Friday’s episode of Haven, “William,” picked up right where “Crush” left off, with the gunshot in Audrey’s room – but we immediately find out that her attempted killing of Nathan was interrupted by one of the muggers/men from the barn. In the ensuing chaos, Audrey is outed as herself to the Teagues, but this at least gives them a chance to tell Nathan that Audrey now shouldn’t kill him after all. They decide the “soft spot” through which Audrey got back to Haven has let the bad guys through as well. The barn guys (which I’m going to call them throughout, as we never hear their names) capture Dwight, saying they lost a box and he needs to help them find it, but he cleverly manages to call Nathan, leave the line open, and drop enough clues so that Nathan and Audrey can find him. (When he mentions an illegal poker game, it’s of course Duke who knows where it is.) They arrest the barn guys and find William in a closet, tied to a chair with a hood over his head. William claims to remember nothing – the barn erases memories, after all.
As Dwight, Nathan, and Jennifer (because of her connection to the barn) try to get information from the barn guys, they are infected with little balls of black goo, which play on their fears and insecurities to give them overwhelming delusions. They make Dwight think Duke is trying to kill all Troubled people, Nathan think Audrey is falling in love with William (and so he has to kill him), and Jennifer think that everyone is trying to get her back into a psych ward and that Duke is just pretending to like her in order to help Audrey. Dwight goes so far as to confront Duke on his boat – “I’ve been arrested a bunch of times, and this is not proper procedure” – and then, after Duke tells him what happened and shows him Wade’s grave, Dwight tazes him. Luckily – well, sort of – they’re also infecting people all over town, and when Gloria tells Audrey about the black goo balls she found in victims of violent death caused by delusions, Audrey realizes what’s wrong with Nathan and the others. Meanwhile, there’s a weird electrical shock when Audrey and William touch, and William starts saying he’s remembering things – like that the box is at the hill called the Lookout. The barn guys overhear and escape to go after it.
Everything culminates in a big confrontation at the police station, and Audrey and Duke barely manage to keep Dwight, Nathan, and Jennifer from killing anyone. Duke stays at the station to watch them while Audrey and William go to the Lookout to find the box, and as soon as they’re there, William starts talking about how special Audrey is and how her friends don’t deserve her. After he finds the box but doesn’t want to return to the station, Audrey starts to think the black goo got to him too, but no, he’s just finally being honest. He hadn’t really lost his memory – which I thought all along, given that this just happened with Audrey – and the whole thing with the kidnapping and the delusions was part of his plan to get Audrey “back.” The box is supposedly a “gift,” and there’s a flower inside, but it quickly turns into black goo balls – and when William crushes one to blacken his hand, Audrey realizes he’s the one behind the new and spreading Troubles and the mysterious handprints, and the barn guys in fact work for him. He claims he was doing all this just to make Audrey realize her friends were inferior and they belong together, and will continue until she goes back to him. “There isn’t any part of me that will ever love you,” Audrey insists, but William says there’s another version of her – the “real” one – who loves him. “And she is mine,” he says as he touches her face and vanishes in a flash of light that knocks her out.
Luckily, in the midst of all that, the barn guys called the goo balls out of Audrey’s friends, so they all come back to themselves and realize what happened. Of course, Dwight now knows that Duke killed Wade, but he decides not to arrest him. Dwight’s upset that the Crocker curse is gone because it provided a necessary counterbalance to the Troubles, and Duke confesses that even though his Trouble is gone, he still doesn’t feel free. Meanwhile, Nathan rushes to the Lookout, but William’s already gone. At least he’s there for Audrey when she wakes up.
I’m glad we got more of the William story, and I’m curious to see where that goes, but this wasn’t my favorite episode – I don’t tend to like episodes in which a supernatural force is making people act weirdly. I am glad that this doesn’t seem to have done any damage to friendships or relationships – especially since Audrey and Nathan can finally be together openly, and since Duke and Jennifer are still in that new adorable stage. I’d love a standard Trouble-of-the-week episode that just let the couples be happy for a little while. Is that too much to ask? Probably.
(Image courtesy of Syfy.)