Haven “See No Evil” 

Well, well, well. I am super glad we’re back in Haven and super glad to have our core cast– Lucas Bryant, Emily Rose, Eric Balfour, and Adam Copeland, plus Richard Donat, John Dunsworth, and Jayne Eastwood–front and center and directed by showrunner Shawn Piller, in a script by Gabrielle Stanton and Matt McGuinness. What I loved less was the extreme mwa-ha-ha that is Mara.

We learn pretty quickly, picking up at the exact moment that last season ended, that shoving William through the door collapsed the lighthouse and blasted everybody to the four corners of town.

Gloria sits in the gazebo with baby Aaron and a young woman who reveals her Trouble when she activates a drawing into a gorgeous, idyllic flower petal waterfall to soothe him as the lighthouse falls into the ocean and a pulse blasts across the water to where they stand.

Soon, folks are turning up withe their eyes sewn shut. Elsewhere, the Teagues wander through the woods, Dwight and Duke wake up in town, and Nathan calls out for Audrey and is instead by met by Mara, who disarms him, cuffs him, and mocks him.

She follows that up with shooting a random Havenite in the head, Tasering Dwight (twice), and shooting Nathan–all of this as she scoots around town looking for Thinnies–weak spots between realms that will get her back to William.

Meanwhile, Duke is obsessed with tracking down an MIA Jennifer. Then Dwight gives him something else to focus on when he tells him that his blood seems to be spontaneously re-activating dormant Troubles–a sort of reverse engineering of all the Troubles the Crockers have hoovered up over the years. Welcome to your season five arc, y’all.

In the middle of that, Nathan is holding tight to the notion that Audrey’s still roaming around somewhere inside Mara, and he can get her out. We’re treated to a very sweet blink-and-miss-it flashback as he recalls driving around with Audrey and talking to her about regaining his sense of feeling after she kissed his cheek, before he’s slammed back into the reality that Mara is currently wearing her.

He gives Mara an ultimatum a couple of times, declaring that his love for Audrey is bigger than anything Mara had with William, and that he will get her back. Mara tells him no (a thousand times, no) and then shoots him. After he falls, he ekes out,”I’ll always love you, Parker,” and it short circuits her psyche enough that she doesn’t finish him off. Instead, she leaves him face down on the edge of the water.

Vince is rattled by the events in the cave and keeps watch over Dave, who’s in a dopey morphine state but plagued by visions of the events of the finale.

Dwight inadvertently finds out that Mara created the Troubles when Nathan’s cagey about how powerful Mara is and Duke just blurts it out, not realizing Dwight hasn’t been looped in on that. Dwight’s unhappy to have been deceived but he still keeps everything on the DL.

And that’s our set up. I’m not going to lie–Mara was Too Much for me. I will watch this cast to the very end, but it’s going to be painful to watch Mara smite a mournful and pining Nathan at every turn. Emily Rose told us during the press call last week that some of what Mara does and says this season made her very comfortable. I get it–it was uncomfortable for me at home. It’s particularly hard to watch when Bryant is selling the hell out of Nathan’s grief (again) for an Audrey who may be lost to him (again), who he is desperate to have back.

I take the tossed-off flashback, and Nathan’s resolve, as signs we’ll get where we’re going. I just really hope we don’t run the Mara thing into the ground to the point that she pisses off enough people and there’s a real danger of somebody putting a bullet in her so Audrey can’t return. (199% unlikely but you know what I mean).

Haven repeats Tuesday morning at 2 am/1c and Wednesday morning at 1 am/midnight and should be available on iTunes and syfy.com tomorrow.