This season of Haven has been a bit up and down. The first half of the season was ever improving as the cast of characters came into their own without Audrey to hold their hands through every potentially catastrophic situation. Then, Poochie arrives. And by Poochie, I mean William. The character sideswiped all the progress made in the first half of the season as everyone spent the final half of the season talking about William.

Would this season finale make bring an end to Poochie or does more William await us after this?

Spoiler Alert: There are spoilers for this season of Haven in this review along with spoilers for Twin Peaks. Trust me, the Twin Peaks spoilers make sense when use them in context of this episode’s ending.

The episode starts right where we left off last week with Audrey giving Duke his old Trouble back. When she does, she has a flashback to her original incarnation together with William. Present day William senses that the barrier between Audrey’s incarnations is breaking down and leaves Crazy-Hair and Kurrgan to their fishing to deal with Audrey.

Duke doing his duty and killing the Troubled baby’s father was probably the emotionally powerful scene of the episode. I do mean that in the singular. Eric Balfour and Jayne Eastwood had this great emotional moment with just one but were able to make the impact hit home.

Having left The Lighthouse and the door back to the other side, Jennifer informs everyone that the four people they need to unlock the door are not of this world. She’s one. Audrey and William are two more. That leaves them to find the fourth. Jennifer and Vince are tasked with this. Duke and Dwight are sent to pick up one of Crazy Hair and Kurrgan. That leaves Audrey and Nathan to deal with William.

Turns out that Crazy Hair and Kurrgan are just creations of the black orbs. When William figures out that Audrey talking to him is a trap, he gets Kurrgan and Crazy Hair to jump Nathan so he doesn’t tranquilize him. William uses the opportunity to try to get Audrey to tap back into her original self. She does tap in enough to stop William’s brutes from pummeling Nathan but she also gives Nathan an opportunity to knock her out to knock William out. It probably would have been easier if they tried that in the first place since they’re so connected.

Meanwhile, the rest of the cast is trying to figure out who the fourth person who is not of this world is to open the door. During this sequence, we discover that whatever Audrey’s did in reactivating the Crocker curse is having a very adverse side-effect on Duke. He’s coughing up blood and getting progressively weaker.

Anyway, the fourth person is Dave Teagues. The younger, adopted Teagues brother found out that he’s not from this corporeal realm and was trying to hide the evidence because there is a great evil on the other side of the door/lighthouse. Every time a door to the other side opens, he’s pulled in and doesn’t want to risk going across. Of course, he’s not going to get any say in the matter so he’s cuffed and dragged to the lighthouse by Vince and Dwight.

At The Lighthouse, both Dave and William are trying to convince everyone else that opening the door to the other side would unleash an evil far greater that William already is. Well, that’s not going to convince anyone that opening the door is the wrong thing to do. Dave gets drawn into the door between dimensions but despite the fact that he drew a gun on everyone earlier and tried to shoot Vince, the other Teagues brother is the first to try to save Dave and does with the help of Nathan and Dwight.

Where was Duke during this? Well, his coughing up blood has gotten worse. Turns out that Audrey’s re-Troubling wasn’t done entirely correctly. As a result, all of the Troubles that Duke has ended using the Crocker curse are still bubbling inside of him and are very quickly tearing him apart from the inside.

While all the other drama is happening, Audrey throws William through the Door. Jennifer uses her book to close the door but says that they shouldn’t have opened the door and immediately keels over dead proving that it doesn’t pay to be a female actor on Haven not named Emily Rose. And now Audrey is fully consumed by her first incarnation, Mara, who immediately starts looking to get William back from the other side.

So we get the Twin Peaks ending. Season two of Twin Peaks ended with Killer Bob inhabiting Dale Cooper’s body after emerging from The Black Lodge. In this instance, it’s Mara who inhabits Audrey’s body after The Door in The Lighthouse is opened. Given that I’m a fan of both shows, I’d certainly find it comical if both series were cancelled after season finales that featured basically the same ending.

As a cliffhanger, it does send the series in an interesting direction. I don’t have an issue with the show making Audrey the big bad for a season. It changes things up in the series and gives the writers a fairly blank slate to work with. All of the minor characters get more screen time and get to do more things which worked very well in the early, Audrey-lite episodes this season. I don’t think that turning Audrey into evil Mara harms the series irreparably. However, if they botch this storyline and pull the trigger on ending it too soon or let it spin its wheels for too many episodes, then Haven is in trouble.

And spinning wheels is my primary problem with the second half of the season. Up to about episode eight (in which Duke deals with the aftermath of Wade’s death and ends with the gunshot cliffhanger), the show moved at a lightning pace. You never knew what was going to happen and you had to tune in every week. I thought it was well-paced, if occasionally a bit fast. William, was only the big bad for the last four episodes but each felt the same. Nothing felt fresh. Nothing changed. It’s just William talking about the old Audrey loving him while supercharging a Trouble. It never felt like it progressed until this week. But stalling seems to be working well for The Walking Dead.

I just felt that the season started strong, peaked midway through and slid home to this finish. It wasn’t a bad finale. There were good points and bad points. I liked the idea that Crazy Hair and Kurrgan go fishing in their spare time, even if it wasn’t supposed to be funny. I liked Audrey going evil. I loved Gloria and Duke. I’m just not a fan of the William character and am tired of the writers making one season supporting female characters. Sure, they can retcon Jennifer’s death but killing her does nothing for the story and it’s just a tired trope for this series at this point.

Well, here’s hoping that Season Five, if there’s a Season Five, is more like the first half of this season rather than the last half.

Other random points of note:

• I quite enjoyed the part where Nathan proved William wrong. He can hurt William without hurting Audrey. All it requires is a stiff knee to the groin.
• Bonus points to Dwight for using his bullet magnet Trouble to get Dave to shoot himself. You’d have to think that he doesn’t spend a lot of time around shooting ranges, though. I wonder if there was ever an old-timey version of the Trouble that made someone an arrow magnet.
• I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned why I call Robert Maillet’s character Kurrgan but just in case I didn’t: Robert Maillet was a former professional wrestler. His most famous character in the WWF was Kurrgan. Since the show hasn’t given a name to Maillet’s character on Haven, I just call him by his ring name.

And that wraps up season four of Haven. There’s no word about cancellation or renewal at this point but Syfy has a habit of cancelling cult hit shows after only a few seasons. The producers have said in the past that they had a plan for several more seasons ready to be enacted so it’s not like they’ve run out of ideas even if it seems like they’ve crammed a couple of seasons worth of plot into this one.

We’ll have an update when we hear anything about cancellation or renewal.