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Haven<\/em> is set to return on October 8th for its final season. You may not have time to catch up on the 13 episodes that make up Season 5A, so this is a synopsis of events that I hope you’ll find helpful. If you want to read my posts about the characters and previous seasons, you can start here and work your way back<\/a>. I’ll be updating the Who’s Who with info from Season 5A in due course, and I’ll have a sneak peak of Season 5B for you soon: I’ve already seen the first two episodes. Stay tuned. The game is\u00a0changing in many different ways.<\/p>\n After Audrey, Nathan, Duke and Jennifer, with the assistance of Dave and Vince, cast William through the portal at the bottom of the lighthouse, two things happen: something bad comes through (about which more later), and Mara takes complete control of Audrey\u2019s body. She claims that all traces of Audrey are gone, forever; however, Nathan, loyal to the end, believes Audrey is still there and he can bring her back.<\/p>\n Mara is a bad piece of work. Armed with all of the memories of her other personalities, she delights in stirring up Troubles, promising a rash of new ones. However, she needs William\u2019s \u201cblack goo,\u201d aka aether, to execute her plan. She believes William left a cache of it behind, or she might find some in a thinny, but the only ones she knows about have been sealed. Without aether, she\u2019s powerless. Well, that\u2019s not exactly true: she can still wreak havoc. She kills people for arbitrary reasons and shoots Nathan. However, she can\u2019t finish him off, so maybe there\u2019s still hope.<\/p>\n Nathan has to keep Mara away from everyone while he tries to rescue Audrey. The police want to arrest Mara and the Guard wants to kill her. He takes her to his father\u2019s old cabin, which no one but Duke knows about. Audrey manages to emerge from time to time, and she tells Nathan that the way to get her back is to talk to and treat Mara as if she\u2019s Audrey. It takes a while for Duke and Dwight to get with the program, especially once Dwight learns that Mara caused the Troubles, but eventually they both believe that Nathan isn\u2019t grasping at straws and agree to help out. They hope\u00a0that Mara can fix all of the Troubles she created, and they work on forcing her to do so.<\/p>\n However, Mara is deviousness embodied. She tries\u00a0to seduce Nathan. She pretends to be Audrey in an attempt to escape. She pilfers a small amount of aether from Nathan. She promises to fix individual Troubles but merely changes them into something worse, usually with lethal consequences. Audrey, who has access only to Mara\u2019s current thoughts, realizes that Mara is lying to them: she can\u2019t cure the Troubles.<\/p>\n Part of Nathan\u2019s strategy is to bring Mara along on a Trouble investigation, since that plays to Audrey\u2019s strength. Mara tricks everyone and escapes, but Nathan and Duke track her down. Duke releases a reincarnation Trouble that separates Mara and Audrey into two entities. For the first time ever, Audrey is just herself. She has no memories of other lives, she is no longer immune to the Troubles and Nathan can no longer feel her. Worse, she gets sick and begins to rapidly degenerate on a cellular level. Without Mara, she\u2019s in trouble. She begins to doubt herself\u2014even doubting her reality\u2014and starts losing her mojo when it comes to fixing Troubles.<\/p>\n In parallel to all this, Vince and Dave investigate the mystery of Dave\u2019s nightmares. After the lighthouse explosion, his body bears marks of violence, including a wound on his leg that won’t heal. He is drawn relentlessly toward thinnies and remembers waking up on the beach beside the body of the Colorado Kid after passing into one years ago. During their time in the lighthouse, the Havenites experienced a loss of time and memory similar to what happened on the day of the Colorado Kid\u2019s death. Something is trying to stop\u00a0Vince and Dave from learning more. It wants to hurt Dave, who is convinced that whatever it is, it came into the cave when William was sent packing.<\/p>\n Dave\u2019s nightmares relate to a massacre in the woods, and the word Croatoan. While at first it seems that this is a reference\u00a0to the missing Roanoke Colony from the 17th century, Dave ultimately realizes that the trees in his vision aren\u2019t indigenous to North Carolina, but rather\u00a0to Maine. Using geographic benchmarks, Vince and Dave identify the location of his visions. They find a stone with Croatoan carved in it. The carving is very, very fresh.<\/p>\n Duke has his own issues to deal with. His lover, Jennifer, died in the lighthouse, so he has to face his grief and guilt. Worse, he’s now filled with every one of the hundreds of Troubles the Crocker family has absorbed over the generations. The pressure builds up inside him to the point where he has to give a Trouble to someone or he will overload and explode. Chaos ensues until he realizes what\u2019s happening each time he bleeds. He tries to release relatively benign Troubles, but he soon runs out of those. Mara promises to help him deal with his situation, but he\u2014understandably\u2014has a hard time trusting her.<\/p>\n Dwight takes over\u00a0the Guard after the group\u2019s members lose confidence in Vince, who is too distracted helping Dave to pay attention to his leadership duties. With Dwight out of town, Nathan, Audrey and Duke don\u2019t know what to do with Mara. If they turn her over to the guard, they\u2019ll kill her. Nathan worries that Mara and Audrey might still be connected the way Audrey and William were, so they chain her up in the bowels of Duke\u2019s freighter. They need information, but she won\u2019t cooperate without getting something in return. She wants to read Duke\u2019s journal, which contains all the Troubles his family has removed. There\u2019s also an element of reverse-Stockholm syndrome: Mara gets inside Duke\u2019s head, suggesting that he\u00a0subconsciously wanted to rescue Mara by splitting her in two instead of just doing something to put Audrey in charge. She warns him that, if word of the Troubles gets out, she and he will be the main targets of the investigation. They\u2019re the woman who created the Troubles and the man who can take them away. She successfully alienates him from the others.<\/p>\n Mara \u201cproves\u201d her loyalty to him by escaping custody and returning with supplies. She\u2019s not the problem, she argues. Duke is the one who can destroy Haven by unleashing a flood of Troubles. He agrees to recover the small sample of aether for her. When Duke unleashes a Trouble that threatens to kill him, Mara again demonstrates\u00a0her devotion by staying with him and helping him fix the problem. He believes Mara cares about him. They consummate the relationship.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all a lie, though, part of her nefarious scheme. When Duke finds out how badly he\u2019s been duped, something happens to him. His tears turn black and fly from\u00a0his body, inflicting Troubles on other people. Mara tells him he\u2019s become something awesome\u2014a concentration of new troubles that no one has ever seen. She wants to leave Haven by a thinny, and promises to fix Duke if someone can make that happen. Duke thinks he can isolate himself by sailing off to sea, but Dave tells him that Troubles always find people unless they\u2019re expelled where they came from: the void. Duke then agrees to take Mara to a thinny, but his real plan is to kill her and go into the void, thereby saving Haven from his explosion.<\/p>\n Another complication is the arrival in Haven of Dr. Charlotte Cross from the CDC. She\u2019s supposedly there to look into the\u00a0virulent lesion on Dave\u2019s leg, but she arrives during a period when a disease plagues Troubled people, so her investigation expands, threatening to blow the top off a\u00a0secret the residents have been keeping for centuries. As part of her study, Charlotte discovers a genetic marker that is unique to Troubled people. Perhaps the Troubles aren\u2019t supernatural\u2014maybe there\u2019s a scientific explanation for them and maybe even a cure.<\/p>\n Charlotte and Dwight grow close as she works on this problem. Ultimately he tells her about the Troubles. However, not everyone is accepting of her story. Vince finds out that the CDC didn\u2019t send anyone to Haven, and then he discovers that Charlotte\u00a0has a file on Audrey and several of her other incarnations. She has an explanation for this, but her cover is finally blown when Audrey finds a ring in Charlotte\u2019s car\u2014identical to the one that used to belong to Sara. It\u2019s part of a set, Charlotte admits\u2014everyone in the family has one. She\u2019s Audrey\u2019s mother or, rather, Mara\u2019s mother, and is 1,100 years old. She crossed over from her world to try to figure out and undo whatever Mara has done. Joining the CDC allowed her to investigate Troubled people. She was the one who punished her daughter by forcing her to return over and over again in other guises to make reparations for her actions.<\/p>\n Audrey is sick, Charlotte says, because one life force was split into two. Mara\u2019s personality has been overlaid so many times that the goodness in Audrey has been leached out of her. Audrey must be returned to Mara. It will be different than before: Audrey won\u2019t be trapped in Mara, she will be part of her. However, Audrey will be like a drop of white paint in a bucket of black. She will cease to exist; she must die. Naturally, Nathan isn\u2019t a big fan of this idea, but Audrey insists. Nathan promises to get Audrey back after the two are united again.<\/p>\n Charlotte convinces Mara to go along with this plan by telling her that she\u00a0will feel better if she is reunited with Audrey. She’ll be like she once was, before her father died. After Mara claims she\u00a0turned off Duke\u2019s problem, Charlotte brings the two together. However, it is Audrey who emerges after an energy wave emanates from them. Mara had already been destroyed by the loss of her father many years ago, Charlotte says. Audrey is now how Mara once was. Nathan can feel her again.<\/p>\n Mara has the last laugh, though. She lied about fixing Duke, and a black fog circles Haven, trapping everyone in town. Duke finally erupts, spewing hundreds or thousands of Troubles into the air. They rain down on Haven, impacting every living resident of the Troubled town.<\/p>\n That can\u2019t be good.<\/p>\n Troubles<\/strong><\/p>\n Note: Season 5A consisted of pairs of episodes, so I will treat them as such here. Also, a number of “classic” Troubles from previous seasons return, thanks to Duke’s \u00a0condition.<\/p>\n 1-2) See No Evil \/ Speak No Evil<\/p>\nHaven<\/h2>\n
Season 5A\u00a0\u2014 Trouble has a new name<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>King references<\/strong>: Doors to other dimensions are a recurring theme in King\u2019s work. Thinnies–special places where the veil between worlds is stretched thin, allowing travel between worlds\u2014are from the Dark Tower books. Black House coffee makes a return appearance. Duke\u2019s license plate is 98 KA 16\u2014KA is an important concept in the Dark Tower novels.<\/p>\n