Note: Spoilers ahead if you haven’t watch Thursday’s premiere episode, “See No Evil.”
Syfy’s “Haven” is back for Season 5, and it wasted no time digging deep into the show’s ever more complicated mythology on Thursday’s premiere episode.
At the heart of it is Audrey Parker (Emily Rose), who came to the small Maine town as an FBI agent investigating a routine case and ended up staying for years, learning that she has more to do with the town’s history than she ever realized.
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Now, after multiple abductions, personality changes and stints in supernatural barns, Audrey has emerged on Season 5 with yet another new personality, this time a seemingly immortal being named Mara. She’s the very opposite of a “Haven saver” and the one who may just be responsible for starting the Troubles hundreds of years ago.
Executive producers Gabrielle Stanton and Matt McGuinness talked to TheWrap about the explosive season premiere, which answered some questions and asked a few more. But with the show potentially heading towards its series finale at the end of its current supersized 26-episode season, it’s time to start paying seasons-long mysteries off.
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“We’re really playing out character stuff, we’re really playing out emotional stuff,” Stanton said of Season 5. “If you’re a Nathan and Audrey fan, this is going to be the season for you. If you’re a ‘what on earth is going on in Haven’ fan, you’re going to love this season too.”
On deck: Mara’s true feelings for Audrey’s love Nathan (Lucas Bryant), the fate of Jennifer (Emma Lahana), Dave’s (John Dunsworth) mysterious visions and whatever the hell Thinnys are.
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TheWrap: Can we break down that final scene? Mara shoots Nathan and then can’t go through with killing him. What’s going on there?
Gabrielle Stanton: We want the audience to be wondering what’s going on there. Mara has been very decisve in speaking to Nathan about how Audrey is gone and dead and there’s no way Audrey can come back out but obviously Nathan doesn’t believe her. We want the audience to be asking, in that moment, why didn’t she finish Nathan off? Is it because she just didn’t want to? Or is there still just enough Audrey inside there that she wasn’t able to pull the trigger? So we want the audience to be wondering, and within the next three episodes we’re going to get a very definitive answer.
Well, it seemed to me to confirm that Audrey was still in there. Are we going to be seeing her emerge more prominently over the next few episodes?
I think it’s safe to say… yes.
So now we’ve gotten a pretty good look at Mara and she’s pretty nasty. What exactly is her ultimate goal?
Matt McGuinness: We can’t tell you that!
GS: We can’t tell you that, unfortunately, because it’s a big part of both seasons. We can say this: Mara and William came to Haven 500 years ago with a plan…
MM: Well beyond just troubling people…
GS: Yes. And they were unable to achieve it. Mara was captured and she was put in the barn and William banished to the void. But now that she’s back she’s going to pick up where she left off. Discovering what exactly that plan is and what it means to Haven is going to really play out over the first 13 episodes – actually over all 26 episodes.
MM: I think we can say that although Mara is, like you said, nasty, Mara has loyalties as well. Mara is working on her loyaties as well.
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Do you mean to William, or…?
MM: I mean to someone.
Since Mara remembers all of her past identities, does that mean Audrey does too?
GS: It’s interesting because Audrey has always had bits and pieces – like when she realized she could play the piano – but she’s never remembered what’s going on, except she remembered being Lexie a little. But generally speaking, when and if Audrey comes back, she will not share Mara’s memories.
MM: She goes back to the Audrey that she was. She does not remember her past incarnations. Something might seep through or bubble to the surface, but no, she cannot remember her past lives the way Mara can.
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We’ve seen Nathan become more and more singularly focused on saving Audrey, especially in this episode, when he’s so sure that their love will save her. Is he going to see that pay off, or should he be trying a different approach?
GS: Nathan, because he’s like the heart of Haven because of the love that they share being the cornerstone of our series… All I can say is you never want the hero’s journey to be a failure. So I will say he will ultimately be successful in the end.
Jennifer’s fate is still up in the air by the end of the first episode. Is that going to last a while or will we know what happened to her soon?GS: We will know what happened to her in the second episode.
What is up with Dave and those visions of the cave? Is he the one who closed the thin spots?
GS: No, he is not the one who closed the thin spots, but that’s interesting, I never thought of it that way. We are going to learn a lot more about Vince and Dave this season. For the first four seasons, you’ve kind of felt like they know what’s going on and we didn’t, and that started to shift a little bit when they realized they thought they knew everything, but they only know the tip of the ice berg. But we’re going to learn a lot more about Dave’s backstory, how he’s connected to the door and to Jennifer, the cave, the thinnys and everything. And his relationship with Vince is really going to be tested this season. They’ve always been a big part of the mythology of Haven and no more so than this year.
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What moments or revelations in the premiere should fans keep in mind in looking forward to the rest of the season or even the series?
MM: We’ll have to go character by character. Dwight makes an interesting revelation that people were keeping secrets from him. Dwight has always been a loyal soldier of Vince’s, and he starts to realize that Vince’s wisdom is being colored by more emotional motivations. So Dwight begins to realize he needs to take of a leadership role.
GS: I would say for Duke, remember how his eyes were bleeding and how he came out of the cave. I would say that’s something that’s going to ripple through season 5 in a big way. Nathan is on his journey for Audrey. The thinnys being sealed is going to be very important.
MM: Dave’s flashbacks. Something happened in that cave. We find out more. A lot more happens in the second episode than the first. In the second episode we find out a lot more about Dave’s flashbacks.
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GS: And we’re going to find out a lot more about what happened in that cave and if the start of the season really was a direct pickup.
“Haven” airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on Syfy.