Haven: Chosen Review

Haven’s mid-season finale went out with a literal bang. Probably, if I’m being super-literal, there was more than one, but that’s beside the point. After a slow and shaky build up this season, Haven managed to deliver a killer of a mid-season finale that definitely provided us with enough meaty plot goodness to tide us over until it returns in the New Year.

That being said, just because this week’s installment left me as breathless as an asthmatic attempting to summit Everest, don’t think I’m going to turn a blind eye to the major fumble. You know what I’m talking about: Mara’s big reveal. 

Throughout last season and now this season, the question of what is driving Mara has been omnipresent. She’s full of spite and she’s clearly out for revenge, but the why behind her actions has never been explained. Frankly, until this week, I’d begun to view her as a third (fourth, fifth?) rate version of Shakespeare’s Iago — not bad for any real reason, just born that way (or in the case of Jessica Rabbit, drawn that way). It was a smart idea to reveal Mara’s motive in the series finale. It was less smart to uncover that the motive in question was her anger at her mother, Charlotte. I mean, come on. I’ve gotten angry with my mom before and mostly I act out by way of dying my hair or being sassy — as a teenager I maybe slammed the odd door. But destroying the lives of hundreds? That seems a bit much.

While I waffled as to what I felt regarding Mara’s big reveal, there was no doubt in my mind as to the excellence of where they went with Charlotte. Of course she’s got the answers for how to solve things! She is literally thousands of years old! Like any good finale (mid-season or otherwise) the problem of Mara being solved involved a major loss. The idea that Audrey would have to put herself (and thus, her goodness) into Mara was gut-wrenching. But you know what was more gut-wrenching? Charlotte tacitly deciding that her “bad” daughter was too far gone and shoving her ass into the thinny, whaaaaaaaaaat?

I love the concept that Mara’s been put back inside of Audrey – the idea that Parker has a little bit of bad in her is thrilling and provides of lots potential options regarding story – perhaps options that somehow tie into the whole Dave and Vince and Croatan thing? That would be nice. Other things I’d love to see include Duke maybe not ending every cliffhanger episode by seizing. I was delighted to learn that his Trouble had been turned off, but to follow that up with an immediate illness just had me rolling my eyes. Which, you know, meant that I did take the fact that Duke just gave every single person in Haven a Trouble as seriously as I should have. But hey, no one’s perfect! 

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