This week’s episode of Haven, “The New Girl,” picked up right where last week’s left off – with Lexie refusing to kill a stranger and basically everyone about to kill everyone else. It’s basically Jordan, Vince, and the Guard against Duke and Nathan – until Lexie gets a gun and threatens to just start shooting people if they don’t all stop and explain what’s going on. This is a little odd, since she had just been refusing to shoot anyone, but hey, it works – it makes everyone freeze for long enough for Duke to diffuse the situation by claiming he has yet another theory about how to end the Troubles. (Lexie also calls Nathan “Cheekbones.” Heh.)
Nathan and Lexie are left in a room together while Duke, Jordan, and the Teagues debate what to do, and they make some tentative efforts at getting to know each other. It seems like Nathan can feel Lexie’s touch. Meanwhile, Jordan wants to try changing Lexie back into Audrey so she kill Nathan, but Vince says that’s impossible, so Duke’s plan wins out – have Nathan get Lexie to fall in love with him, so she can kill him and end the Troubles. Of course, Duke soon admits to Jennifer that this was not a real plan – he was just trying to buy time, and the Guard went for it. But for now, they’re all stuck trying to carry it out.
While they wait for Lexie to fall in love (not sure it’s that easy . . .) they take her along to investigate a Trouble of the week. Tyler’s Trouble was triggered by a car crash; after it, he accidentally possesses his best friend Josh and discovers that Josh is having an affair with Tyler’s girlfriend while he’s lying paralyzed in the hospital, so he deliberately possesses Josh and the girlfriend in turn and makes them kill themselves. Afterward, Tyler starts possessing other people in a quest to possess a new body permanently, because his own body is shutting down. (He just needs to hold some sort of small item the person he wants to possess has handed him.)
This is pretty straightforward, allowing Lexie to get a taste of Haven – “What the hell kind of a town is this? Why the hell does anybody still live here?” – until Duke gets possessed and locks Nathan and Lexie in a closet. Wade suggests that if Tyler-as-possessed-person kills Tyler’s original body, he might be able to stay in the possessed body, so Tyler-as-Duke heads to the hospital to kill Tyler’s body – but first he runs into Jennifer, who has felt like Duke is shutting her out (when in fact I’m pretty sure he just wants to protect her) and has decided to head back to Boston. When Duke kisses her and asks her to leave town with him instead, Jennifer is confused but agrees, but she soon realizes that something’s wrong with Duke. (They’d left her home during this case, so I don’t think she actually knew that people were being possessed, but she’s been in Haven long enough to know a Trouble when she sees one.) When he stops at the hospital, she stabs him in the leg with a pen and manages to get away, but Duke gets inside the hospital.
Meanwhile, Lexie has picked the lock on the door to free her and Nathan, while talking about drugs and boyfriends who were into bondage and various other things that make it very clear that She Is Not Audrey. “You know I’m not her, right?” “Yeah, I do. You’re a completely different person and I don’t want you. I want you to be Audrey again.” Good boy. I mean, bad for Duke’s plan, but after Nathan’s previous time travel-induce fidelity issue, I’m really glad they don’t have him falling for Lexie too. Of course, he’s Nathan, so he’s still trying to sacrifice himself to save everyone, but I’m glad he’s not feeling it, anyway.
They meet up with Jennifer outside the hospital, and she suggests that if Audrey was immune to the Troubles, Lexie probably is too, so she could go in to try to get the drink ticket Duke gave Tyler out of Tyler’s hand without worrying about being possessed herself. Nathan reluctantly lets her go in alone, but she backs down pretty easily when faced with Tyler-as-Duke trying to kill Tyler. Luckily, Duke’s “killing someone ends their curse” thing works even when he’s possessed, so when he kills Tyler, Tyler dies and the Trouble ends, and Duke’s okay.
Let’s talk about Duke here. Nathan’s grief and his determination to sacrifice himself to stop the Troubles are perfectly in character, but leave an opening for someone else to be the more active hero of the season so far, and Duke is stepping right up. Remember when Duke supposedly hated Nathan? Yeah. Now he’s desperately trying anything he can to save him. And when at one point Jordan suggests that Audrey/Lexie/etc. might be the cause of the Troubles and that Duke killing her might end them for good, Dwight barely even bothers to take the time to laugh at the idea – Duke would never. He’s also trying to protect both Wade and Jennifer – who both feel like he’s shutting them out of his life. Aww. (But Wade has some sort of mysterious connection with Jordan now. Hm.) Now that Duke is Duke again, Jennifer starts talking about leaving, but he actually asks her to stay, and says he remembered everything that happened while he was possessed, including their kiss – and while he initiated it, she definitely kissed him back. She agrees to stay in the spare bedroom on his boat, which sounds . . . cosy, and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where they go with this new side of Duke.
But Duke’s got one more surprise for us at the end of the episode. When Lexie shows up to stay in Audrey’s apartment at the Gull, Duke confronts her about what happened at the hospital. Since Lexie has shown a lot of bravery in general, he doesn’t believe that she was suddenly scared and stepped aside, letting Tyler-as-Duke kill Tyler. It was almost like she knew Duke’s Trouble would end the curse if he killed Tyler, but Lexie wouldn’t know that. Audrey would. And yep – as soon as Duke calls her on it, she fesses up. “Lexie” has been Audrey since she arrived in Haven, just pretending to be Lexie to try to avoid being forced to kill Nathan. I love this twist – I was surprised but it seems inevitable in retrospect, which is really the best way for a big plot twist to be. I’ve been pretty clear about not really loving the first few episodes of this season, but now knowing they were headed here does a lot to redeem them for me, and I’m really, really excited to see where this goes. I assume Audrey and Duke will try to keep this from Nathan – for how long? And now that Audrey has an ally who knows what’s going on, will we find out if she has concocted a plan?
(Image courtesy of Syfy.)