Haven: Who, What Where, Wendigo?

Wow. Haven is always good, but stuff got real this episode. It seems like the crisis that has been brewing since Audrey arrived in Haven is finally coming to a head, and there are real consequences. But first, let’s review the Trouble of the Week that gets us there …

The Benton sisters have their affliction triggered when their parents are killed in a plane crash: they become Wendigos. They hide in the woods outside Haven, where two of the sisters try to ignore their cravings for human flesh and subsist on trapped animals while the third finds it harder to let go of her cravings – and of her human boyfriend, Rory Campbell. The police get involved when both Rory and a serial killer they’ve been tracking go missing in the woods. Audrey and Nathan, after an adorable interlude during which he expresses his concern for her post-breakup emotional state and level of coffee consumption, wind up in the woods looking for Rory along with Rory’s father, Dwight, and the Teague brothers. Nathan wants to call for backup, but Audrey won’t let him because she doesn’t trust anyone: “From now on, Nathan, it’s just you and me.” Audrey asks Duke to come but he says he has plans.

As the group wanders around, Rory’s father questions Audrey’s qualifications, and Dwight starts talking about his dead daughter and then seeing visions, but things otherwise go about as expected – until Nathan is ambushed by the Rev and a bunch of men, including Duke. Only Audrey’s intervention keeps Nathan and Duke from starting a gun battle, it seems, and the Rev is determined to take over the investigation. Rory’s father instead decides that they’ll all work together. Nothing can possibly go wrong with that plan. Duke tells Nathan that he’s seeing things clearly for the first time – at which point I wrote “Uh-oh” in my notes. Nathan suspects that the Rev is finally making his move and that Duke’s part of it, so from this point on, Audrey and Nathan stick together instead of breaking into small groups with the others. When the group makes camp for the night, Duke tells Audrey to trust him, and that he feels like he’s on to something big but doesn’t know what. “Welcome to the club,” Audrey tells him, but she’s obviously worried about him.

In the middle of the night, they hear noises in the woods, and everyone ends up scattered. Audrey finds the Rev, who finally admits to her that his plan is to kill all the Troubled people in Haven. Nathan, meanwhile, finds two of the Benton sisters, who explain the situation to him and Audrey and tell them that Rory lured the serial killer into the woods for their sister Amelia to eat. Nathan tells them that he’ll help and sends them off somewhere safe for the night.

The next morning, the Rev tells Duke that his destiny is to save Haven, as his father tried and failed to do, and that he’ll tell him what he means when the Wendigo situation is resolved – and then the Rev is promptly taken by Rory as food for Amelia. Elsewhere, Dwight tries to take the youngest, very ill sister to get help while the older one leads Nathan and Audrey to Amelia. Amelia tries to resist her cravings and lets the Rev go – so, of course, he immediately attacks her and is ready to kill her just as Audrey and Nathan arrive. And Audrey shoots him dead! Wow! Afterwards, Nathan drily asks her “You were aiming for his shoulder, right?” but as soon as others begin to challenge her, he’s completely on her side: “Officer Parker followed procedure and prevented a murder. It was a proper kill. End of story.” He will not brook any discussion of her behavior, and I wonder if it has occurred to him that Audrey killed the Rev mere hours after the Rev stated that he was going to kill Nathan. Dwight takes the Benton sisters to live and work in a slaughterhouse until the Troubles are over, which … I guess is the best possible solution.

Duke, of course, is angry that Audrey has prevented him from getting answers by killing the Rev, but Audrey still doesn’t know whether to trust him:

Audrey: “If you were with the Rev and he was about to kill that little girl, would you have stopped him?”
Duke: “Honestly, I don’t know.”
Audrey: “Well, you need to figure that out, Duke. Because while you’re looking for answers, the rest of us? We’re fighting a war. I did what I had to do.”

Wow. I feel like this isn’t coming through well enough in my writing, but the tone of this episode was very different from usual – it was much darker throughout, and by the end, there had been some major, permanent changes. The Rev is dead, and Duke, who likes to claim to be bad but always winds up on the side of good, may actually not be on Audrey and Nathan’s side after all. Nathan and Audrey seem to realize this as they stare at each other as the episode ends. This is war, and they really are on their own.

Photo Courtesy of Syfy