REVENGE recap – Did Emily …just get her revenge?

After spending six years of her youth in juvenile detention, being the captive of “the system”, Emily is determined to make others feel what she felt being held against her will and at the mercy of strangers. To this end, has Emily become more like Conrad than she thought – to get what she wants at all costs?

Revenge Season 3

Revenge Season 3 Episode 21 “Impetus” Recap

Who’s got Charlotte?

It turns out the mystery kidnapper who dragged Charlotte from the beach was none other than a hooded Aiden, who brings her to Emily’s new lair. Tied to a chair with duct tape on her mouth, he puts the day’s newspaper in her lap while Emily films a sort of ransom video to send to Daddy Dearest. The scene is so disturbing that even Nolan questions his revenge buddy’s methods. Emily assures him that she has no intention to hurt her half-sister but sees her as the last resort to get Conrad and Victoria to ‘fess up to their crimes. Of course, Nolan would never leave Emily and break up the team!

Daniel and Margaux – the BFFs

It remains hard to pinpoint exactly what Daniel’s motives are other than that he is looking out only for himself. While attempting to comfort his mother following Pascale’s untimely death, she tells him she suspects Emily and Conrad worked together to ensure Pascale’s demise, though neither can figure out why. Then when Margaux tells Daniel that the police are suspicious of Pascale’s death but without proof, are left with no choice but to rule his death an accident, Daniel admits he also believes Conrad killed her father. She shows him grainy footage from the security camera in the stairwell which showed the back of a woman leaving from the rooftop shortly after Pascale’s death. Of course, Daniel immediately recognizes that as his ex-wife and wastes no time in telling the police this information. Daniel tells Margaux the truth about their parents – but how much did he tell her? I suspect he only told her enough to get her on his side but not so much that she finds out he is as manipulative and dangerous and both their parents are.

A desperate Conrad

By now, we know very little can shock or horrify Conrad Grayson. He has witnessed murders and ordered a few hits himself. But when he tried to stage his own rescue of Charlotte, his call is intercepted by our intrepid kidnappers, and instead of finding his regular thug-for-hire at his appointed meeting place, he finds a box containing a tablet with a video of his daughter being beaten and then a bloody ear, complete with Charlotte’s earring, leading him to believe that the kidnappers mean business (after all, the Initiative once sent a dismembered finger to Nolan’s last girlfriend). All he needs to do to get his daughter back is to confess to all his and Victoria’s crimes and their part in framing David Clarke. And so, Conrad tells Victoria that they have no other choice but to call a press conference to confess all in order to free Charlotte.

Victoria takes matters into her own hands

I wish I could feel sorry for Victoria – her daughter has been kidnapped and she has just lost her newly-minted fiancé, murdered by her ex-husband and convinced that everyone she loves always wants to leave her. While the police ruled Pascale’s death an accident, she decides to find proof that Conrad murdered him and she becomes increasingly convinced that Emily has something to do with his death. She knows there is a strong tie between Emily and the late Amanda Clarke, which leads her to baby Carl, Amanda’s son. She conveniently finds Carl in the playground, who has just fallen down and scratched himself and is crying. She takes a swab of his blood and gives it to her own thug-for-hire, along with a few strands of Charlotte’s baby hair, to perform a DNA test. We don’t know exactly what the results are, but they were enough to convince Victoria that the kidnappers would not harm Charlotte and therefore her kidnapping is bogus.

Charlotte finally learns the truth – the hard way

Let’s face it, there is no nice way to tell someone that their parents are mass murderers and guilty of a million and one heinous crimes, not even if she is your half-sister. After Aiden handcuffs Charlotte to a steel-framed bed, Emily, using a voice-changer and standing behind a two-way mirror, bombards Charlotte with videos and images of David Clarke’s trial, all the while telling her the truth about how her parents were responsible for framing David and then conspiring with many more to hide the truth. She really hits below the belt when she follows up with videos of the late Declan and Amanda to add to the death toll of people she loved and lost. It’s a form of torture that even Aiden could not bear to continue putting Charlotte through, saying it reminded him of how the Initiative must have tortured his own sister in order to blackmail his father into working for Pascale and Conrad. If it wasn’t for Jack’s unexpected entrance into their Kidnap HQ, who knows how much more Emily may have told Charlotte?

Are the Hamptons police finally catching up with Emily?

Although the police failed to find any proof that there was any wrong-doing on anyone’s part for Pascale’s untimely death, they did find a wire on him (presumably on whatever parts of his body that wasn’t hacked to pieces by the helicopter blades) and apparently a partial fingerprint. With Daniel’s tip about the mystery woman in the stairwell, the police bring Emily into the station for some friendly Q and A. With a bit of sleight of hand, Emily calls Nolan to tip him off that she needs help, which came in the form of Aiden crash-tackling a smug Daniel in the middle of the police squad room, who then gets arrested for assault. (Just an aside, I can picture the two Brits – Barry Sloane and Joshua Bowman – practicing their rugby tackles for this scene.) Meanwhile, Nolan busies himself with altering Emily’s fingerprint records from her juvie days to ensure the police don’t find a match of the print to her, just in case.

Charlotte finally pays off

For a long time, I was wondering when Charlotte would finally prove useful to Emily’s plans for revenge. Alas, the wait has paid off. While Nolan and Aiden are out rescuing Emily from the clutches of the police, Jack is left to babysit the kidnapped Charlotte, despite insisting he did not want to help Team NolEmDen. For a while, nothing happens while he sits there watching her, but then Charlotte speaks – she asks if her kidnappers are responsible for sending her those letters as David Clarke. Feeling a pang of guilt, he tells her to put her blindfolds on and then wearing Aiden’s hood, Jack takes her back to Grayson Manor, releasing her in the same spot where Aiden had taken her.

Charlotte goes into the house (where a bunch of news trucks are supposedly parked at the front door waiting for the press conference) and confronts Conrad, who is preparing his speech for the press conference he called for his public confession. She confronts him about his part in Flight 197 and tells him she is going to the police. He, in turn, accuses her of being ungrateful and reminds her that he has loved her despite knowing that she is not his biological daughter. He then continues to list his litany of sins and tells her that he has come up against bigger baddies than her and still remains the last man standing. At this point, his television suddenly comes to life, thanks to Nolan’s technical genius, and his entire confession is livestreamed via all the satellites on the news trucks outside his house. It turns out Team NolEmDen had planted a camera on Charlotte’s lapel before she was released so that her conversation with her father would be captured. Time for the Feds to roll in and do their job!

Questions, questions and still more questions

The fact that Jack managed to so easily locate “Kidnap HQ” and how conveniently Charlotte was able to get Conrad’s confession made me wonder:

·         Did Nolan deliberately allow his phone to be tracked by Javier so that Jack could find them? After all, it is not like Nolan to be so careless.

·         Did Aiden and Emily plan to leave Jack alone with Charlotte, knowing that he would release her while not betraying their secret?

·         Did Aiden tell Jack that he and Emily were over so that Jack would keep his mouth shut until their mission was complete, when all the while, he knew that he and Emily were meant to be together?

·         If Emily knew nothing about the letters that were sent to Charlotte in her father’s name, then who is sending them and why? And why does that man have her father’s ring (conveniently with his initials engraved)?

·         Now that Conrad is in prison, Emily still has Victoria to deal with. As her former father-in-law smiles his encouragement for her to get Victoria, does this mean he will help her take down his co-conspirator? After all, as he reminded his ex-wife earlier, she has been guilty of as many crimes as he has and in some cases, even worse, since she has actually pulled the trigger herself.

Tune in for the season 3 finale of Revenge on ABC next Sunday at 10/9c.

Photo: ABC. Written by Valerie Leung. Share your Revenge theories with her on Twitter (@valshopaholic) and read her blog LibragirlRules.com.