YMMV / Haven

• Broken Base: Charlotte, Audrey/Mara's mother, caused this with her general demeanor as well as her treatment of her daughter. She's the one who sent her fighting the troubles in Haven, as it should have provided a cure both to her daughter, who was turning into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds at the time, and the townspeople of Haven, whom she'd wronged. Too bad it came at the price of Mind Rape on a previously innocent woman who was severely traumatized and shortly became much worse because of it, undoing part of the good she'd meant to do. Add to that the fact that while purely well-intentionned, hard-working brave and brainy, she's also manipulative, condescending and an adept practitioner of the Mercy Kill, and you have one of the most controversial characters in the series.
• Critical Dissonance: Haven was never really "appreciated" by most critics during its run on TV, with USA Today even describing the series as a "ludicrously see-through supernatural crime drama". Despite this, it got generally positive audience reception and decent ratings over its run.
• Cult Classic: Still has a pretty decently-sized and dedicated fanbase despite its cancellation and mediocre ratings.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Jennifer, who was well-liked by the fandom (at least on Tumblr) despite her single season appearance on the show. Her relationship with Duke won over even those who shipped him with other characters, with the consensus being that they were "adorable." Fans seemed to enjoy that Jennifer was a support for Duke in a way that Audrey and Nathan were not, was willing to call him out on some of his character flaws, and that their relationship brought out a very soft and tender side of him. The fandom was not pleased when Real Life Writes the Plot happened and the writers chose to kill her off instead of literally anything else.
• Fan Nickname: "Fraudrey" for the second Audrey Parker who showed up at the end of season 1. Ironically, it turned out that Fraudrey was in fact the real Audrey Parker and the first one is the fake!
• Friendly Fandoms: With the other live-action SyFy shows, most notably Eureka, Warehouse 13, and Alphas.
• Growing the Beard: While Season 1 isn't necessarily bad, it's often seen as having relied too much on the generic Monster of the Week format, which hindered its own attempts at establishing a unique identity. Season 2 and onward, however, is generally seen as where the series started to really dive into its overall Myth Arc and the show got significantly more interesting and engaging as a result.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Nathan is great with babies, which is heartwarming since this is in spite of the relationship he had with either his biological father, who was physically abusive and whom he can't remember, or his adoptive father, who was emotionally distant and often at odds with him.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In-universe. Nathan's rage against Duke (with repeated references to his inability to feel) in "Harmony" feels even harsher after he reveals in "Sins of the Fathers" that he blames Duke for the return of his Trouble.
  • In season one's "As You Were," Nathan, Audrey, and Julia discover that the Chameleon has been living as Vaughn Carpenter for years, and they wonder if his wife knew. They decide she did, based on the picture, and then imagine the impossible choice she had to make: lose the love of her life or live with a copy, somebody that "looks like him, speaks like him, acts like him, essentially is him." In season 5, Nathan is presented with exactly this scenario by Croatoan—and rejects the idea of living happily ever after with a replica in favor of trying to save Audrey.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the pilot, Audrey reaches for her badge, only to become annoyed when Nathan tells her to keep her hands where he could see them. She sarcastically asks "What, am I going to pull out another gun?" However, in "As You Were," it's revealed Audrey does, indeed, carry multiple guns on her person even when attending a casual function.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Outside of a few WWE fans, no one expected Edge to take to acting the way he has.
  • Emily Rose's excellent performance as Audrey Parker has often been cited by critics as one of the greater highlights of the entire series. This is only further shown in Season 5 when she has to consistently switch between the kind yet stern Audrey and cruel and malevolent Mara, and does so flawlessly.
  • Downplayed, as William Shatner already has a pretty good reputation as an actor, but many audiences were still stunned with his performance as Croatoan in Season 5, if only because of how genuinely unnerving and creepy he is to be around.
• Hollywood Pudgy: A most egregious example can be found in "Reflections", where a girl says she was teased for being fat. She's really, really not.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Wade Crocker jumps into the family curse with both feet. He knifes a Troubled man to get his blood to activate the Crocker family curse, then murders Jordan - his Love Interest.
  • Once William is revealed to be evil, he does a lot of despicable things, but the worst one has to be activating a baby's Trouble that causes people to die whenever it cries, just so he could force Audrey to create a new Trouble to cancel it out.
  • Mara wastes no time proving how evil she is in Season 5, murdering two people over two episodes for incredibly petty reasons.
  • Croatoan has more of these than there is space to list, being responsible for nigh everything that goes wrong in the show, a massive one being what he does to Duke, and by extension Nathan and Audrey. It can sour the ending a little, since talking him down largely renders Duke's death a Senseless Sacrifice, especially since Duke is the only one who is left dead at the end despite the fact that the reason he 'needed' to die has been rendered moot.
• Narm: The series finale "Forever." While the happy endings for most characters are very sweet, they get laid on a tad thick. Admittedly though, one could argue that the show's cancellation could be to blame for how rushed many of them are in the episode.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Some people have jokingly described the series as what would've happened if Stephen King had created The X-Files.
  • A few fans have noted that the numerous Mythology Gags to King's body of work, themes of dimensional travel and infinite cycles, and the assemblage of a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits to fight off a Cosmic Horror have arguably made the series a better adaptation of The Dark Tower than it is of The Colorado Kid.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The anti-Troubled bigotry plotline creates a problem similar to what X-Men runs into; some people, like Nathan, have benign Troubles that could be passed off as disabilities. Others, like Garland Wuornos, have Troubles that can level buildings. And then you have the Nix Family, who have a Trouble that drives them to mass murder. While very few of the Troubled actively use their Trouble for profit, Reverend Driscoll has a point that there are people with supernatural abilities running around town that have the potential to cause a small-scale apocalypse if they're in a bad mood.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Audrey and Nathan do some very morally questionable things in order to solve Trouble-related crimes, making them come off as Dirty Cops at times. One episode has a Troubled person who spoils any food he takes a bite of, and they use the threat of that Trouble triggering to make someone confess to murder, while another has Audrey and Nathan let a criminal drown rather than subject them to any form of due process.
  • Later in the series, they also develop a habit of prioritising themselves and their relationship over everything else, and tend to get righteous when confronted about it. Nathan is almost obsessed with Audrey at the expense of others, repeatedly abandoning plans and caring more about getting her 'back' than the bigger picture. Meanwhile, Audrey sometimes veers into it as well, overshadowing valid points she does by make refusing to accept when she's wrong, and continually expecting others to sacrifice and do things to support what she wants without following through on the consequences for them. This is especially noticeable in how they treat Duke, who spends a great deal of several seasons going through hell while also putting himself and his own relationships on the line to support them, only to be immediately told off and treated like a selfish monster when he finally cracks under his own trauma. They get called out a little bit, but it's enough to make the finale a bit disappointing, with Nathan and Audrey getting happy endings, even bringing back James, while Duke is left dead despite the fact that the entire reason he sacrificed himself has been neutralised.
• The Woobie:
  • Nathan.
  • Duke.
  • Will Brady in "Last Goodbyes".
  • Audrey herself, especially after she realizes her entire identity was a lie over the course of Season 2.

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