Last week on Haven, we moved one step closer to the band getting back together. This week, Audrey has to escape the Barn or disappear into the aether. Meanwhile, Nathan is dealing with missing children and Duke and Jen continue their adventures to find Audrey from their side of reality. It sets up as just another episode of Haven but those last ten minutes made the setup worth it.

Lost and Found starts with children vanishing in the town of Haven. Parents hear very creepy laughs coming from their kids’ rooms and check up on them to find that they’re gone. It’s not like they’ve been taken so much as escaped by elaborate means. Clearly, they’re being compelled by a Trouble and it’s certainly a creepy Trouble.

Nathan and Dwight get their hands on security cam footage of one disappearance and see the kid being led away by a really freaky looking kid. This kid had fangs for teeth, claws for hands and feet and bowl hair cuts. That’s the uber creepiest combination you can get on a kid. The Teagues dig in the archives and find out that they’re Douens, creatures from Caribbean myth who charm children and lead them deep into the woods. We’re not getting into freaky myths this week but just Troubles that manifest as freaky mythical child-like creatures. And all in time for SyFy’s 31 days of Halloween.

Anyway, Nathan ties the Trouble back to the local preschool principal who can’t have children of her own. To build a family, her Trouble is gathering kids to make a family. Or at least that’s what we’re led to believe at first. It turns out that some medical test results that were conveniently left lying around said that the principal’s husband was the infertile one and his guilt over not being able to have a family triggered his Trouble. Nathan was able to save the day by likening this to his guilt over the death of his son in last season’s finale. That broke the Trouble and the kids were saved.

My only problem with how this Trouble was solved was that this episode started as if it was Dwight’s Trouble to solve. I know Nathan’s the town’s Trouble solver with Audrey out of commission for the moment. However, it’s Dwight that lost a daughter to his bullet magnet Trouble and has to live with the guilt of it. Rather than give him something to do other than keep Nathan’s seat warm, they tied back to a one or two episode arc from last season that Nathan seemed largely inconsequential in.

Speaking of Audrey, she’s still in the Barn thinking she’s Lexi. Before she can have that identity crisis that William has been teasing for the last three episodes, she needs to escape the Barn before it implodes and erases her from existence. No pressure.

Anyway, Audrey has to find a secret door in the Bar/n that will lead her back to reality. It’s not that simple though. In addition to finding that door, she needs to take a leap of faith over what is effectively purgatory and hope her friends back in Haven open their door back to reality. If she’s lacking in faith or a second open door, she’s stuck in limbo for the rest of eternity.

And that brings us to this week’s adventures with Duke and Jen. Jennifer is hearing the goings on in the Barn which includes Audrey trying to find a way out. Well, she’s trying to hear what’s going on but Nathan has a rather powerful negative aura around him which is making Jen nervous and turning of her Barn listener Trouble. So Duke decides that they’re going to do things to calm Jen down such as yoga (it was mightily impressive to see Duke do a handstand), meditating and drinking games.

Anyway, this all works and helps Jen hear a fog horn. It’s the same fog horn that Lexi hears in the Barn that draws her toward her exit door. A quick cut and Jen has led Duke to Haven’s door to the Barn.

Duke calls Nathan to get him to the right spot and the friendly neighbourhood Guard is right there to make sure he gets a bullet to the brain courtesy Audrey to end the Troubles. Except it’s Dave Teagues who doesn’t want any doors opened. The normally mild-mannered Teagues brother shows up, revolver in hand, to try to stop the door from being opened. His digging in the archives for the Douens turned up info that opening this door could open Haven to things even worse than the Troubles and he is quite clearly freaking out as a result of what he found. One quick Jordan nerve pinch stops his objections quickly, though.

When Audrey/Lexi makes her leap of faith, it causes some sort of shockwave that knocks out everyone in the vicinity until after the commercial break. When everyone comes to, Audrey is there and Nathan greets her by giving her a gun telling her that he knows what she had to do to end the Troubles. The whole scene smacks everyone right in the feels including Jordan. See, she’s not a heartless monster like some fans think. Sure, she may not be my favourite character but she’s certainly pretty high on the Haven good character power rankings.

When Nathan hands the gun to Audrey and points it to his heart, Audrey says that she’s not killing anyone and certainly not someone she’s never met before. And everyone has a collective “oh shit” moment. It’s not Audrey that came out of the barn but her new incarnation Lexi. It looks like we’re a long way from ending the Troubles and getting Haven back to normal.

Overall, I liked this week’s episode. I don’t think that it put together as solid a 42-minute package as last week’s did but that concluding act at the door was certainly the most dramatic moments of the season so far. As always, Duke and Jen were the highlights of the episode and it’s certainly easy to like the two characters. When two actors are just going out there and having fun, it certainly makes the show great to watch. It was also great to see Dave get some highlighted time with Vince getting most of the attention given his role with The Guard.

Best of all, we have interesting possibilities going forward. Sure, it’s entirely possible that the show goes forward with Jen trying to get Lexi to realize she’s Audrey and Nathan trying to win her heart again. I hope that we get something unexpected going forward. Maybe Lexi finds herself gravitating to the much better-armed and higher-number Guard than Nathan and friends. And this doesn’t even mention where the series goes with Dave’s revelation that opening the just made things much worse than your bog standard Troubles.

Other random points of note:

• Lost in the shuffle of this review was a great Nathan speech to Jordan early in the episode about how he felt guilty about all the people who had died because of the Troubles since the Barn left. I just didn’t like it as much as Jordan’s speech last week. Jordan’s torment as a result of her Trouble has been driving her this season. Nathan… Well, sometimes I’m not quite sure what his motivation is. Guilt is a powerful motivator but when it’s just numbers rather than people you, as an audience, care about, it just doesn’t resonate the same way. Jordan’s speech worked because it was written and told in a way that made the pain of never being able to touch or be touched almost palpable. Yes, I’m going to keep saying good things about Kate for a long time because of last week’s episode. I don’t care how many times I read about fan’s hating Jordan.
• Edge had the line of the night. When the Troubled guy’s wife asked what happened, Dwight said, “Your husband just decided it’s time to adopt.” They really need to make Dwight the focus or the hero of an episode this season. Like the Teagues in seasons past, Edge is working wonders with what little time he has on screen.

Next week, Lexi makes her first visit to Haven (Well, you know what I mean.) and finds out about all the fun that you can have dealing with the Troubles in “The New Girl.” The preview clip during the end credits made it seem like we’ve got some sort of mind control Trouble sweeping through town. I guess an episode where no one is safe is a good 31 Days of Halloween follow-up to creepy kids. Meanwhile, everyone is at each other’s throats now that the best laid plans of mice and Troubled men have been ruined now that Lexi, rather than Audrey, emerged from the Barn.