Haven is back! Yay! Season three kicked off on Friday with an episode that, yes, was actually called “301.” That’s not just the production number. But we’ll get there. (Hey, Canada, you get the premiere on Showcase this week.)
We start right where we left off last season, with Audrey missing and Nathan accusing Duke of taking her. They fight, and Nathan clearly has an advantage as far as stamina: “Upside of not being able to feel is I can do this all day.” But just as Nathan’s choking Duke, a bit of his blood spills on Duke, which gives Duke the power (and the weird eyes) to throw Nathan across the room. Luckily, they get distracted by all metal on the boat suddenly being weirdly magnetized, and Duke finally manages to insist that he doesn’t know where Audrey is. He’s alarmed to see Nathan’s tattoo, but Nathan’s response completely cracked me up: “If you’re supposed to die at the hands of somebody with this tattoo, I need to be on the approved list.” Now, we don’t really know how the tattoo thing works yet, but I am tickled by the idea that Nathan just took Duke at his word and got a random tattoo so he’d be able to kill Duke if necessary. We do know where Audrey is – she’s tied up in a basement, and a mystery man is demanding info about the Colorado Kid.
Duke insists that, his family background notwithstanding, he’s not the enemy, and finally convinces Nathan that they need to work together. But they’re called away to a crime scene, where we have more magnet wonkiness – a magnetic force apparently tore through town. But Nathan tells Dwight he can’t worry about anything else while Audrey’s missing. Aww. Dwight tells him that another woman was abducted, from the Altair Bay Inn, so Nathan and Duke go to check it out. Vince shows up and Dwight asks if Dave could be involved in Audrey’s disappearance, but Vinces says he doesn’t know – and gets a nosebleed that I’m not sure is ever explained in this episode. Hmm.
Nathan and Duke head to the inn, where Wesley the innkeeper says that his mother has gone missing. He’s convinced aliens are to blame, and he wants to stay at the inn so he can use his technical equipment to investigate. Duke plays along to try to convince Wesley to go back to station with them. “You think your set-up is any better than Haven PD’s? Tell him, Nathan.” “We just upgraded.” HA. Those two are pretty great when they’re working together. Wesley doesn’t buy it, though, and disappears on his motorcycle. Duke and Nathan follow him, but their car, radio, phones, etc. all abruptly die, and I abruptly start having Revolution flashbacks.
Meanwhile, Audrey’s tied up in the basement of the inn, being questioned by someone whose face we never see. She insists that she doesn’t know anything about the Colorado Kid, but he’s not buying it. “You stand there so smug and possessive. You think you’re the only one who loved the Colorado Kid?” When he leaves, Wesley’s mother Roslyn talks to Audrey from where she’s imprisoned elsewhere in the basement. It turns out the Colorado Kid had been a guest at the inn.
Nathan and Duke argue about the car, and when Duke says Nathan won’t be able to fix it, Nathan says “You’ve been telling me what I can’t do since we were kids.” And then they get into the actual subject of their (current) tension:
Duke: “Will you please stop acting like a lovesick child!”
Nathan: “What?”
Duke: “You are in love with Audrey. What, did you think that was a secret?”
Nathan: “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Duke: “No, I do, I understand – ”
Nathan: “You don’t understand anything.”
Duke: “No, I understand that if you – ”
Nathan: “When Audrey touches me, I can feel it. She’s the only one I can feel.”
Duke: “What?”
Nathan: “She’s the only one.”
Well. There’s a lot to unpack there – what exactly is Duke claiming about his own feelings, for one? – but the most intriguing part is the question of whether Nathan is actually denying that he loves Audrey. I’ve seen some read it that way, but I don’t buy it. I’m more interested in whether he’s saying he loves her because she’s the only one he can fear, or whether he’s taking this as a sign that they should be together, or what. Nathan gets dragged off by the magnet effect before they can discuss it further. Duke: “You may want to reconsider your stance on aliens.” And, of course, they end up in the middle of a bunch of crop circles, but at least the power’s back.
What looks like a UFO crashes by the inn, and the aftershocks make a lantern in the basement fall and start a fire. Audrey manages to put it out, and manages to get a piece of the broken glass to try to cut off her ropes. When Duke and Nathan track the UFO back to the inn, they find Dwight pushing Wesley out of the house, and Nathan manages to cuff him to the car. The Teagues show up but deny knowing anything, and they all go into the house, where they find a bunch of research about extremely similar incidents. Nathan says it might not all be real, but Dave says it doesn’t matter: “If the boy’s troubled, what counts is what’s real in his mind.” Interesting. Nathan suggests that the Trouble was triggered by Roslyn’s disappearance, which makes sense and is a good way to tie these threads together. According to the articles, if they don’t stop whatever’s happening, a hillside will be leveled. Duke: “Given our luck, it’ll just be all of Haven.” Always looking on the bright side! When talking about the aliens, Wesley says something fascinating, given that he’s grown up in Haven.
As Audrey tries to get out of her restraints (and wishes she had Nathan’s tolerance for pain), she and Roslyn talk, but are soon interrupted by someone torturing Roslyn. Audrey yells “I’ll tell you about the Colorado Kid,” presumably bluffing, but it doesn’t work – once she unties herself, she finds that Roslyn is gone. Audrey gets to a phone and calls Nathan, but she drops the phone as she hears footsteps. She walks through the inn and eventually (right then? It’s unclear) Duke grabs her; she’s relieved but immediately throws herself into Nathan’s arms, and poor Duke is crestfallen. Audrey tries to tell Wesley that she was kidnapped by a man, not aliens, but Wesley insists that since she never saw his face, he was an alien. They soon smell a fire outside – and realize that Roslyn’s body is burning.
And then, holy God, a spaceship appears. Whoa. Wesley’s doing some stuff with fancy equipment, trying to interrupt the signal or something, and according to Nathan, even if what Wesley’s doing is fake, it will work because the fake spaceship is from his brain anyway. But the energy (?) from the spaceship seems to be about to destroy the inn anyway, and Audrey futilely tries to talk Wesley down. Duke is not impressed by this strategy: “We have to do something.” Nathan: “We are doing something. If you want to take off, now’s the time.” (Duke, of course, does not take off.) It turns out that Wesley’s grandfather, who also believed in aliens, disappeared during the last Troubles, so Nathan and Duke convince Wesley that he should do the same.
The door blows open and Wesley walks out into a beam of light and – vanishes upwards into the sky. Wow. Our heroes just watch him go. Duke insists that Nathan encouraging Wesley to walk into the beam isn’t really different from killing him. Nathan tries to argue that Wesley might not be dead, but Duke isn’t buying it: “Whatever helps you sleep at night, chief.” For his part, Nathan is bothered that Duke wanted to kill Wesley at all: “You can tell the world you’re not like your father. When the chips are down, you are what you are.” And Duke promptly calls him a hypocrite. Oh, boys. (But seriously, was it all in Wesley’s head? Presumably he died eventually, but how, exactly?)
Nathan adorably (sorry, but he is so adorable with her now that he doesn’t have to hide it) puts Audrey’s jacket on her, and she takes the opportunity to fill him in: The kidnapper thought she was Lucy and thought the Colorado Kid was still alive. Nathan is Concerned: “I can’t imagine what you went through down there. I don’t want you to let anything he said turn you inside out.” It looks like they’re about to kiss, but Vince and Dave interrupt. Boo! They’re happy she’s okay, and she wants answers to her questions, but Nathan tries to intervene. She does ask whether Lucy was in love with the Colorado Kid, and Nathan certainly looks shocked by that one. Vince doesn’t exactly answer, but claims that the Colorado Kid is buried in plot 301 in Haven’s potter’s field, so that’s how the episode title fits in. But Nathan is adorably determined to be protective: “Let me take you home.” “I need to see what’s in that grave.” “Tomorrow, Parker.” Once they leave, the Teagues agree to put their problems aside to find out who kidnapped Audrey and what he knows. I love how we’re in season three and still not sure whether the Teagues are good or bad or indifferent.
As promised, the next day, Dwight and Nathan dig up grave 301. As they work, they have a fascinating conversation about Nathan’s tattoo:
Dwight: “You sure you know what you’re doing with that thing?”
Nathan: “Protecting Audrey.”
Dwight: “From Duke?”
Nathan: “If necessary.”
Dwight: “Make sure you protect yourself too. People with that mark, they’re not all good.”
Hmm. The mythology on this show (beyond the trouble-of-the-week stuff) has been a slow burn in some ways, but it’s certainly intriguing. Audrey misses this because she’s on the phone with someone who tells her that Roslyn’s body was in the fire for four hours – even though Audrey was talking to her an hour before they found the body. When Dwight and Nathan finally dig up the coffin, it turns out to be full of bricks, and Nathan suggests that there was never a body in it at all. Audrey asks if this means the Colorado Kid could still be alive, but Duke seems completely convinced that that’s impossible, for some reason. And then they notice the writing in the coffin – it says “Find him before The Hunter,” in Audrey’s handwriting. Whoa. And, to add a bonus level of creepiness, someone with binoculars is spying on our heroes from far away. Eep! That was quite a start to the season. Thoughts?
(Image courtesy of Syfy.)