Haven “Spiral” 

In case you missed it, Syfy renewed Haven last week, so we were thankfully promised a follow-on to this mind-bender of a first season finale, where we discovered new identities of existing characters, potential new characters with existing identities, and a potential new big bad on the rise. My only complaint was that it seemed a little rushed, like maybe 90 minutes had been promised and instead they had to whittle it to an hour.

The episode opens with a Shawshank (HAH!) prison parolee, Max Hansen, landing in Haven just as Audrey is having an “Are you there, God?” moment out on the rocks. He plays nice with her but makes his way around town menacing folks who were involved in his incarceration (Dave, Garland) and then the lighthouse disintegrates and collapses. Hansen goes to see Duke to collect a debt owed to another inmate and Duke’s not having it until he sees that Hansen has the tattoo, which sends Duke into a bit of a panic. Audrey, meanwhile, has been put on leave by Nathan because she’s obviously distracted (but she hasn’t told him why yet) and is in the throes of an existential cupcake bender when Duke asks for her help. In a nice bit of consistency, she is happy they’re from Rosemary’s when Julia brings them to her.

Audrey goes to see Hansen at the Gull. She doesn’t really get any answers out of him, but when the waitress spills a pot of coffee on him and he doesn’t flinch, she realizes there’s more than meets the eye there. Later, Nathan and Hansen have a chat and Hansen tells him he has friends in town and when he threatens Nathan with an attempted death grip, Nathan doesn’t feel it. Audrey and Duke go talk one of Hansen’s cellmates who’s now in Haven and he says the tattoo predated the prison stint. Duke tries to get Audrey to talk to him about what’s bothering her and she says she can’t, and he calls her on it that she won’t tell him until she’s told Nathan first. She agrees, sort of sadly, that he’s right.

Back at the station, Audrey eases into telling Nathan about Hansen’s inability to feel, and Nathan rages into Garland’s office demanding an explanation. The Chief confesses that Nathan isn’t his son, he’s Hansen’s son. That’s enough for Nathan to hear and he storms out. Audrey stays behind to hear Garland out and he tells her he rescued Nathan and his mother (I’m not clear on who his true mother is and whether Garland married her) after Hansen went to prison. Garland says he had to step in because of the way they were treated, and that he should have killed Hansen all those years ago. The next thing we see is Hansen ending up dead when the road literally falls away beneath him.

Nathan thinks the structural cracks are coming from Duke, so they go see him at the Gull, where’s he jumpily armed himself with a shotgun. He says no, not me, but good that Hansen is dead. Audrey takes his joy down a peg when she says that tattoo could still be out there on someone else, so he shouldn’t assign his fate to the one man they knew who had it (he hilariously tells her she’s a buzzkill and he liked her better when she was in her cupcake room). Garland goes to see Vince and Dave, who knew about Nathan and Hansen, in a panic of his own about everything coming apart. Audrey and Nathan continue investigating and put it together that Garland has caused the cracking up and has been concealing his Trouble all these years. Audrey tears Nathan a new one about Garland being his father and that he stayed in Haven with him when he could have been a cop anywhere. She tells him they have to find Garland and then he and his dad need to get right with each other.

Garland is on the beach in a desperate state when Nathan and Audrey catch up to him. He tells them he did all he could (drinking, cigarettes, even going to church) to hold things together, to hold himself and the town together but he can’t do it anymore, essentially telling Nathan, “Your ball.” He starts waving a gun, believing that to be the only way out. He tells Nathan that Audrey sees the truth and everything’s not going to be OK. Nathan begs Audrey to tell Garland he’s wrong, that it will, but she can’t speak, and then the beach starts to break apart beneath them. Garland says he held everything together as long as he could; he tells Audrey he waited for her, but warns her to be careful because not everyone is glad she’s back. A now-teary Nathan begs him to let them help him, but the ground keeps breaking up. Garland looks at Nathan and says “I love you, son,” and Nathan finally calls him Dad. Garland hears it, then solidifies into rock and explodes, throwing Nathan and Audrey backward.

Audrey calls Vince and Dave in to help scoop Garland’s pieces from the beach. She asks them about his warning and they tell her they don’t know, but once she’s out of earshot, it’s clear that they do, and Dave tells Vince they need to stay out of it to stay alive. Audrey goes down the beach to talk with Nathan and he is furious with her that she didn’t save his dad and offer him the same empathy she’d offered all the others who were Troubled. She says there was no good ending that she could provide and tries to confess her truth to him, but he won’t listen and tells her to get away from him. She does as he asks and he hangs his head and sobs.

Separately, Duke and Julia have been touring the Haven cemetery, where Julia shows Duke a whole passel of graves marked with the quadrant tattoo. He’s grateful and freaked out and wants to commiserate over a bottle of wine, but she shuts him down again, hard. The kicker is that the camera angle is over her shoulder behind her, so we see that she has the tattoo on her shoulder blade and it appears and disappears while Duke is saying he will kill before he is killed. We don’t know whether she’s consciously masking it or is unaware of its existence on her person. Once she leaves, Duke walks over to a suspects chalkboard where has written down names (including Audrey’s) and he adds Julia’s name below it.

Out on the beach, Nathan finds his dad’s badge and we see that Garland’s collected pieces still have energy in them, so I’m thinking we’ll see him again. Nathan goes back to the precinct and runs smack into the Rev (who was in the earlier episode, “Butterfly”) sitting in his father’s chair. The Rev pretty much tells Nathan that he will be cleaning house and running things with his “good friends, the right kind of friends,” which mimics Hansen’s words to Nathan. He tells Nathan he should get out of Haven, along with the rest of the Troubled (even though he was just praising Hansen, who had the same thing Nathan does, as Nathan’s true dad—a gaffe/disconnect?). This sends Nathan running straight back to Audrey to apologize.

He finds her out on the rocks and they have a very sweet, tender scene together. After he tells her about the Rev, he admits he knows he’s going to have to step up and be Chief, and they come clean with each other about their big secrets. She tearily tells him he’s the only person she can trust and she has to be completely honest with him. She takes his hand in both of hers and when he flinches, she realizes he can feel her touch. She asks him how long he’s known and he sheepishly confesses “a while.” In a lovely gesture, she keeps hold of his hand the entire time they talk and she marvels a bit about what that means to him to feel. She tells him she thinks she knows why, and she finally chokes out that somehow she is Lucy.

While they’re sorting that out, a suited woman comes upon them asking for Audrey. Audrey wants to know who she is, and when she says FBI, Audrey moves to get her badge, the woman sees her gun and draws her own and then Nathan and Audrey draw theirs. The woman introduces herself as FBI Special Agent Audrey Parker, with the exact same dialogue (and wearing the same wardrobe) as Audrey in the pilot, and she wants to know who the hell our Audrey is. Nathan and our Audrey are dumbfounded. Credits!

So, we have a new Audrey, and she’s played by Kathleen Munroe, so I think she will be around for a little bit next season. This startling curve ball makes it more likely that Audrey is Lucy, but the how and the why of it remain unexplained. There are a few possibles—she’s a clone (no, thanks), she was reborn and had a childhood and grew up as Audrey, or somebody manufactured this Audrey’s memories and applied them to Lucy, who’s been locked away somewhere in a kind of stasis and not aging. Mystery! Thank goodness they’re coming back.

Bravo to everybody on an intriguing, nuanced, weird, and sweet new show. If we weren’t getting another season, I’d probably have been miffed about the cliffhanger, but I was happy about everything that preceded it, especially Nathan and Audrey’s heart-to-heart. It may be that Audrey/Lucy is a sort of healer of the Troubled, or she has a blood tie to them, and to Nathan.

I like that she and Nathan stand to inherit a powerful mantle in whatever the new Haven order is going to be, barring any sort of bogged-down FBI case next season with the “new” Audrey. And if this new Audrey is an FBI Agent and is Audrey Parker, then who is Agent Howard really, what was his role in all this when he dispatched our Audrey to Haven and tricked her into quitting, and where is he now that another Agent Parker has shown up? Why is Julia’s disdain for Duke so heightened? I sort of think she knows she can’t be around him because she’s dangerous to him, but she’s drawn to him, and if so, then she does know about her tattoo? So many questions. Such a good show. You can rewatch the last handful on Hulu and Syfy. Season two arrives next summer. Thanks for reading!