Audrey
is back with us after last week – and Mara didn’t go away.
Everyone agrees they have no idea what happened and why
Duke’s released Trouble caused an Audrey to manifest, but it did. Duke and
Audrey are all for handing Mara over to the Guard, but Nathan isn’t so keen
with Dwight having left town (probably because of his estranged and now dead
sister). Audrey was connected to William last season, any harm done to him
happened to Audrey as well, he worries the same may be true for Mara (go
downstairs and stick her with a pin or something and test it).
Audrey doesn’t want to spend any time with Mara so it’s
Duke who goes down to figure out whether there’s a connection or not. Of course,
Mara isn’t co-operative but agrees to tell them – in exchange for the Crocker
journal. Duke realises she’s worried about the Troubles his family has absorbed
because, unlike all the other Troubles, Mara isn’t immune to the ones inside
Duke. Duke decides a different plan – cut off one of Mara’s toes then Audrey
would lose hers, proving it (uh, I think my pin prick may be a more sensible
suggestion). Of course, Duke’s ridiculously extreme suggestion means Mara knows
he won’t do it – because he’s not going to cut off Audrey’s toe.
Nathan and Audrey are getting reacquainted, naked, in bed
(Audrey losing a toe at that point would have really ruined the mood. Hey, if
they are linked, do they share sensations beyond pain and injury?). But Nathan
gets a message about a Trouble and reveals why he is reluctant to take Audrey
out investigating (we’ve handwaved everyone’s suspicion by Nathan apparently
having told everyone she’s Audrey again and everyone being totally ok with
that) – he thinks she’s lost her Trouble immunity since he can’t feel her
touch. Still Audrey takes this as a great sign that she has become her own
person
Of course, when they go to the Trouble scene (with three
dead) not everyone is accepting Nathan’s handwave and the grieving survivor
assumes Audrey is a monster who caused the deaths; though Rebecca (a new
recurring police officer) assures her Audrey only looks like Mara. Though
Rebecca herself doesn’t agree – she’s just following Nathan’s instructions. The
dead themselves haven’t left bodies – just shadows on the wall. They do connect
the victims to the farmer’s market and Nathan realises that “hey she’s totally
not a bad guy any more” isn’t really going to keep Audrey safe, so asks her not
to go with him.
At the farmer’s market Nathan runs into Reggie the angry
Guard member who isn’t Nathan’s biggest fan. Someone was mean to him so he goes
back to the office instead to look at old cases with shadows – and as he talks
to Audrey on the phone he disappears in a flash of light
This turns him into a ghost – still around but unable to
touch anything or be heard. He walks through solid objects. Including Rebecca
who finds his shadow. Duke and Audrey arrive at the scene and we learn Audrey
has none of Mara’s memories. Audrey is determined to reverse the Trouble,
no-one accepts Nathan is dead while Duke tries to wrangle irate Guard members. The
Guard agree to watch Audrey until she slips and reveals herself to be Mara.
Audrey goes to the farmer’s market and finds a woman who has a photo of Nathan being confronted by Reggie and asks for the rest of her pictures
Nathan runs into a guy who can see and feel him – he says
they’re ghosts. As in dead – and he died from a car crash so it’s not even from
the Atomic Flash Trouble (which is what they’re calling the bright light and
shadow thing). He says there are others and some of them have become rather
disturbed by their experience.
Ghost guy sends Nathan to the cemetery where Nathan hopes
to learn a way to communicate with Audrey. There he meets Morgan who acts as a
ghostly induction guy. He’s been a ghost for two years and says they can’t talk
to the living; Nathan finds it dubious that there’s so few (and doesn’t accept
the idea that the rest have “moved one”). He shows Nathan his grave (Morgan had
cancer) and how he died swimming – Nathan points out that he’s not actually
dressed for swimming and Morgan has a pat excuse for why he’s actually dressed
(ghosts appear as they looked in a happy moment with someone you love).
This isn’t the first time Nathan spoke to a ghost – he spoke
to his dad in the cemetery thanks to a Trouble that let the dead talk to the
living – a Trouble Duke absorbed by killing the person. So Nathan realises Duke
releasing that Trouble will let him talk to Audrey.
Nathan goes to see Duke who can’t hear him either, so
that’s not very useful. But Mara can see him (though not touch him). He
realises he’s not dead and just hit with a Trouble which Mara is (somewhat)
immune to. Nathan goes to his fellow ghosts to tell them they’re all Troubled,
not dead – with the added titbit that none of them left bodies behind which you
really think they would have noticed before. He gets the ghosts to gather information
about how they “died” to see if there’s a pattern – though Morgan is hostile
because he’s pretty much afraid to hope
Audrey, meanwhile, is using herself as bait to draw in Reggie and his angry fellow Guard. So being in Mara’s head hasn’t increased Audrey’s intelligence much. Turns out Reggie doesn’t have the Trouble (are we shocked?) and after some threats he becomes a bright light and shadow himself. The Guard, of course, assume Audrey did it and she gets knocked out and kidnapped. Witnessed by Nathan.
Mitchell demands Audrey cure them or make their Troubles
easier to deal with which she can’t do. Nathan hurries back to Mara to try and
convince her to help (doesn’t work, of course) but Duke has also been told by
the Guard that they have Audrey and he’s willing to trade them Mara to get
Audrey back. Mara decides to go with Nathan’s plan instead and tells Duke
Nathan’s there and she can talk to him (she calls Nathan Duke’s boyfriend –
which seems to be an attempt at an insult. A show with zero LGBT people in five
seasons should really drop homophobia as well)
She apparently helps because next we see Duke, with a gun, going to rescue Audrey before a man with a disintegrate Trouble touches her. Duke offers to shoot or arrest them but Audrey wants to let them all go so she can prove to them all she’s Audrey.
Duke goes back to Mara and she cuts herself on her cuffs
to prove that she and Audrey aren’t connected. She’s sure they won’t kill her
or get rid of her because her immunity means she’s the only one who can speak
to Nathan – they need her.
Audrey agrees that they need Mara in a monologue to
Nathan (she hopes he’s hanging around – and he is) and raises her new conflict
over what she can do without her immunity
Nathan returns to the cemetery to find a ghost’s murdered
body – and the words “even ghosts can die” smeared on his grave stone in blood.
Audrey’s new conflict is a fascinating one. For most of
the last 4 seasons of Haven, part of
the conflict, of the impetus behind discovering the reason for the Troubles has
been finding out who Audrey was. The one element of identity they had through Audrey’s
many incarnations was that she helped the Troubled. That was all they knew
about her – beyond that her personality changed every incarnation; Audrey never
really knew who she was (especially since they found the real Audrey Parker).
Now she is finally an individual, completely separate from Mara, not just a
copy pasted on top of Mara – but in becoming so she learns that Mara was the
REASON for the Troubles and she loses the immunity that made her so essential
at solving the Troubles. Just as she becomes her own person she loses the
element of identity she had managed to claim: being the person who helps the
Troubled. She’s gone from town hero to town villain, saviour to threat and even
lost her ability to help
It’s a fascinating conflict. Far more so than Nathan
playing ghost for more pathos. As a story it’s interesting, but I’m not really
invested in Nathan and Audrey playing star crossed lovers – especially since
that means Duke and Audrey are now going to become closer and it feels like we’re
dragging up and rebooting a love triangle we don’t need and have already buried.
