Previously: Audrey found the original Lucy Ripley, who has not gone to the barn and had her memories erased! And… Simon Crocker was looking for AudSarLu when she was Lucy. Oh GOODIE. We will be reminded yet again of how Duke is at the center of everything going on in Haven, and lost Evi as a result. And oh look, part of that involves the Crocker boxes, now with the big version, hi Dwight you're like a big version, and killing AudSarLu. Gee. I wonder what the Rev's plans were for Duke! Let's find out on a moonlit night in Haven. We open with the Trouble, not the town's tarnished trio, which just means the Trouble's going to be inherent to them all as we learn what it is and how it works. Some Dude is asleep when Some Other Dude appears and wakes him insisting he go save a woman named Sheila who's in danger from a guy with a gun! This cannot possibly end badly! First Dude looks like he's about to tell the other guy that he's dead or something, oh yay just what we need. Yes, the guy with a gun is going to be you, honey. Arlo is meanwhile across the street with Sheila telling her to be quiet and careful and he'll keep her safe until Bill gets here. Of course you will. Vindictive ghostly bastard. This translates to mock-strangling her and Bill shooting her through the ghost. As you do. Evidently this was, as one might expect, payback for sleeping with Sheila, who was Arlo's wife. I assume he was hoping for a murder-suicide but will take one out of two.
Next morning, Duke and his truck are headed downtown at the same time as Audrey and… that looks like still a rental? Audrey when are you going to give in and buy a used cheap car. She's headed for the Herald, Duke is headed for her, it looks like after the ulp-ing at the end of last ep they haven't talked since and now things have an extra helping of Awkward. Duke's going to confront this head-on! Honey. Audrey's off to confront other people head-on, she's not upset with you, go hold her flower while she kicks the Teagues' ass. I would pay such good money for that alt-version of this scene. Alas, no, he's determined to explain that he is REALLY not going to kill her, he doesn't take assassination requests from dead as well as deadbeat dads. Audrey please stop being quite so emotionally repressed, you're going to sprain something. She does realize after the bad joke that she needs to take him a little more seriously than that, but the words "I believe you" would help here. A lot. And not leave Duke sighing at the heavens while Audrey storms into the Herald.
It is a very loud storm, too. Dave, she is not in the mood for cheery greetings and stop calling her kitten that's creepy. One photo comparison later and Vince knows the jig's up, Dave is trying hard to still lie though honestly I'm not sure WHY. We know that Sarah (Mara?) is his greatest fear, as of Fear & Loathing, but we have exactly zero background on the details of that even now, since the flashbacks showed him pretty friendly with her, as does the photo. All that control Audrey was using out on the street is now gone and she will be smashing the cup out of Dave's hand and yelling at them now. I mean, at least when Vince starts telling her stuff he starts with an apology and moves on to give her at least some information. They keep back the part about the barn, which at this point I can't entirely blame them for: oh by the way you go away and probably get your memory wiped by this thing but then the Troubles stop is not conducive to goodwill either. Just like oh by the way you're a construct designed to help the Troubles doesn't go over well! By the time we've hit s5 I understand their reasons for NOT telling Audrey all the things they don't, not least of which is the sheer amount of overwhelm that infodumping at her would cause when they do need her functional to help stop the Troubles. I just don't have to LIKE it, and on a Doylist level it irritates the fuck out of me because neither of them seems to ever learn from their mistakes. While this is believable, I like competence porn and characters actually growing! And it feels like there's never a great balance between reasonably sized reveals versus not locking the writers' room into things they can't go back and change. Grumble. They give her bits and pieces now: she was Lucy, then Sarah, then they weren't around so they don't know (Veronica, I believe?), she goes away but comes back with a new personality, she always helps the Troubled, they don't know the details of why or how. Which is true so far as it goes. And no, they don't know who the fuck Agent Howard/the barnvatar is. Given Dave's reaction to the adoption papers in s5 I actually buy that: they may know he's tied to AudSarLu somehow or another, but the nature of those ties never got made clear. Hell, it's not even really clear NOW, and never will be, thanks so much, Nathan. Vince gets up to give her Sarah's ring, which of ALL the things turns out to be magically significant? Seriously? It looks like an engagement ring, honestly, of the too poor to buy a giant rock but can afford a nice small three-stone setting, and Audrey reacts to it as such. Yeah, Vince, nobody's exactly buying the "friends" line here. Unfortunately, further revelations will have to wait because Nathan needs her on a case, so she puts a pin in it, which is arguably the worst thing she could have done because it gives the Teagues time to clam up and throw up defensive walls again. Which they are very, very good at. Once she's gone, Dave questions how much Vince told her, Vince claims she needs his help (and that of the Guard, presumably) and that Dave's not getting in his way this time. SOMEONE COUGH UP WHAT HAPPENED WITH LUCY FFS. I'm pretty sure that's what they're flailing about, not Sarah, though not positive; the fact that Dave had a blackout moment with Lucy and the Colorado Kid and the being transported to the beach (and the mysterious invisible squid and the thinny? we all remember this coming out last season, yes?) would suggest it's Lucy. Also Vince put the teeth away and give them back to Flagg augh.
Meanwhile on the Cape Rouge, some gratuitous Duke in nothing but low-slung sweats. I am so okay with this. Less okay with Simon Crocker showing up in the middle of the living area cheerfully establishing that this is his territory while appearing to deliver compliments. No. Shut it, you. Duke's immediate response is "Dad? You're dead," which is not, he realizes, an actual problem in Haven, but he would like to file a complaint with someone I'm sure. Aaand roll credits.
When we come back it is not, alas, to answering the mysteries onboard the Cape Rouge. Instead it's the crime scene Nathan called Audrey to! He scolds her mildly for being late and asks where she was and of course instead of answering she gets right to business. AUDREY. The Teagues are an object lesson, not a role model, we were just over this. Sigh. The upshot is that Bill from the opening scene is in shock and keeps saying that Arlo made him do it. Oh honey. Better yet, the neighbors saw Arlo leave the house, so despite Audrey's first thought of a weak insanity defense, no, something more is going on here. Maybe Arlo faked his death! In which case there should be a paper trail and this should be pretty easy to solve. It also tells us something about the way this Trouble works, sort of, in that either the ghosts have to travel by normal human means or they think they do, which is probably residual body memory more than anything else. Both of them seem to know this might be a Trouble, but they have to rule out the mundane causes first, because good cops. And it's not like this would be an unusual thing, if it were a onetime event. Nathan will now move on to asking Audrey out on a date rather than nudging her for information more directly; she responds by admitting they should talk about everything. Lucy! Their relationship! The Teagues! SO MUCH STUFF. Of course this means they'll never get a chance to talk. She offers to make pancakes, in an adorable callback to their first meeting, setting up some of the most incredibly adorable awkward shy flirting I think I have ever seen two grown people do onscreen. We talking dinner or breakfast inDEED. There will be no answer, just Significant Flirty Looks and then Nathan looking after Audrey with an expression that says "this woman is gonna be the death of me" for him. Potentially accurate, Nathan, just not in the way you expect.
Okay now we can have some answers out of Simon and Duke, but they're all terrible answers. Duke would love for his father to be a hallucination from special brownies, which he may or may not have even eaten, this has the flavor of Duke Crocker babbling in order to get a good head of steam and defenses built up back there. He is also going to have a nice stiff drink. Good plan. Simon can't have any, he's too incorporeal. I'm not even a little sorry about that. We get an unsurprising cite on Simon being dead for 27 years, or since the end of the last cycle of Troubles. Nice confirmation, but by now that's all it is. And a lot of snarling from Duke over what Simon's doing back here, how he's going to disappear, come back beat to shit, and expect his son (who at the TIME was like seven or eight, let's not forget) to take the place of the hospital he should've been at. Gee. I can't imagine why he's still upset, or that he's been saving that up to say for the last couple decades minimum. Simon makes halfassed… not even apologies so much as statements of fact. Well, at least he's being honest now! Also given that we know the rush of killing people on the Crocker Trouble is equivalent to heroin, there's a chance Simon is less addicted at this point, since he's got no body to experience the effects of addiction with. (Ah, the mind-body relationship: always so complex when you have to deal with noncorporeal sentient beings!) Duke keeps protesting that he's asleep, he's dreaming, this isn't real, while Simon continues to take in the surroundings and go OH HEY MY MURDER BOX. (K: I want a murder box.) (A: No, dear. The current murder box is William's and you DON'T want it.) Stop sounding hopeful when you ask if he's killed anyone yet, you absolute creep. Simon proceeds to explain to Duke a thing about the Crocker Trouble. Ah, the good old days, when Duke firmly believed he would never do that for any reason and that his father was always wrong and that things could be that black and white. Though I honestly don't think he thinks that, down deep where he doesn't let other people see, and he's terrified of what he could become - has the example standing in front of him - but since Simon is advocating firmly for "go out and kill Troubled people" he needs to take a hardline approach for his own sanity. Such as it is. Poor love.
Meanwhile at the… graveyard? Oh. The paper trail dead-ended, so now they're going to ask the gravedigger to dig up Arlo and be sure his end is dead. Ahem. Kyle Hopkins, gravedigger, is also smoking a joint while a couple people leave flowers graveside, and turns out to be one of the Rev's people. Oh goodie. This can't possibly go badly! And it does! Seriously, dude, don't mouth off to the cops when you're on probation and breaking the law, they will throw their weight around. One blackmailing in response to being growled at for killing the Rev and being Troubled later, we have a grave dug up and a very, very dead guy in a coffin. Audrey starts throwing out semi-joking possibilities when Nathan gets a call with another homicide! This time a dead girl told her brother to do it. Looks like you have confirmation that it's a Trouble, then. Back at the station, said brother evidently… beat his sister's rapist to death, by the blood all over his arms. Probably with a blunt weapon of some kind, judging by spatter and insufficient defensive wounds. I'm going to go with, his sister probably did tell the truth to her parents? a teacher? friends? and nobody believed her so she eventually committed suicide. That, or the relevant social circles are so toxic she knew she couldn't say anything to start with. Ouch. Cue the Teagues wandering in and sharing information in the form of gossip: specifically, what killed Arlo was that he got told his wife was cheating on him with the neighbor across the street and keeled over dead of a heart attack, aneurysm, whatever. One of those quick shocking deaths. I have mild eyebrows for that, given the dead are coming back with Matrix-style residual self-image, and Arlo didn't look that old, but sure, we'll go with it. The upshot here is, the dead are coming back to settle old scores, whether by direct manipulation of the living or by simply telling the truth. Great! It's not like Audrey's immune to the Troubles and recently killed any… one… who might have it out for her and other Haven… oh wait YES IT IS. Hi Rev, standing over Kyle Hopkins while he finishes putting Arlo McMartin's grave back together! You're a bastard for using "God has sent me" when you know fucking well that it's Kyle's Trouble that's doing this. Even if you believe it. Maybe especially if.
It's the Creepy Field of Lavender And Exposition! Yaaaay. I can only assume that Simon citing 26 years ago is actor or writer error, since we're pretty sure Lucy didn't stay that much longer than she was supposed to before going back into the barn. Hard to say, since we still have NO FUCKING PAYOFF for Lucy's era. Or almost none. Probably 28 would've been more accurate, since this is the story of How Simon Decided Killing People Was Okay, and if Lucy ended up killing him after the addiction took full hold (as seems likely) then this was probably earlier. Anyway. A huge chunk of a grade-school class died (Mrs. Holloway! she of the married to the creepy bastard who became his house, we believe) when the teacher told a scary enough story that a little girl's Trouble kicked in and killed sixteen people, most of them kids. Whenever this happened, it was at a point where Simon was at least semi-openly known as the person who could kill you and take your Trouble out of your family line, though given that the Crocker Trouble seems to be an open secret in Haven, who the fuck knows. He was definitely active at the time, is the point. We heard the story of how his Trouble was activated from Vince more recently, remember that? Remember also how long Vince said it took for him to devolve, because we do! And in this particular instance he didn't kill Jennie Meers' grandfather the week before when he had the chance, but did after her grandfather begged him to. Okay, Simon, you seem to be missing this aspect of free will here? Which is important? In favor of hammering on Duke's destiny and responsibility, two words he is perhaps less allergic to than he pretends but still not what I'd use as a first attack here. It's Duke. Not that Simon ever bothered to get to know his son, probably not either of them. And then he tries for the kill with you could've saved whoever died of the Troubles if you'd been willing to kill, which in Evi's case is actually untrue, unless by that Simon means becoming the Rev's personal assassin. Duke can only even make the choice to tell you all to fuck the fuck off (as he does here) if you people TELL HIM ABOUT THIS SHIT. I'm just saying.
Audrey and Nathan are on their usual "find the commonalities between the two instances of Trouble outbreaks" hunt, and coming up with a whole shitload of nothing. Plus some UST. The one thing they've got is that both the ghostly dead people (as opposed to recently dead) were buried at Eastside Cemetery, which tells us there's at least two cemeteries in town. Guys this is perhaps not the time to be within a couple inches of making out on the desk? Which they realize and, um, extract themselves from the situation with adorable awkward. Over on a random street with different but similarly colored purple flowers around the porch railings, we have Driscoll, Hopkins, and at least one other dude from the Rev's congregation. My that is a long list of known Troubled residents. And it's not even close to complete, though I suppose there's a chance that the Rev decided not to include those too dangerous for people to kidnap and kill. For one thing, you know Hopkins is on that list and Driscoll should know it. Sigh. I wonder if we need to update our list of Troubled people from this list, though, maybe that'll happen in between eps this next season.
We don't know why Duke left or if there was a sour note other than the bits from high school previously mentioned, but once Audrey and Nathan go back out to the graveyard they… appear to have been talking in the car about what she recently learned? Would be my guess. And here Nathan will tell his story of how Duke used him again as a cover for a smuggling operation, and that betrayal is what led to Nathan's Trouble returning while they beat on each other for a couple hours. Nathan do you mean had hatesex? Because an hour of actual fighting is, um, a little unbelievable. I think Duke probably was trying to kill two birds with one stone, get a friendship back and also get some smuggling taken care of, because first off that's very like Duke and second off he's about as allergic as Nathan to being openly friendly with the other. Not to mention emotionally honest in general, though Duke's marginally better at it than Nathan. It's just that when Duke tries to be that at Nathan, Nathan usually thinks he's being mocked and gets even snarlier, and it's just a bad, bad spiral. So maybe Duke did care! I think it's a lot likelier than the alternative, considering how much he gets up in Nathan's business still. Audrey can only offer the hope that Duke's changed, because she's way too tired of dealing with all these revelations and way too close to everyone involved to have the distance to smack Nathan with a frying pan and lock him and Duke in a broom closet until they stop being idiots.
Plus they have more immediate concerns. Like checking Annie's grave and confirming it's untouched, just like Arlo's, so it's not like anyone's been digging these people up and in so doing digging up their spirits. Kind of the other way around, though it's a good first guess! The other immediate concern is all the dead people walking out of their graves. Which is just a great inversion of the Sixth Sense, I have to say, because Audrey's immune… so of course she can't see the dead people. Good twenty, couple dozen of them, while Nathan twitches, Audrey looks Concerned, and they figure out the reason why she's not seeing anything pretty quick. And they all show up, form a circle of what appears to be surly menace, say nothing, and walk away. That's so helpful! What does it mean? WHO KNOWS. Maybe just that they wanted a look at the supposed savior of Haven. Audrey is just thrilled that they've found an instance where her immunity is a hindrance rather than a help. THRILLED. Let her tell you. It does mean that they're completely screwed if all those dead people are off to cause another twenty-odd revenge murders; they don't have the manpower for that. A wild Duke appears, burying his past on top of his father's grave! After the ad break, he finishes up explaining his Trouble and presumably his miserable morning to Audrey and Nathan with confirmation that yes, that is the Crocker Murder Box, no, he doesn't want it anymore. Nathan yes please let's not forget that Duke is many things, and will kill in self-defense, but that's a long ways away from hunting and killing, or even offering to let people line up outside his door and commit suicide by Crocker, or any number of other awful ways this could go. (Does go, in the end, hi Wade.) Audrey is apparently aware of where Simon Crocker was buried, which given last ep surprises me not at all but it's a blink and you'll miss why she knows that sort of shit reference. Yes but Seaside Cemetery is eroding, as you might've guessed from the name, so they moved him over here! AHA A CONNECTION. Obviously they've explained what the Trouble is to Duke so he thinks he's a little less hallucinating and a lot more haunted.
Nathan goes off to do police work so Duke and Audrey can have a heart to heart moment about the big philosophical questions. The point of existence, why she's there, why Duke's there, if it gets to Audrey that despite claiming as her identity "to help the Troubled," nothing ever stays fixed. Well, what other option does she have? Except she frames it as, she doesn't have another option. Oh Duke honey. You're offering yourself up to Audrey as a tool to use in helping defeat the Troubles? Sweetie. Please don't. Audrey seems to think please don't is a good response too, because she would rather not have that responsibility on top of all her other ones, although we note that she did pretty quickly decide to take it when the organ-eating asshole decided having a bunch of kids as organ donors was a great way around his Trouble, yes? Yes. Not that I think they had any easy decisions there, but it would've been more honest to say, I don't want to hold this power over you but there may be times when that is our only option and we'll talk about it when we get there. Or something along those lines. And now Nathan will come back and inform us that yes, indeed, Kyle Hopkins is the Troubled guy let's go find him oh wait hi Garland what the hell. What the hell, indeed, since Garland doesn't seem to be back to avenge any wrongdoings.
Nobody knows how he got here, either: we saw him buried. Nathan and Duke buried the pieces in the cooler on a hillside themselves. We know this! We saw it onscreen! Doylistically, of course, we have the episode title to go on, plus if Duke's getting his father showing up (and this is sad, too, because it proves that Duke never got a more emotionally close father figure than Simon, whereas Nathan gets Garland who raised him rather than Max whose DNA he shares), then for balance reasons we should get Nathan's dad too. Watsonianly, we eventually find out we get to blame Vince. Vince, EVERYTHING is your fault. For fuckssake. Audrey, meanwhile, gets no father on top of being immune to seeing the ghosts, which is probably one part commentary on her existence and one part commentary on Mara. Anyway. Go fucking talk to your father, Nathan, says Audrey. Be fucking careful, says Duke. I think I'm on Duke's side on this one, and I haven't been drinking. I love that Garland's slightly more comic in death than he ever was in life, that he's, heh, had the opportunity to loosen up. I'd bet he's a lot more like the dad Nathan obviously worshiped at some point in his younger years, as opposed to Da Chief of stringent rules and regs. All your parts are there, Garland? YOU'RE INCORPOREAL. You goof. Nathan has no idea how to take this, not least because dad how are you here, and indeed Garland would like to have words with him about wasting a perfectly good cooler for burying him in. Well what the hell was he supposed to use to pick up the pieces, Garland, and would YOU have reused that cooler? Because I wouldn't've. Just saying. And yes, Nathan is jumping down his throat over quips like I miss the rain, but he makes the point that ghosts have been coming back to settle old scores and he doesn't know what his dad might have in mind, but (and this stays unspoken) given who Garland was in the town I seriously doubt any revenge murder would do less than shake the power structure.
No, he's pretty sure he's here to see Nathan. Aww! Sort of. He may be a lot lighter than he was in life, while trying not to send cracks through Haven and destroying the town, but that doesn't mean their relationship has suddenly been mended. As we will witness now! Garland pokes Nathan for a status report, more in the manner of a father than in the manner of Da Chief, which is nice to see, but both things are intertwined with them and always will be. Nathan tries to reach for a joke, except now Garland's going to push about what are you hiding. Both of them seem at least moderately aware of how little time they have: whenever this Trouble gets solved, they'll probably never see each other again. And so! Well, Driscoll's dead, Audrey shot him, which absolutely delights Garland. We knew they weren't exactly the best of friends, but DAMN, dude. I'll be over here laughing a little. And then the reveal of, Nathan you love Audrey? You can't do that. (K: Considering what Nathan loving Audrey brings to the town I am so very sympathetic to Garland on this point.) Which is part and parcel of the thing Garland points out, same as the Teagues circle around, that it's very very hard to explain to your savior-construct with no memory of this town that you know her every 27 years. At least not if you want her to treat you as an ally. Here, I'm pretty sure Garland has a clue about the barn, or at least that AudSarLu disappears and with her so do the Troubles (given his close relationship with the Teagues, and that he knew and talked with Agent Fuck You), and as such he's trying to save his son from heartbreak. Remember, he knows Nathan. He knows that Nathan will devote his entire life to trying to figure out what loving Audrey means, and letting her go is never going to be on that list. He might cede his place if she tells him she doesn't want him (anymore), but now that they've started something Nathan doesn't know how to do half-measures. So it's very much too late on that score, and Garland looks terribly resigned when he realizes that if this is all he gets to say, it was probably useless. Possibly worse than useless, because the thing he doesn't quite grasp about Nathan, his blind spot, is that telling his son not to do a thing is as good as shoving him in the opposite direction with a boulder. So it's possible that Garland's dire warnings about Audrey being too important to the town to risk a relationship with are among the things in Nathan's head when he shoots Agent Fuck You in an attempt to get her back. We'll probably never know for sure.
Meanwhile, Duke and Audrey are off looking for Hopkins so that he can stop raising the dead. Please stop that. Duke gets to be her eyes since she's immune to seeing dead people. He's so happy! Let him explain how thrilled that makes him! Particularly if he ends up playing interpreter as well. I have a question: where the fuck has Simon fucked off to during all this? Last we saw him he was standing in the Field of Creepy Wildflowers proclaiming about destinies, and now he's given up and let Duke go wander around without trying to nag him into murder some more? Somehow that doesn't seem right. Simon, are you off plotting with the Rev? You are, aren't you. At any rate, Audrey stops in front of the same house we saw earlier, or at least a very similar one on a similar street, oh look there's a red X in a circle spraypainted on the pavement. That's never a good sign. Literally. Never ever. Several signs of struggle later and Duke goes absolutely dead still and pale. Duke, looking like you're going to vomit makes you a terrible liar, I'm just saying. Even if I understand the impulse with a very dead Reverend Driscoll coming up the other side of the porch. Duke has decided to declare his loyalties in favor of getting Audrey out of the way and don't you dare hurt her. Audrey, meanwhile, is more focused on being a good cop and what she can't see than on what's making Duke blanch. Some bantering please fuck off and stay dead type quips later, the Rev delivers his ultimatum: come with me and see what I have in store for you or I'll get someone to kill Audrey for me. Well, that's an easy choice for Duke to make! Also the Rev implies that he hasn't met up with Simon yet, which I dunno if I buy. We all know the Rev is a lying liar who lies.
Nathan has to ride to her rescue so Audrey doesn't have to walk the whole way through the town to the Hopkins residence, and he is mortally offended that Duke left her there. Yes that's nice and also an obvious subject change, Audrey will kick (okay, more likely kiss) him until he coughs up what his father said to him. I would raise objections to her prying at him like this, except that it is a part of their relationship by now and presumably she tried for casual and Nathan clammed up like only a Wuornos can. No more time for prying, anyway, they're here to pry at the woman coming out of the Hopkins house. Luckily they're not wearing their guns or badges, I don't know why, but it conveniently allows them to portray a lost couple looking for someone else's house when Audrey spots the red paint on her hand. Which is over a very pregnant belly. I can't imagine this being significant later or anything! Audrey's spidey-sense is tingling. It says, if dead people are walking around, then there are probably some pretty huge problems with the Rev's people coming up, and one of them's the person raising the ghosts. Okay, it might not say that so blatantly, but it definitely says red Xs and creepy gravedigger Trouble are connected somehow so let's follow Mrs. Hopkins and see if she leads us anywhere good. As it turns out, yes! Down a remote wooded trail oh my god could you two at least be QUIET when you close your car doors? For fuck's sake. Into a clearing, where a bunch of men are dragging a bunch of people out of the backs of vans and trucks and loading them into a shed. Oh, and there's gasoline or something else Distinctly Flammable. And the people are being chloroformed, which is gonna suuuuck for them later and possibly for everyone else if they have the kinds of Troubles that are really bad to set off with fear and pain and disorientation.
They get as far as, okay, the people in the shed are Troubled, they're going to burn the building, and then the Rev shows up, making it Nathan's turn to blanch. Followed closely by a Duke who's arguing with him, followed immediately by guns pointed at their heads. SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS SUCK AT STEALTH. You should've taken Dwight. After the ad break, the Rev takes longer than it really should take Duke to catch up to what's going on. No, they're not going to burn them alive, they're going to burn them dead after you kill them and take their Troubles, Duke, honestly, what did you think, that they weren't horrible people? Or not this horrible? Sorry, but no, they totally are. Right down to trying to shove the knife into Duke's hand! There's some nice back-and-forth editing going on, where we see things from Audrey's POV without the ghosts, and then from everyone else's, mostly centered on Duke, with them. I say ghosts even though nobody significant's shown up but the Rev. So far. When Audrey and Nathan are shoved on into the clearing, Duke still has the knife, but throws it down when it's even suggested he might be working with the Rev. No. No he is not. Hell no. Fuck no. Cold day, etc. Kyle and the other guy are prepared to put them into the shed for Duke to kill, as though that's not going to bring the wrath of Crocker down on the entire gathering. Seriously. You are all very dumb. Not least because Duke's only child is a woman and (as far as we know) the Crocker Trouble is sex-linked, and also she probably got her poor mama's Trouble of turning into a succubus. So if Duke dies, what the fuck is your solution here? Do they even know about Wade? Etc. (I don't think we ever found out if Wade has kids, but given the fuckery of killing him and then of Audrey re-Troubling Duke, I would guess they're probably no longer carrying the Crocker Trouble if he did. Along with the other brother(s) Duke mentioned in 2x01 with the whole firstborn son curse.) Anyway. Nathan would like them to stop taking orders from a dead man. Audrey would like Kyle to know this is ALL HIS FAULT. Of course he fights the truth, a majority of his identity is predicated on being Not One Of Them. Despite all the proof Audrey throws at him. Simon comes up to deliver color commentary and oh how I wish Duke could punch you in your smug face. Poor Marissa Hopkins looks terrified and I think she's (one of?) the only women here, aside from Audrey and any Troubled women in the shed. She is so not going to have the right words to save her husband from the creepy cult. Especially not against the Rev arguing that Duke can save him! NO. NO HE DOES NOT WANT TO. NO HE HATES YOU ALL. The same guy who gave Duke the knife in the first place picks it up and shoves it into his hand again while he's arguing with dead men, which, okay, I can't entirely blame him for not throwing it down again. Partly because he's debating the merits of this, and partly because he's surrounded by a bunch of people who are ALL ARMED and two of them have guns on his best friends in the world. I'd want a weapon too. Kyle will now beg him to end it! Simon and the Rev will impugn Audrey's good name, first by calling her a liar and then by telling/reminding him that Sarah killed Roy and Lucy killed Simon. We note that Audrey can only hear and see Duke's half of this conversation, and whether or not either he or Nathan ever tell her what happened is an open question. So what she sees is "no, she's my friend," and a lot of hesitation and looking shocked at thin air, and then turning away as if to drop the knife when she tells him to.
Too late! Kyle has decided to commit suicide by Crocker. Son, when you do that, aim for the goddamn heart, not a gut-slice. Cue blood, silver eyes, and a group of people falling around Kyle trying to save him or at least say goodbye to him, in Marissa's case. Nathan is creeped out by the eyes. So say we all! While Kyle dies, we'll have a last conversation between the ghosts, because Garland's going to come up for the farewell ceremonies. Seriously where were all of you fuckers hanging out when you weren't haunting your respective people? Simon claims he knows Garland helped Lucy kill him, and he says no she just beat him to it. I would like to beat some goddamn answers out of the lot of you cryptic fucks about what happened in Lucy's day. This is one of the few loose ends from this episode still dangling, along with basically everything else from the 1983 Troubles. It makes me all of the grumpy. We know a great deal (by now) about what everyone else did, but just about nothing of what Lucy or James Cogan did, what kind of people they were, etc. And Garland is also something of a mystery still, from that time period. Simon and the Rev snarl at Garland over how Duke has a taste of what he's capable of, he can't be stopped, blah blah blah usual rhetoric that, actually, did kinda turn out to be true. Although I think that was as much or more Mara's fault than Duke's or Audrey's. Garland lays claim to Nathan as a damn good son who'll "take care of our girl," which gives me all the eyebrows. Every time I think we know who Lucy's maybe-love-interest was, they go and change shit around on us. Or at least her close friends. Though I'd bet she and Garland really were close, and that's some of his attitude problem at the outset with Audrey. Similar-and-not to set off all his hackles and grief. Poor everyone. Duke and Nathan stand there frozen in shock, grief, some combination of the two, a little bit like if they move they'll break the spell of their parents talking about useful, interesting data. I can understand that!
Then Kyle's really dead and the ghosts shimmer out of existence, with a last half-scared half-longing look from both Duke and Nathan, who know they can't stay but they were COUGHING UP ANSWERS and at least in Nathan's case, wholly justified grief and missing his dad. Duke's a little more dubious on whether or not he should miss his father, but I'm sure there's a little boy in there somewhere who misses the father he never had. It's okay, Duke, he and John Winchester can go off to the afterlife contest for Worst Dad Ever. Audrey is the first to react, grabbing up her gun and ordering everyone else to put theirs the fuck down. Which they do, considering they just witnessed a series of events of who the fuck even knows what and maybe it's not a good idea to make a guy like Duke kill all those people? NO. YOU THINK. She's going to arrest all of them while the boys stare at each other still in shock. Okay, at some point you should snap out of it and help, guys, I know it's been a shit day, but at the very least could you maybe not impede her progress?
An answer! Sort of an answer! Dave proceeds to chew on Vince for having Kyle dig Garland up three weeks ago. (Take a drink.) Why? Because they need him this time around. No they don't yes they do feel free to filk your own Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better) here, because the Teagues basically ask for that all the fucking time. O-kay, and this never gets followed up on either: are you saying you can put Humpty Dumpty back together again? Please, enlighten us. But they don't, and I don't remember but I don't think we ever get an answer as to how do you solve a problem like the chief. Instead, we move on over to Audrey's apartment above the Gull, with soft jazz piano and candles and romantic lingerie and wine and Audrey how many dishes did you dirty making the pancakes? Or are you just not a very good housekeeper, which wouldn't be surprising given she spends 90% of her time out solving Troubles. Thaaat's not Nathan at the door, Audrey, that's your daughter-in-law wearing Grady's skin. (Sorry, I don't have enough of Sweeney Todd memorized to find you the right reference there.) With a taser.
Nathan shows up on time, not early, in jeans and a dress shirt and tie and sportcoat that is ADORABLE. You are both the cutest. I have to assume the signs of a struggle are put here on purpose by Arla, because we saw Audrey get knocked straight out by the taser. The nice part about a studio apartment like this is there's not a lot of places to hide, so he puts his gun away pretty fast in favor of examining the scene, and what's this? Is it the necklace Duke was in the middle of putting on when Simon's ghost surprised him at the beginning of the episode, presumably left out onboard the Cape Rouge for Arla to steal and plant? WHY YES. YES IT IS. Duke, get better boat security, please. Nathan leaps to the obvious conclusions - well, not obvious if you think about what Duke's like around Audrey? But obvious for the amount and type of emotional stress of the day, and knowing that Duke can be impulsive in all the wrong ways sometimes. So rather than close it out there, we go over to the Rouge, where Duke is drinking his feelings from the bottom of a bottle of whiskey. Nathan is not hearing reason. Nathan is also flinging the necklace at Duke's face, and he must be kinda drunk, because instead of offering up anything to defuse the situation he blanches and steps back, which to Nathan is as good as a confession. Sigh. Both of you, sigh. One scuffle later and Duke's in position to grab one of his many guns from underneath the table, Nathan's done counting, and oh yeah, he also has a brand-new Guard tattoo. Excuse Duke while that sobers him the fuck up right quick. And then a pan to the exterior and a gunshot! Which, as we now know, doesn't hit either of them, but at the time it was KIND OF unnerving.
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