The Breakdown
There are some ghost seekers in town, calling themselves the Dark Side Seekers. They came to town to investigate a murder in which a victim was found without his heart. Some of this episode is seen through their camera, in that “Blaire Witch Project” sort of way. Using their ghost-seeking gadgets, they listen in on the conversation between the M.E. and Dwight about the latest victim’s heart being eaten. They decide they will tell their viewers it is a rougarou from ancient folklore. They say it’s a cousin of the werewolf and was once man but is now a monster. They also over hear the M.E. and Dwight talking about the Troubles and decide to investigate what that means. Dwight walks up on them while they are filming and tells them to turn the camera off, but of course, they start chanting about freedom of speech.
Duke asks Jennifer to see if she can do some “journalistic” work and find out if Vince and Dave know anything about William and his connection to Audrey. Duke goes back to Audrey’s hospital room where Nathan is and they discuss doping up William since hurting him is now out of the question (since he is linked to Audrey and what happens to him happens to her). Vince comes running in asking how Audrey is. Once they tell him she is fine, he tells Nathan about the ghost chasers and how they’ve hacked into the Haven Herald and are calling the heart-eater a rougarou. He fears that if they keep investigating, they will find out about the Troubles. Duke says no one will take those conspiracy type guys seriously but Vince and Audrey say if those guys find evidence of the Troubles then every government agency would be headed to Haven.
Audrey sends Nathan and Duke off to go solve the heart-eater mystery before the Dark Side Seekers figure anything out. When they leave she asks Vince if he knows anything about William since he has known her for three personalities (Sarah, Lucy, and now Audrey). He swears he knows nothing and that they are in uncharted territory. She confides in him that William said they were connected beyond just that gunshot wound and that she felt it when they were up on the hill. She tells him about William saying they are responsible for the Troubles and she is terrified because a part of her feels that he is telling the truth.
Duke and Nathan go to talk with the best friend of the latest victim and find that the ghost chasers are already interviewing her. They try to stop them from filming but they keep on chanting about first amendment rights. Suddenly, one of their little gadgets goes off, the lights go out, and we see sparks. This is where we see through the camera again as the monster busts through one of the walls. They are all crouched behind shelves (they are in a store). The best friend is with Duke. The monster grabs over one of the shelves to grab the girl and Duke shoots at him, moving the girl out of the way. When he turns around she is gone. Duke finds the breaker box and turns the lights back on. The girl is dead. Duke asks if seekers recorded any of it and the camera guy tells him he was too scared but he is lying.
The M.E. tells Nathan and Duke that all the victims have their hearts missing and traces of an unknown fluid. She is having trouble separating it from the blood. She sent off for a rush on a DNA test. Meanwhile, Seth, one of the Dark Side Seekers is harassing Dwight in the hall with the camera, trying to get into the morgue. Nathan walks out there and tells him he is not getting in. Seth says he doesn’t care because he has footage of the monster and recordings of law enforcement trying to cover it up. He wants to make a deal that he will not use the recordings if they let him and his partner tag along and finish the story. Dwight takes off his badge and gets scary. He proposes a new deal where Seth and his partner watch politely as Dwight smashes his equipment to pieces and lights their van on fire. He says if they don’t like that plan, he can always leave them inside of the van. Nathan pulls Dwight back to calm him down as Seth says it doesn’t matter because their footage is automatically uploaded to a secure server on the cloud. Dwight is perfectly calm. He was just trying to piss Seth off to get him to say where they were uploading their footage. He says he will have Jennifer dig through the files.
Duke and Nathan are back in the office and Duke asks how Audrey is and how Nathan is handling things. Audrey is still in surgery but is over the rough patch. Nathan, on the other hand, is having troubling dealing with all the things that keep happening to Audrey and he’s worried he can’t protect her, especially from William. The connection William has with Audrey is bothering him. Duke tells him William doesn’t know Audrey like he does. He convinces him they can help her but they need to figure out what the deal is with the heart-eater. While they are looking at the board and questioning the connection the victims have, Dwight walks in saying they all share the same birthday, June 12, 1981. Duke realizes that is Jennifer’s birthday and they all rush off to the Haven Herald to find her.
The place is a wreck and no one is there. They find Jennifer’s phone but no blood. They do, however, find that saliva stuff the M.E. was talking about. Now it is Duke’s turn to be the crazed worried boyfriend and for Nathan to be the reasonable one. They decide to go find the Dark Side Seekers to see their footage (and strike up a deal if they need-be). The seekers say there is something wrong with their footage that it looks fake and the monster looks like a million little black pixels. They ask to see it anyway and it looks like the black orbs William used to turn them all against each other. They figure there is no Troubled person, that it must be William doing this somehow. He is still at the hospital unconscious so Nathan and Duke go to the hospital while Dwight stays with the seekers to see if he can get anything else out of them.
Back at the hospital we hear a monitor make that coding sound as if someone has stopped breathing. Audrey suddenly wakes up and looks at her wound. It is completely healed. She looks through the window at William’s room and sees Officer Stan knocked out on the floor and William’s bed is empty. Stan tells Nathan and Audrey that he was knocked out when two guys kicked the door open. It sounds like William’s thug groupies were there and according to a cop outside the hospital, William walked out completely healed.
Duke gets a call from a blocked number. It is Jennifer and she is in some warehouse Vince sent her to saying she would be safe. She tells Duke they were attacked by a monster at the Herald and Vince went to look at the archives to see if he could figure out what it was. Duke, Audrey, and Nathan rush off to the warehouse.
Dwight is still with the ghost chasers at their van. He gets a text from Gloria (the M.E.) saying the rougarou is not human. Dwight asks Seth about his little gadgets and if they ever detect anything. He pulls out a little Ziploc bag with the fluid in it asking if Seth can see if he can get something from it in exchange for “the scoop”. While Seth is warming up is tech, Dwight asks what the obsession with this stuff is. Seth admits that he spent a summer in Haven as a kid and witnessed a man coming out of the ocean and taking his friend back into it. Ever since then he has been looking for answers to explain what he saw. His equipment is done warming up and most of it doesn’t go off when he puts it near the fluid. He pulls out an EPG (Electro Polarity Guide) machine he built and it goes off. Dwight tries to take it and of course Seth wants to come along. Having no time to argue, he brings them with him to the warehouse.
Meanwhile, the gang already at the warehouse is trying to figure out why the monster wants Jennifer. The date she was born is the day the Troubles came back during the last cycle. When Dwight and the seekers come in, Seth’s EPG gadget goes off, pointing toward the right in the red section. Dwight has to remind them no guns since he is a bullet magnet. The EPG stops going off but then starts making a different sound and pointing to the left in the green section. Audrey notices a book Jennifer just picked up. It is the book Audrey gave to Agent Howard in the very first episode of the series (called “Unstake My Heart”). Jennifer tells her she found it at her birth parents’ house.
Audrey takes the book and the EPG goes silent. Audrey gives it back to Jennifer and the EPG goes off again. Then it starts making the original sound (pointing to red) signally the rougarou was coming. The lights go off and we see sparks again. The monster comes in and throws Dwight against a wall. We’re back to seeing things through the camera again since everything is dark. Duke tries to distract the monster from Jennifer and Audrey’s direction. Jennifer has dropped the book. She goes to get it and the monster shows up. Audrey pushes a cart into the monster moving it out of the way for a second but then it pushes back and sends Audrey for a ride. Jennifer grabs the book and the monster swipes at her, turning into a bunch of those black orbs and disappearing. The lights come back on and Duke runs up to see if she is okay. Then she has a weird look on her face. The book has a symbol of the Guard tattoo on it and it is glowing.
Dwight goes off in an ambulance with a concussion. Seth asks about him and Nathan teases him saying, “Oh, it’s Dwight now, not officer big foot.” The camera guy, Anderson, comes out of the building trying to make sense of what just happened. He asks if the opposing frequency created a compressed static field and “poof”. Vince looks at him and says, “I’m sure that’s what happened”. Seth tells Nathan and Vince they will not ever release the footage.
He tells them even though the Haven Herald has laughable passwords, what they do for the town is important. He got the truth he has been seeking all these years and doesn’t want to turn these innocent people into a side-show attraction. He says Anderson is still trying to wrap his head around it and believes he feels the same way. Nathan says good luck to them and Anderson tells him to keep it for himself because they will need it. Jennifer asks Duke how he feels about dating Hermione (from Harry Potter). He says they all have their stuff and admits that he snores when drinking red wine. Jennifer can still see the orange glowing guard symbol but no one else can, not even Audrey. Jennifer opens the book and a riddle starts glowing. It says “In times of great evil, the child of ruin must find the heart of Haven and summon the door.” They figure Jennifer is the child of ruin because she was able to find the door for Audrey. They think she can send William through the door back to where he came from. That is why William wants her dead. He killed innocent people to make it look like a Trouble all so he could get to Jennifer.
The Analysis
This episode was not as exciting as the past few. I suppose there has to be a little bit of a lull before the two-part season finale. We did, however, learn more about Jennifer and her purpose. She is the person who can open the door. We knew that already since she opened it for Audrey but we weren’t sure how else she would contribute to the story. I am very curious about why the Guard symbol is on the book.
Haven comes on SyFy channel Friday nights at 10pm EST / 9pm CST.