, possession, blah blah blah, ending on the vague but ominous note of Dave's fate will be sealed if this doesn't get stopped. Oh Vince honey. I admire your desire to save your brother from a miserable fucking time as a monster's meatpuppet, but you are going about it ALL WRONG. Dave may be more reckless than we're used to, but he's also used to listening to Vince and maybe even taking orders, such that once Vince finishes the shortest possible version of Your Life's About To Suck A Lot he's willing to leave. I have a question! Does Dave know he's a freak even by Troubled standards already? Or is this knowledge, such as it is, that he picked up after his initial possession? Okay, two questions: how much, if any, of this does he retain post-beach? And how much of the garbled version that we get in the present day is due to mind-wipeage and how much is due to almost twenty seven years happening between then and now. Or now and other now. I demand answers to Croatoan's memory-fuckery that aren't just "it works however the writers need it to." Internal consistency is a goodness!

Duke comes back to blurry consciousness to the sounds of a chopper's rotor whirring. O-kay. This is seriously WAY more drama than is necessary, dude. The be-earwigged mooks mostly leave to "go help him" which lets us see that Duke's in room #4, for whatever significance that may or may not have. The only thing that brings to mind within the show's cosmology is the four figures on the labyrinth/Guard symbol, although if you really want I can give you chapter and verse on the symbology of the number four in several cultures. No, probably not. Head Mook stays inside to keep an eye on Duke, who makes a more halfhearted than usual attempt to bribe him into letting him go. Seriously, where do you think you're getting that money from, Duke? Given you no longer exist to the banks? It's a bad job of lying and a worse job of bribing, honestly, since he hasn't taken the time (or had it) to find out anything about what motivates these guys. MICE doesn't work so good if you have no intel to apply it with. (That's Money, Ideology, Coercion, and Ego, for those of you less up on your Cold War-era counterintel acronyms.) No, Head Mook likes suits! Of course you do, honey. Though he does have a better tailor than the other four. Enter Head Honcho, in a much nicer suit, with all due pomp and declarations of hi I've been looking for you. Duke is so over this shit. Duke would probably rather be back in vision-land with Walter's cryptic bullshit; at least that involved DATA at the same time as Walter kept jerking him around. Pretty concise, clear data too. Surprisingly. This is just overblown for the sake of being overblown. Sigh.

Oh hey, it's time for the inevitable Accidentally Overhearing Things Out Of Context scene! I guess we know how Lucy found out about the Troubles now. I'm a little surprised that both Nathan and Garland failed to notice her pulling up and coming up the porch, given Lucy wasn't hiding her footsteps and the guys are plenty paranoid and attuned to their environment. But it serves the scene. Nathan and Garland discuss the Coulton Trouble, how it lets people move through solid space but thin air is a new one on Garland. Well, how about those interdimensional rings? Which Lucy has. Garland assumes Barbara stole it, which I suppose is possible, but it's also possible that she was given it for some other reason? Hard to know for sure in the context we're given, though there's a behind the scenes bit on SyFy's site that confirms yes, it was stolen. At the moment we know there are at least three rings in not so much play but this point in time: Lucy has one according to Garland, Nathan has one that we see, and unless something else happened that we didn't see Vince and Dave have one tucked away in the museum they call the Herald offices. Nathan's and Lucy's should be the same one, duplicated by time travel. Vince refers to the one they have as Sarah's, so that one wasn't likely in play in '83. So who the hell's is Barbara's? I'm not picking at this more because it's possible it's Vince and Dave's and they recover it later in time to give it to Audrey in at the end of s1, but it's going to bug me. Meanwhile Nathan's version of the Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, the thinny-creator is our only hope is all the more poignant for being typically understated. Which Garland seems to recognize. There's a lot of really, really lovely acting and bouncing off each other going on here; they got very lucky with their casting, I think, both in terms of someone who passes as a young Garland and in terms of the actor chemistry. Garland offers up Agent Howard's name and we will all take a minute to yell at the screen about KNOWING someone and SHOOTING him are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS, NATHAN. I suppose that's like not messing with the timestream any more than he already has, though. Howard has apparently coughed up the kill the one you love clause to Garland, which only gives us, oh, ALL the questions ever. Why? Under what circumstances? Why Garland and not Lucy? Or James, for that matter? What fucking game is Agent Fuck You the barnvatar playing at this time? We already know Garland has a self-sacrifice streak from his death in 1x13 Spiral, is Howard banking on that? See also one of many reasons why we call him Agent Fuck You. I do not trust any of this. Though it does put a new spin on Garland's meeting(s) with Howard at the beginning of the 2010 cycle. Not to mention dead!Garland's warning to Nathan about don't fall in love with her, and more importantly don't let her fall in love with you. Heh. Nathan rather generously, for him, admits that that's Garland, but no, not anymore, it's all her son now. We continue to have all the questions ever, but they're not new ones anymore, since we still don't get to know how James and Lucy found each other, who went searching for whom, etc. It does emphasize what it is that makes AudSarLu different from the other times, that she's got the anchor of James. Actually, Garland, NOW you've told Lucy about this! Nathan. Now would be a good time to cough up that it's good he hasn't told her because it's a BAD SOLUTION let's not kill everyone. But no, they're sitting and talking because they have some time, or think they do, and they don't need to rush to everything like one of them's about to die. Which makes for a nice change for Nathan, if only the irony weren't so thick you could cut it with a spoon. And the layers and LAYERS of meanings when Garland says that that's no choice for a parent to make. Lucy appears to think this is a valid choice! Or at least that she doesn't have much of one, judging by the shellshocked silent crying as she disappears off to get a weapon. Oh honey.

How are they in the future? Well, Dad, you're dead. To begin with. I appreciate how incredibly restrained Nathan is in not commenting on that. Or that they buried him in a cooler, shut up that still amuses me. Nathan describes him as tough but not without reason, preparing him for the Troubles, and then he found that when the Troubles came back he was ready for it, and credits his Dad with that. Well, explicitly, says to young!Garland that he never gave him credit for it and young!Garland replying that he just did before briskly moving back along to let's save the damn town already. Oh Garland. You have some issues that could use addressing regarding emotional connections. And on the other hand, this conversation probably IS one that Nathan needs to have. Though I severely wonder how much this affects Garland's parenting style in the future. Heh. Speaking of awkward parenting, Lucy is now taking off and now the boys hear her, get up in some alarm. Extra alarm for Nathan because she overheard just enough about the part about killing the one you love ending the Troubles for good to be dangerous. Which means Nathan now has to rush through explaining to Garland that, no, that will end the Troubles but only by killing everyone with them, activated or not, one assumes. Meaning yes, a whole lot of people will die including them. We're going to take a second here and be somewhat amused because as far as we know, Garland either never told Nathan he was Troubled or never told him what his Trouble was. Of course, on the other hand, young!Garland doesn't know that, so, sure, go stop Lucy from doing something really horrible. What was once your salvation is now your doom indeed. So to speak. Though killing everyone already seems kind of doom-y. Eh, never mind. Save that for later. First chasing down Lucy and Barbara, two men, two subjects, two different directions! And does Nathan need a car? Apparently not when the blue Bronco's sitting parked just at the next intersection. Oh Nathan. Of course he knows how to hotwire it, which actually brings a fair bit of approval and amusement from Garland. Oh boys. Right, off they go.

In the spirit of asking for emotional reassurance from loved and respected family members (adoptive, no less), Dave's wondering why Vince pulled that cover story out of his hat among all the ones he could possibly have chosen. This leads me to once again wonder what the fuck kind of formative experience in military or quasi-military organizations Vince has/had, beyond just the Guard, but that's data for another day, if we're lucky. The real answer, I suspect, is that Vince knows appealing to Dave's ego is a surefire way to get him to jump without thinking too hard, but you don't say those kinds of things to your brother when you're trying to save his life. At least not with the relationship these two have. Instead he asserts that he knows Dave could make it as a writer outside of a tinyass town in the middle of nowhere, Maine, and any further speculations about that will have to wait because Lucy's just pulled up. Leading to a lot MORE speculation. Again we have absolutely no data to go on, but it seems like the Teagues may have told Lucy more than they told Audrey, at the outset. Not that that would take much, and indeed Dave will lend a hand to my damning with faint praise by instructing Vince to stay out of sight inside fuck no she can't know you're here. Clearly Vince hasn't told Dave that he didn't come back alone, either. My keyboard is wearing out under the force of all the faceplanting I'm doing. The important part here is Lucy asking what Dave would do to save Haven from the Troubles and stop all of this. Well, after going through them twice, pretty much anything, he says, clearly without thinking about it too hard. This is one of those places where I think it's really obvious that Vince has tried to shelter his brother from the kinds of really hard, heavy decisions that being a leader during the Troubles causes, and one of the reasons we trip occasionally on the fact that Vince is still the younger one (at least according to the chameleon ep in s1). Lucy would like a gun now please. No questions, Dave, just the fucking gun. Dave pretty clearly thinks she's going off to commit suicide, which, no, I think she'd hate that but be a lot less outwardly miserable if that were the case. At least then she could rationalize that she's not hurting anyone but herself, not more than going back into the Barn and not remembering anyone when she comes back again does. That isn't true, of course - it's different for everyone - but it'd be an easy rationalization to make for suicide. This? No. But Dave's a pushover, so she gets his gun and he goes back in to questions from Vince about what the hell took so long. Vince. You know why she probably wanted that gun, even if you don't know how the hell she could've found out about it. I'm disturbed by Dave's use of the term "our" Lucy here. Ours in what WAY? Is this related to the rings that keep getting tossed around like a set of pogs? Or just ours because she's Haven's savior and they're even now a bulwark of the town? Apparently Lucy being scared to death but insisting on fighting for Haven has inspired some spine in him. At the worst possible moment. Vince knows he's going to lose this argument from the moment it starts, too, he's just trying desperately to fight a rear guard action of some kind. Also he's WRONG. Like a very wrong thing. Croatoan may have merged with one of Charlotte's kind, and whatever kind that is can be killed, but for damn sure with the void and all that aether floating around he is not normal interdimensional alien anymore, Vincent Teagues. My fucking god you're a moron. Does Dave even know who Charlotte is, or are you just flinging names around willy nilly at this point? Argh. Dave's getting the shotgun in the interests of finding out if they can kill the evil monster from the black lagoon void and Vince points out that maybe running into the jaws of this fate is a bad idea? YES. YES IT IS AND IT WAS IN THE FUTURE WHEN YOU LET HIM DO IT, TOO. KNOCK HIM OUT AND SHOVE HIM IN A TRUNK. Love of god. But no, Vince crumples for Dave's terrified-and-stubborn face just like he always does. This can't possibly end badly!

Over on the beach Lucy is contemplating all the heavy things she's just learned while crumpling or shredding a tissue,  which makes it obvious enough that James notices and tells her not to be sad, she'll be back. Maybe she'll remember him the next time, which suggests that he knows at least most of what we know about how he came to be and the Lucy-Sarah connection, and that however they discovered it at least it was in a beneficially bonding way. To my surprise we continue to get information about this meeting, which is to say that apparently James went looking for her, found her, either after she found out who she was (to an extent, since I doubt anyone else is suggesting she knows who Mara is or any of that ridiculous mess) or shortly before and they came to know each other while she was figuring it out. Close enough at least that after she figured that much of it out she felt very much adrift, the way we've seen our Audrey go through, and James made her feel connected to something. This beautiful moment of love and family and affirmation is unwittingly spoiled by James saying something about ending the Troubles for good, reminding her of what she has to do to do that. And probably in a way confirming for her that this is what he'd want if he knew it was a thing. We're not of course going to ask him about if this is what he'd want now that she knows it's a thing (but only part of the thing), no, instead we're going to claim oh it's just chilly out that's why we're shivering could you please get my sweater from the car. This is where Lucy takes a sidestep out of our identification incarnation because really, if you've been following our recaps you would know that generally we prefer to err on the side of hi have an infodump and let's process this together into very small bits before we do anything irrevocable like KILL SOMEONE. Ahem. No, James, car, sweater. Parting comment about Arla wanting three kids. I'm reasonably sure the writers just put that in because a) it'd look weird if Arla didn't get a line reference and b) to make us twitch. Because they're sadists like that. Fucking Arla. Lucy has a second of smiling or so at the thought of being a grandmother? James and Arla with kids? Both? I'd laugh at the thought of being a grandmother in my apparent late twenties/early thirties. And then the laughter goes very quickly away, replaced by tears and "I love you, James" and a very shaky hand on the gun. If it weren't a revolver I'd say she would have shot him already, but that looks like it takes a strong pull. So. Yeah. We know it's not going to happen, because that's not how it did happen, but. Yeah.

Nathan stops her, of course he does. Nathan stops her and remember the whole part about preferring to infodump, spread around the information until everyone has it and then make decisions? Apparently Nathan got that memo because he's telling Lucy at least enough to get her attention, that James is their son. On the heels of that revelation it's very easy for Nathan to tug her into the trees so they can, and this is the only phrase I can think of for it, bear witness. He explains that yes, he's come back in time before but he's still from the future, which gives Lucy an "I knew there was something between us" moment and she's all happy because he totally came back from the future to stop her from killing James, their son, yes? :D :D :D. (Seriously, the effusive relief right there on her part calls for smileys, is that effusive with a touch of desperation I see? Emily Rose is knocking Lucy as her own individual person here out of the park, as usual.) No. Actually. Not really. And he does tell her that it would end the Troubles by killing all the Troubled people, and while she's absorbing that new shock (this is a rough 24 hours for Lucy) Garland is pulling up and calling for Barbara Coulton to stop where she is. Which of course causes her to rip open another thinny to escape. Causing Nathan to have to at least sum up thinnies and so on. Good thing one can do that in a couple sentences oh shit it's James. Here we go.

Oh hello there Teagues. Vince what are you DOING. Vince NO. BAD VINCE. STOPPIT. NO COOKIE BAD JOURNALIST. Oh my god. Lucy, your questions are good but lack a certain punch to the face. Vince do not shoot the fucking thinny. Trying to change the past is one answer for what he's doing. Being a fucking complete dunderhead is another. DO NOT SHOOT THE THINNY IT WILL EAT THE NEAREST GOOD CANDIDATE. And you brought Croatoan Dave, both in the sense that Dave is now about to be a carrier of evil and in the sense that you brought Dave to Croatoan. You are so fucking stupid sometimes, Vince, you didn't even try to make him get well behind you? You were in the cave under the lighthouse! You were in North Carolina! You have SEEN YOUR BROTHER GET SUCKED INTO THINNIES BEFORE. If ever there was a candidate for Nice Job Breaking It, Hero on TVTropes, this would be it. Gold star, Vince. Four for you. So, yes, Dave gets sucked in with an at-best weak attempt to haul him back on Vince's part, lands on the other side of the thinny Barbara Coulton created which is of course right by James out on the pier. And then there's a truly creepy mistlike film that covers his eyes as he gets possessed, and some really nice physical acting of the turning puppetlike and stiff. Lucy did not sign up for this shit. Lucy would like a gun from Nathan rather than listening to him tell her that they have to stand here and do nothing about their son being killed. Which is, admittedly, easier for Nathan to say and do. Not easy, I can't imagine he likes it, but he's never gotten to know and love James as his own person instead of the abstract concept he represents, whereas Lucy has been confronting losing James for awhile now. First in the one sense that provides some comfort, knowing he'll be out in the world living a life even if she's not there with him, and then in the last hour or so the flipflop between I have to kill my own son and wait that's a bad idea so he can live? Yay! Not yay. None of this is yay. Lucy argues awhile longer, including the emotional argument that he's your son too you asshole. Not that she says it but it's all over her face, how can Nathan be such a stoic asshole about this? Well. He doesn't have time to explain but he did apparently learn from shooting the barnvatar, I think, and made it so that Haven was almost completely fucked once before! He doesn't want to risk that happening again. Which is fair if cold; I have no idea what saving James Cogan would do but for damn sure it would mean that picture didn't end up in the paper and Audrey Parker would not be investigating her former self because she stayed in Haven looking for her mother. (Hey! Some quests do have an endpoint. Too soon? Too soon.) Nathan continues to be bad at comfort, though in this case I think it's because he doesn't know Lucy very well and out of the three of them she's a bit different from Sarah and Audrey. Harder and sharper, like we said the first time we ever got a glimpse of her. Look at how quickly she went from "wait I have to kill the one I love to end the Troubles" to "give me the fucking fruit gun." So. Croatoan!Dave smacks James in the back of the head with a brick or block of some kind, which might be enough to kill him all on its own if untreated, but then he goes on and sucks out the aether. Given that James is a halfling (like Dave!) and may have also inherited Nathan's Trouble, or maybe some kind of weirdass partial Trouble? There's more aether there, is what I'm saying, and I don't think that's all for dramatic effect. It looks like a greenish-yellowish-black mist when not viewed through Dave's monstercam filters and seems to be going into his mouth? Maybe? General lower face region mostly delineated by the part that isn't covered up by glasses. Also that is a creepy fucking smug smile of I-win, I can't tell if it's directed at Vince or at Lucy and Nathan. Now that Lucy can't go save James, Nathan will let go and hustle Vince out of the inevitable range of people wandering up to the beach. Why are they wandering up to the beach, other than to make that photo come true? Who knows. Maybe they were out for a walk, maybe some of them saw the fight and came towards it, maybe something in Croatoan's makeup lured some Troubled people closer, maybe they're just wondering if that guy's really dead. Some of them actually do look possessed. Maybe Croatoan just knew they were potential witnesses and is bringing them into mass range for memory alteration? It's also possible, I guess, that someone saw Lucy with the gun and now people are coming to see what that was about. Vince is still standing there in emotional shock, gets hustled off, Croatoan!Dave turns to the crowd and raises his hands and THAT'S interesting. Those shock waves of here you weren't using those short-term memories anyway looks an awful lot like what we saw pulse out of the lighthouse at the end of s4. They don't knock over anyone this time, though, probably because they're more directed and controlled. Just make them all look confused as fuck. Dave will now fall over so that Croatoan can dissipate in a cloud of that same evil fog-mist gunk, which passes through a thinny that… somehow still exists? Did Barbara Coulton make a new one when we were all looking at Dave and James? Lucy's mascara is smudged, the thinny closes, Dave wakes up in shock and runs away when he sees James' body, and I still really, really want to know how much of his memory of these events he's retained. Or lost. Both. Both is good. The little boy from the station is back! He got his camera out of Duke' stash and now he has a perfect angle… for the photo in the paper. Man, how much must it suck to be known for THAT all your adolescence? And there's ickle Duke appeared from nowhere holding Lucy's hand!

We shall have no further resolution to this issue, we're just going to have Nathan and Vince walk back into the station while Nathan declares it time to go home. Every fucking time this happens, it turns out it's because some crucial data is being elided. Dammit you guys. Flash of light, nice touch with the foreground being someone scrolling through a tablet so we really most sincerely are in the present. And Audrey is checking in on Nathan, who is most definitely not okay, he had to watch James die and watch Lucy watch James die. Of which he doesn't mention the former and focuses on the latter, but watching James die for himself even if James is more a person in the abstract than his son can't have been comfortable either. He does wish, kind of, in the way one wishes for the isolated effect rather than the consequences of it, that Croatoan had gotten his memory wiped too. But on the other hand he did come back with valuable Barbara Coulton data, that her Trouble opened the thinny and that she used the ring to do it. Nathan's speculation is that Barbara had Lucy's ring, however she got hold of it (SyFy website has a bit from writer Brian Miliken which confirms Barbara stole it, so at least there's an answer there), and that Garland got it back after some point. That's not even a bad idea, because then Garland would have kept ahold of it and kept it for Nathan. As he says, it explains a lot. (We touched on most of that lot above.) Now for the complicated part: finding a Coulton. Audrey wasn't able to find one in all of Haven, which Nathan knew, they've been out of town for years. They're fairly disreputable, the entire family. He's looking surprisingly calm for all of this bad news, Nathan, what did you do.

And we're back to Duke and the Very Bad Melodramatic People Of Unknown Origin! It turns out the well-dressed guy trying desperately to be a Secret Keeper from X-Files is Saul Goodman, aka Saul The Kid Whose Stuff Duke Stole In Grade School. Aka That Kid With The Camera! AH-HAH. The plot coagulates. Of course Saul doesn't remember Duke from grade school, but he has something for him, and what follows is a very interesting convoluted set of sentences that must have been fun to write. Basically it goes like this: he's been watching him for three decades (he's aware of this because he has a rough sense of amount of time passed, despite chunks of it being lost to the Haven interdiction), he doesn't remember why he started watching him (because of the Haven interdiction), but he has something for him. The part he doesn't explicitly say but I'll fill in because I know people are going to pick at it is, he probably is aware of all of this and never lost the thread because a) the interdiction has only been fogging up people's memories for a few weeks and doesn't actually erase all the actions that took place before it, which we know because of Seth's video shot of the Rougaru. Otherwise I would be giving the show some side-eye, but no, there's internal consistency and small clues that say it's a mental interdiction, not a complete rewriting of this particular universe to wipe Haven off the map. And b) Duke's spent considerable chunks of time NOT in Haven, presumably with Evi, with Monty, doing what he does so well so if Saul was watching him, those memories would be un-fogged. This is not explicitly said, again, I'm just laying it out because Haven is a confusing beast at the best of times and sometimes you need to pause the playback and pull all the pieces out and look at them like this. Hitting play, Saul's long assigned task is over although it did make him very good at watching people, enough so to start his own firm, whatever that means (PI? skip tracer?). And now that it's the assigned time, he's giving him the letter he's been holding onto for thirty years that he was told (one guesses) not to give him until this day. And then he walks out into a door of light, which is presumably only a door of light because it's very dark in the room and light outside but that's still a fucking creepy effect all things considered. Duke even apologizes for stealing his stuff. Aww! The letter is, of course, from Nathan. From the past, now talking to Duke in the present and telling him he needs to find a member of the Coulton family and bring them back through the shroud to Haven. And that would, indeed, be where Hayley comes in. Hayley who was last seen running for her life from Duke. Oh this is going to be fun.

Wee pause here (wee paws?) for a brief complaint that this entire episode, neat as it is in the context of the last couple-three seasons, also contradicts a lot about what we learned about Lucy in second season. Because okay, if she'd discovered how the Troubles started but people wanted to erase her, why was she willing to go into the barn but described as wanting to fight the people who wanted to erase her before? That whole part is then contradicted by the shortened timeline between her finding out and going in, there isn't enough time for her to go see Lucy Ripley original flavor. Simon Crocker is then supposed to have threatened her (original Lucy) but then according to later information he died one day before the Colorado Kid. This isn't even going into the part where her behavior around the Teagues is weird given that the Teagues already confessed to trying to get her to remember Sarah, although that's less contradictory given that we only saw her interacting with Dave, who has previously argued with Vince over best approaches anyway and let's not forget, Vince made mention of "and you're not going to stop me this time" at Dave over something to do with AudSarLu. I tend to think that was a throwaway line designed for something else, but it works well enough for this purpose too. So, yes. We have a body of canon that reconciles mostly with itself somewhat neatly! But we still have an endless snarl of contradictions and nitpicky questions and possibly continuity issues.

Next week is even more fun, we get to hide behind the couch from William! Oh goodie, I was so looking forward to that. But on the plus side, fucking adorable domesticity between him and Audrey IN HIS HOUSE! IN HIS HOUSE YOU GUYS FINALLY. Complete with post-its on eeeeverything in the kitchen to keep him from hurting himself. Awww. They're going to have an argument over who goes into the void, settled at least initially with let's go together. I'm not betting on whether or not that'll last. And Duke's going to come back. Nathan has faith in his boyfriend. Well-placed, it turns out, because there's a knock and a Duke and a Hayley looking extremely twitchy and out of place behind him and HUGGING. THE BOYS ARE HUGGING AND NATHAN STARTED IT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Audrey is much less sanguine about this whole thing, but we don't get to see whatever shape their reunion takes until next week. Booooo. My OT3 heart wants all the happy for them. Shush, we haven't had ANY OT3 anything in the longest time, though I could so have gone OT4 with Jennifer. I miss Jennifer.