So lots of stuff happened before Haven randomly disappeared mid season for a huge amount of time – Mara
and Audrey got merged because her mother Charlotte showed up and decided
re-writing her daughter’s personality because she’s not handling her grief in a
healthy manner was totally a good idea, Vince and Dave are still running around
chasing after the Croatoan thing and Duke has been filled to the bring with
naughty bad Troubles and he’s now popping
Which is where we open to him spewing aether out of his eyes
– a bajillion Troubles flying into the air. They rain down on a beach and a new
batch of Trouble people start causing havoc.
Charlotte and Audrey stay with unconscious Duke while
Nathan goes back to the police station and Dwight to try and stop things falling
apart. Dave and Vince drop in as well so Nathan can tell everyone what just
happened – and they can all tell us they have a town full of newly Troubled
people all with Troubles that are set off by strong emotions – and they’re all
panicking. Bonus, there’s a fog around town which isn’t letting anyone leave
(which, for the planet, is probably a good thing).
Dave tells them about his Croatoan visions after so long
keeping his secrets, and their theory that something big and bad will come from
the void and destroy everything and it’s now here in Haven. For bonuses, the
cops they’ve sent out to try and stop chaos breaking out know nothing about the
Troubles and are not making things better. Dwight and Nathan head out – because
taking the leadership out of a central position is really the best option,
right.
They again discuss, in case we’ve missed it, how being
trapped and panicking is really not what the Troubled people of Haven need and Nathan tries to get Audrey
to go after a guy called Joe who may be behind the mystical fog wall.
Duke has woken up (and has both guilt weasels and runs
after his family’s research) leaving Audrey free to Trouble wrangle with Charlotte’s
help but she’s nervous because alien/dimensional/whatever people are not immune
to these Troubles. Charlotte actually wants to leave town using her ring to
travel through the “Thinnys” and go home (to alien world) and abandon the
people of Haven. Audrey is not a fan of this plan. More, Charlotte doesn’t
actually understand the Troubles – in fact, the cure she’d designed with the “barn”
(remember that? Audrey would kill Nathan and solve the Troubles?) would have
killed all the Troubled people, therefore ending the Troubled
Audrey is very very disapproving of this and calls Charlotte out on her bullshit and tells her to get out of Haven – her home.
With all the chaos Dwight and Nathan decide it’s past
time to tell the whole town about the Troubles and tells all the cops that they
need to be kind and careful with the Troubled or they’ll all be set off. Duke
joins them for a lot of guilt over his own part in unleashing the Troubles and
they go pick a Trouble to try and stop it, this a lady who blows things up when
she touches them. Except they’ve taken a Troubled cop with them who has a habit
of freezing people – not Duke though so maybe Duke is immune. Anyway that
leaves Duke free to try and de-Trouble the cop while also dealing with his
colossal guilt since he blames all the Troubles on himself. Hey at least the
cop being angry breaks his freezing Trouble
Audrey joins Nathan for a whole lot of not knowing what
to do. Charlotte gives all her research to Dwight, she doesn’t have a cure but
still wants him to think nice things about her. And one stupid cop brings
scared Earthquake Trouble guy to the police station in handcuffs. Stupid cops
then fire their guns – with Dwight bullet magnet in the building, thankfully a
guy knocks the earthquake man unconscious.
Dave wants more visions so goes to see Gloria who happily
prescribes him super Tequila because she is Gloria and awesome. Drinking
session with Gloria (c’mon you’d pull up a chair and have Gloria drunk you
under the table, you know you would – and she would definitely beat you).
The vision shows the beastie running around doing stuff.
Grabbing Nathan and Audrey, Vince and Dave take them to where the vision led –
to the dead Joe-who-makes-fog-walls. The fog wall is still they wonder if the
killer has deliberately attacked Joe to keep the barrier up indefinitely.
They decide maybe Duke can bring it down, alas this means
subjecting themselves to Duke’s guilt-weasels. He is so consumed with guilt and
the bad things he’s done and the Troubles he’s unleashed that he crosses the barrier
and just leaves town, deciding everyone is better off without him.
Dwight decides to go for a major Plan B: he tells
everyone about the Red Guard and that the Guard I now in charge of the town
since they know the most about the Troubles… that’s… not a bad idea? The police
clearly can’t.
The Haven PD is effectively disbanded, absorbed into the
Guard. Nathan isn’t a fan of this.
Gloria examines the body of Joe – and there’s some
connection back to the Colordo Kid (remember him?) either way the death is very
similar
And Charlotte can’t leave town because the fog shroud
stops her.
Duke takes up hitchhiking and finds people outside of
Haven don’t even remember it exists.
Dwight is frustrated that the cops’ standard approach to
arresting people just emotionally upsets Troubled people and unleashes chaos –
that’s a reasonable position and, yes, they do need a new approach… except… why
do they not have one? Seriously Troubles have been happening for GENERATIONS in
this town, we have huge segments of the population including the last three
police chiefs who knew about this… why isn’t there a different approach? Why
haven’t Troubles been incorporated into how the Haven police work? Why are the
police so overwhelmingly ignorant? This doesn’t make sense.
I’m glad Dwight and Nathan have finally decided to tell all about the Troubles – but it feels awfully delayed. The amount of ignorance and secrecy about the Troubles is a bit much – just based on what we’ve seen in the show so far.
I’m also pretty sure that Dave and Vince had lots of
mysterious secrets in the early seasons but that’s kind of fallen by the
wayside.
I have, maybe, 3 more episodes of Duke having his guilt
weasels before I lose patience with it.
Despite these objections I think the episode was well
done. We managed to cram in a lot of recap of the chaos that has happened
before (and wow was there a lot of recapping) and sum up the chaos and the very
nature of the Troubles (the blamelessness of the victims, the destruction, the
fear) and hold on to the core of the show (helping the Troubled) all in one
pretty fast paced run. It was a good re-introduction to Haven and everything
that happens here
