Haven “When The Bough Breaks” 

I find myself in a quandary, because while I’m sort of over William mwa-ha-haing and trying to bring Audrey to the darkside, I’m also acutely aware that these could be the last hours of Haven we ever have, so I want to write about it while I can. Even when I don’t love a plot point or an episode, I love this show, and its cast, and its creative team, and I’m immeasurably grateful for the four seasons we’ve had. I really, really hope we get a fifth season. But if we don’t, I really, really hope we’re not left with an open-ended finale and unanswered questions.

Let’s get to the episode.

So, we start with random folks around town dropping dead after they hear a baby cry. Everybody agrees it must be a Trouble, and sure enough, it is, but the Harker family always had the issue pop up at puberty. Thanks to a shimmery hand print from William, it’s now been activated in a baby, and his cries have started killing people “near and far.”

William brokers a devil’s deal with Audrey that the Trouble can be fixed if she activates another Trouble in somebody else to cancel it out. She’s immediately, “hell no,” but he dangles the carrot that if she does it, all will be revealed and she’ll remember her true self.

When her attempt to avoid that path–holding the baby while he cries to see if she can absorb the Trouble–fails and the baby’s mother dies, she seeks counsel with Duke. He emphatically tells her it’s a capital bad idea because once she goes down that road she may not want to come back. Nathan, on the other hand, wants her to do it because he’s sure she will stay Audrey, and stay with him, regardless of what she learns.

Audrey researches the earlier instance of the time when William says they created this Trouble and killed hundreds of people way back in 1901 and is rattled to find herself in an old picture from the Herald. Seeing how bad this could get with a child whose cries can’t be quieted, she decides to bite the bullet and give a Trouble to the baby’s step-grandpa (BSG‘s Michael Hogan), who’s deaf, thinking a silence Trouble will be no harm/no foul, but it instead amplifies sounds, including the baby’s cries, and more people die. And she doesn’t remember anything about herself.

So she goes back to William and he gives her more goo balls of evil to try again. Duke tries to talk her down and then the baby’s father comes to them and asks Duke to kill him to end this Trouble for his family. Gloria, the M.E., is his stepmother, and she’s livid that it’s the only offer on the table now when Audrey’s supposed to be a fixer.

Duke and Audrey don’t share with the dad that Duke’s been deactivated, but after he leaves, Duke tells Audrey to give him his Trouble back him so he can do as the dad asks. Audrey’s not nuts about the idea, but it does seem too be a solid solution (not). Separately, Jennifer reminds Duke of everything he went through with his brother and the Crocker curse. Duke says nothing will change if he’s re-Troubled, but she’s not buying it.

We close the episode with everyone gathered on the family’s porch and Audrey gooing up her hand and reaching out to Duke.

Separately in the episode, we follow Jennifer’s book o’clues, which leads to Vince’s tattoo, and the Haven lighthouse (finally!), which turns out to be the “Heart of Haven” in her book. She spies a trap door that the Teagues don’t see and leads the brothers down underneath the lighthouse, where they find a massive Guard tattoo marking the ground. The book says they need four people to send William through the door, so she goes to get Duke and finds out what he’s been up to. We also learn during an explanation of Vince’s tattoo that it’s been handed down from each generation since the original Teagues, and that Dave was adopted–I’d bet that ends up being important.

William and Nathan also have a confrontation where Nathan doesn’t act upon his rage because he’s mindful of what it will do to Audrey if he lays a hand on William, but William has no trouble taking a swing at Nathan, and like Audrey’s ability, the blows register and Nathan feels them.

All of that together leaves us with a cliffhanger in what amounts to the first part of a season, and possibly, series finale.

My takeaways:

Audrey is happy now–as Audrey–but the nagging suspicions about her origin, and the yearning to know whether William is right about who she was and their bond to each other, is a dangerous enticement. I was really glad she came clean with Nathan about who William said she was and that he holds no ill will about that past self and is determined to hang onto her as Audrey.

I love that Duke is the one to set Audrey straight and try to talk reason into her. He calls her on getting a rush at the glimpse of her dark self when she activates grandpa. He tells her how much he cares about her but draws the line at telling her he loves her–which is good, considering Jennifer’s still in play.

The Teagues and Jennifer hunting clues from a magical book feels a little bit out of left field, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt until I see where we end up.

Wherever that is, I REALLY want Audrey to hang onto this incarnation. I don’t want us to go down the road of an amnesia or guilt arc where she remembers everything and everyone she ever wronged. She’s suffered enough (and so have we). I also don’t want somebody in our core cast to accidentally piggyback William through the door and then we have to get someone else back again. As much as I love Colin Ferguson, I also don’t want William to be redeemed and stick around, especially if Audrey remembers everything, because that’ll be a sea of awkward for her relationship with Nathan.

I hope next week is only a season finale. I’m not ready to say goodbye to Haven yet, even if I’m ready to close the door on this particular arc.

If you missed the live cast and crew chat on YouTube, you can catch the replay here — hilarity ensued as the cast and creators sat down together and let loose and egged the Syfy rep about “when they get to season five.” Oh, and Lucas Bryant finally pulled the trigger and joined Twitter Friday!