Haven: Crush

On Friday’s aptly-titled episode of Haven, “Crush,” the Trouble of the week is an invisible force – like the pressure of being thousands of feet underwater – that expands like a bubble and crushes everything and everyone in its path. It’s triggered by members of the Driscoll family, which is notable because they’ve never been Troubled before, and the Troubles have never affected new families before. But brothers Jack and Aidan were abducted by the mysterious muggers the night before, and Jack has the handprint to prove it. Nathan and Audrey get Jack into a decompression chamber and manage to talk him down, but they can’t get close to Aidan, whose pressure bubble is threatening to destroy all of Haven. Jack wants Duke to kill him to stop Aidan’s Trouble, and Duke of course refuses, but he and Nathan wind up in a fight about his (seemingly) random refusal, and when Duke gets Nathan’s blood on his hand, it’s obvious that his Trouble doesn’t activate. He refuses to tell Nathan why and just drives off – but comes back with deep sea pressure suits, which they use to get to Aidan and talk him down.

Elsewhere, the mystery of Jennifer’s birth parents comes to a weirdly rapid and anti-climactic conclusion. Vince somehow narrows down the options to a list of six Haven families (maybe through hospital records?) and then Jennifer somehow determines which family it was, finds out they moved away long ago, and is given a box of their things from the attic of their old house. This is all done almost as an aside and is so unexplained that I hope/expect it to come back in a bigger way soon.

Duke is not in a good place this episode as he buries his brother and tells Jennifer he’s leaving Haven forever. “Somehow I’ve become the schmuck who helps everyone else,” he says, and when she insists that he’s a hero, he says that’s why he has to leave – especially because without his Trouble, he thinks he can no longer help the town. After he saves the day with the deep sea pressure suits – and almost loses Nathan in the process – he comes around and resigns himself to staying in Haven. And then then he finally kisses Jennifer. Finally. I love them together.

The Teagues spend the episode in a growing panic about the progression of the Troubles, and about Nathan’s seeming failure to make Audrey fall in love with him. They have a moment of relief when the 1497 journal of explorer Sebastian Cabot, which includes Native American legends about the Troubles, says that the Big Bad Trouble only comes with a certain harbinger: horseshoe crabs with human eyes. But Jennifer dashes their hopes by telling them she has been seeing the crabs all day.

Audrey and Nathan are finally together and happy at the beginning of the episode, and it’s completely adorable, so of course it can’t last. As part of Duke’s lashing out, he accuses them of just protecting themselves rather than the town, and though he later says he was just ranting, his words obviously stick with Nathan – as does the sacrifice Jack Driscoll offered. “The pain of everyone in this town, it’s on us,” he tells Audrey, and her killing him is “the most loving thing [they] could possibly do.” She seems to be finally convinced, but then the Teagues discover that the message that comes with the creepy crabs is “What was once your salvation is now your doom.” They take this to mean that Audrey (or Lexie, as they still think) should not kill Nathan, and the brothers, Duke, and Jennifer race to Audrey’s apartment with the news – only to hear a gunshot as they approach. We’re supposed to think Audrey has killed Nathan, but I refuse to entertain that possibility until we know for sure. Because no. That can’t happen, right? Right?

(Image courtesy of Syfy.)