Happy Mother’s Day! It’s season finale day for Revenge, and we found out Friday it is a season finale and not series finale, as the show was renewed for a third season. We dive into the two-hour episode tonight still reeling from the closing moments of “Engagement,” which unleashed a power failure that trapped strange bedfellows–Aiden with Emily and Nolan; Daniel with Charlotte; and Jack with Victoria.
The episode begins with the re-announcement of Emily and Daniel’s engagement plus the news that they’re getting hitched immediately AND relocating to Paris. Victoria responds with an engagement party held that evening. She’s also knee-deep in letters from supposed long-lost sons asking to get reacquainted. Emily asks Charlotte to be her maid of honor and she accepts. She’s still grieiving Amanda and tells Emily she needs her sister and Emily tells her they’ll be sisters soon, but Charlotte doesn’t bite.
Nolan reaches out to Edith with a potential peace offering if she’ll tell him all the details on Victoria’s son and she only shares that Victoria knew where he was at one point and then paid him a few million to go away, so more dents in her story there. Edith also tells Nolan that she’s put a tweak in Carrion that requires her to be involved when it’s launched.
Jack finds out from Victoria that he was the official reason for Emily and Daniel’s broken engagement, and then he learns Ashley had a hand in spinning that story. He comes to the engagement party and Emily goes out onto the porch to talk to him. He wants to know why she never set the record straight or tried to make a proper go with him, and she reminds him that the timing was way off with a pregnant Amanda turning up right after all that went down. Victoria witnesses the chat from inside the house and then Jack goes home.
Charlotte begs off the engagement dinner (after hilariously telling Daniel not to shoot anyone this time) and ends up tabloid fodder again. Declan shows up to talk sense into her just as she’s arrested. While he and Regina go from ATM to ATM to collect bail, Charlotte calls Daniel and once he’s sprung her, they sit down to talk, and she drops the bomb on him that she’s pregnant (did NOT see that coming).
Victoria meets with Mrs. Governor and finds out that she’s helping Conrad because her husband has a heart condition and a re-election could kill him. Victoria or the wife (it’s unclear) hand off that little tidbit to the press.
After Takeda gets Aiden ousted from Grayson Global by leaking to Daniel that Aiden’s dad put the bomb on the flight all those years ago, they have a confrontation that ends with Takeda dead by Aiden’s hand. Then Aiden works with Nolan to drain the phony campaign money from the Grayson account.
After the party, Victoria comes to visit Jack and puts it on the table about his role in Conrad’s campaign. He plays her the recording of Conrad agreeing to an “any means possible” resolution of Amanda. She’s rattled but calm enough to request a brandy while she plots with him and he happily pours her quite the glass.
Everything comes to a head when Nolan gets into the Grayson Global system and Aiden gives the go ahead with his surprisingly-still-active ( or is it a surprise?) CFO code. Emily comes rushing in a moment too late warning him that his name will be all over the transaction and then the system seizes and the lights go out. They jump up to look out the windows as all of Manhattan starts to blink out.
And that leaves them in a group, Daniel with Charlotte in a restaurant, Declan and Regina in an ATM vestibule (and I’m old enough that that makes me think of the Jill Goodacre episode of Friends), and Victoria and Jack back at the bar. And Edith lies on the bunk in her cell looking very satisfied.
So, a whole lot of prep for a two-hour finale. I was glad Jack finally had a “WTH, woman?” kind of conversation with Emily, and it looks like, if the promos are genuine (and that’s all I’ve seen, I know nothing about spoilers), he’s about to have a whole lot more of his questions answered. The promos also make it look like the lights out aspect of Carrion is quickly resolved (and if so, really?).
It will be interesting to see where the money did end up, and where that leaves the Graysons if they really are bankrupted. And with Takeda dead, will everything end up on the table between Aiden and Emily about the maneuvers Takeda was willing to make to ensure Emily would fail? As for Charlotte–repeating her mom’s history and then supposedly having a child with her sister’s husband’s brother only that wasn’t her sister. And after she’s really tried to get right with herself. I think Declan would step up and Emily would help her but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a lost leader plot point, too.
I feel like we wasted episodes getting here and now we might be rushing to a finish, but I’m glad we’ll have another season to sort it through. I’ve said before that I hope Aiden sticks around. If Jack comes back to Emily tonight, that’s going to get complicated.
Here’s a sneak peek of “Truth,” which begins at 9 pm E/8 C. Set your DVR for two hours!
Photo courtesy of ABC/Danny Feld.