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We've just arrived back in the Hamptons, yet it already feels like Revenge is preparing to say farewell. Season 3 with the usual flash-forward: Emily with gunshot wounds, floating in the ocean in her wedding gown. But how did we get here? That's always the question, isn't it?
After six months of the Graysons' willing estrangement (Charlotte even went all the way to Europe to escape her Grayson side), they're back together for the annual Grayson Memorial Day party. Somehow, Victoria is unperturbed by Emily hosting this year, and by most things in general. It appears that her sudden inability to strike fear in most beating hearts is gone because she's got herself a handsome little stable boy, but he's her estranged son Patrick, who's got a problem with projecting sexual tension with relatives. Charlotte's not too happy about his sudden return, and after she confronts him (with more inappropriate sexual tension), he decides it's time to return to the city to painting (be still, Victoria's heart). However, Patrick is far too CW-attractive to stay gone for long, so he'll be back and Charlotte will get to use her new Joan Jett-meets-the-Devil Wears Prada look to threaten him some more.
Meanwhile, Conrad is so certain he's killing this whole Governor thing that he's already preparing himself for a presidential bid. This means upping his security at the party where Daniel, the unemployed wonder, rendezvous with Margaux, an “old friend” who clearly wants to get in his pants. The party takes a dramatic turn (and I'm talking about the part where Conrad stands on a podium to talk about a terrible painting of himself) when Nolan crashes the party in a parachute to get past Conrad's security. Emily slips Conrad the poison Nolan sneaked in, sending Connie to the hospital where Em's doctor friend treats him and diagnoses him Huntington's Disease, a fatal neurodegenerative genetic disorder. Daniel tells reporters his father is suffering from dehydration, but the diagnosis has already been leaked -- a present from sneaky Emily. Conrad will have to step down as Governor, but by episode's end, he's telling Victoria that neither of them are going anywhere. Could Conrad already know his diagnosis was BS?
Hopefully, his sense of confidence didn't come from Ashley, who was just banished. After Ashley threatened to expose Jack's assassination plot at Conrad's acceptance speech, Emily set her up to take the fall for the diagnosis leak and she and Victoria sent Ashley back to small-town England with nothing more than her forked tail between her legs.
But what about Emily's many suitors? Jack has been on the road since Emily told him she's Amanda; Aidan is nothing more than a stain on Daniel's shirt; and Daniel's just waiting for Emily to set a wedding date. She stops hesitating after Jack returns and tells her he completely understands her need for revenge, kisses her with the passion of two TV seasons, and tells her he doesn't want her anymore. Then later he tells her to finish the revenge job and leave the Hamptons forever. With that, Emily decides to marry Daniel on August 8th, or duh, double infinity. She's planning to take Victoria down at the wedding, but there's just one small issue: that image of Emily's watery future.
And in the episode's final moments, we get a likely erroneous clue as to who might pull the fateful trigger: Aidan. Daniel didn't kill him and now he plans to team up with Victoria to take Emily down for all the "wrong" she's done to him. Aside from the fact she didn't follow Aidan to exile, what did Emily do to deserve this? Why, handsome assassin? WHY?
Of course, knowing Revenge, we can take comfort in the fact that the show never gives us the real culprit this early on. Let us not count evil exes before they hatch, my friends.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Aww, would ya look at that? Emily gets married to Daniel, the guy she doesn’t love, after all. The Season 3 premiere of Revenge opens on Emily in a wedding gown on a yacht and it’s all twinkly lights and champagne until someone approaches, prompting her to apologize right before being shot and falling into the ocean. And that humdinger is this season’s unsolvable flash-forward mystery, Revenge fans.
Back in present day Manhattan, Emily is sunning herself at her penthouse pool, considerably more prepared to throw Victoria’s annual Memorial Day party than she is to set a wedding date. We learn the Graysons have scattered to the ends of the emotional Earth. Victoria has closed herself off with a mysterious, CW-pretty stable boy; Charlotte has spent the last sixth months in Europe after losing Declan and conveniently losing their unborn child; Daniel is unemployed and living off of Emily’s millions; and Conrad is floating in own egotistical universe in which his eyes are "arctic pools" and six months as governor earns him enough clout to run for president. So, nothing’s terribly different.
While the Graysons, sans their millions, pretend to have problems, Nolan has just solved his. He’s released from prison figuring out a way to trace the Carion cyber attack back to the Falcon and the Initiative. His first whiffs of the real world upon his release from prison? The knowledge that Nolcorp is belly-up, and the fact that Emily revealed her true identity to Jack. Moved by her interaction with Jack, Emily decides it’s time to cut Nolan out of her revenge plot for his own safety, but of course, Nolan is a David Clarke disciple and has no plans to back off now. Even if his time as cyber sidekick will have to go the way of Nolcorp for now (eccentric billionaire stunts only from now on). Together, they cackle that this Memorial Day party will be the last one the Graysons ever attend, but we all know such hubris can only mean one thing: it’s all going to go awry.
After picking up Nolan, Emily is off to stare at the Stowaway, which Jack packed up and left after her confession. He’s not back, but Ashley is and the conniving, yet well-dressed Brit has a ploy to get Emily’s millions in light of Conrad’s inability to pay for her silence regarding the bombing at Grayson Global. Ashley wants an invite to the Memorial Day party, Emily’s high-powered business contacts, and a few easy introductions or she’ll reveal Jack’s failed plan to assassinate Conrad during his gubernatorial acceptance speech. Great threat -- go ahead and dangle the fate of a man who’s no longer around for a crime he almost committed. Top notch plan, Ash.
But Emily should be more worried about a different European PTY. Daniel, who’s drinking away his lack of direction and money, is approached at a Manhattan bar by a wickedly flirtatious French woman named Margaux. She’s apparently an old friend who knows Daniel is spoken for (she did, however, pull the "Whoops, did I say girlfriend? I meant fiancé" card), but is rather brazen with her assertion that Daniel’s partners come and go. This girl wants in this unemployed, poor, handsome man’s pants worse than Jack wants Sammy back. And regarding Daniel, supposed ladies’ man: where is this Daniel? People constantly whisper of his rumored existence, but we’ve only ever seen Emily’s Little Lap Dog Daniel.
It seems Emily has acquired another Grayson for a lap dog. Armed with Charlotte’s whispers of Victoria taking a young lover, Emily visits Victoria, who doesn’t immediately kick her out. Crazy, I know. Instead, Victoria stops playing piano like an accomplished woman in a Jane Austen novel, and apologizes for not having Emily over for asparagus salad. (That’s okay, we’ll pass, V). After actually stating she wants to put their animosity behind them, Victoria agrees to come to the Memorial Day party, a.k.a. Conrad’s self-serving portrait unveiling extravaganza, to keep up appearances. While Em’s got Victoria like putty in her hands, she tells Victoria that Ashley, not Charlotte, was the one who told her about Victoria’s affair and that Ashley threatened to blackmail Emily to protect Victoria’s secret. Victoria says Ashley’s wrong; the person lifting V’s spirits is none other than her estranged son Patrick, who (to Emily and Charlotte’s credit) has an issue with creating sexual tension with his relatives. Victoria says she had "no doubt" Patrick was who he said he was when he arrived at the end of Season 2, which probably means he’s not who he says he is.
When Emily returns to her house -- where she and Daniel canoodle and giggle about Connie’s big, dumb presidential security plan -- we’re forced to pause a moment and remember the last thing that happened at Emily’s house last season: did Daniel kill Aidan? What happened? Where is that handsome man? But it’s not time for answers yet and my brow becomes thoroughly furrowed. There is, however, one small nugget of important information in this cozy, little moment: Emily is forced to find a new way to execute her anti-Grayson plan during the Memorial Day party. Luckily, "Nolan 2.No" (someone take away his Carrie Bradshaw pun chip, please) has a very practical solution, but more on that in a minute.
First we have to deal with new and improved Charlotte. She’s unknowing stepping into her half-sister Emily’s shoes, donning a slicker, more mature look and sewing seeds for her own revenge, playing daddy’s little girl for Conrad, even if daddy isn’t really her daddy. Charlotte tells the Governor she’s so proud of him, that she bragged about him to some helpless stranger in Paris. But she doesn’t stop there. She marches straight to Patrick’s room, where he’s standing in nothing but a remarkably flimsy towel and a cascade of glistening water drops (see what I mean about the unnecessary sexual tension thing?), and accuses him of being Victoria’s mister. He tells Charlotte she’s his sister, but she’s already committed to hating him so she says that if Victoria doesn’t destroy him, she will. Wait, what? She doesn’t even want her mother’s attention. Who is this Charlotte person and why doesn’t she seem to understand that revenge needs to come from a deep, dark place in one’s eviscerated little heart?
Speaking of eviscerated hearts, Emily’s is about to get another giant gash. She awkwardly approaches Jack as he arrives back at the Stowaway and he explains that once he saw the love that a child has for their father in his own son’s eyes, he understood why Emily did what she did. He finally (finally!) kisses her with the passion of two whole seasons and then it all changes. Apparently, it was all in her kiss and he feels nothing for her and she should probably leave now. He turns away from her with tears in his eyes …so wait, he does love her? Is he pushing her away so she can exact her revenge? What is happening? He certainly delivers a convincing performance when he shows up at her house later to ask her to stop her revenge plan and then tell her to finish her it and get the hell out of the Hamptons… forever. It seems, that after losing pretty much everyone he cares about, he’s losing it. Understandable.
It’s almost time for the Memorial Day party, but first Victoria visits Patrick, who’s now staying at the South Fork Inn, a.k.a. the sexcapade hotel. Seriously, dude. Stop exuding sex all the time. Patrick says he has to go back to the city and be a "freelance painter" which is apparently a thing. Victoria assumes it’s payback for her abandonment. He says no, asking "what kind of person would do that?" Nope. No way this guy is actually related to Victoria.
At the party, Emily does her due diligence and introduces Ashley to some doctor she met at a charity event. Boom: connected. While Em is busy letting the Graysons know a fox has entered the hen house, Daniel introduces her to Margaux, who’s running her father’s publication and condescendingly asks Emily what she does for a living “besides throwing great parties.” Duh, she gets revenge like a like a ninja while you run daddy’s magazine. Also, did we miss the part where Daniel has no job and is pretty undesirable himself?
Luckily, we’re saved from this dreadful interaction by Nolan parachuting (yes, parachuting) into the party while Conrad’s presidential guards do to nothing. Not to be outdone, Conrad moves to introduce his own portrait. Take that, Nolan? Conrad does outdo the former tech tycoon, however, when he collapses at the podium, poisoned by the stuff Nolan parachuted in, which Emily then transferred to Connie’s water bottle. Go big or go home, I suppose.
The scene switches to the hospital, where Ashley’s hot doctor comes back with Conrad’s test results and says he’s got Huntington’s Disease, a hereditary and fatal neurodegenerative disease. Daniel attempts damage control, telling the press Conrad is suffering dehydration just as Emily is leaking the Huntington’s diagnosis. Long story short: Conrad has to step down now that people know his diagnosis. Meanwhile, Emily is busy framing Ashley for the leak. Ash was flirting with the doctor, so he must have given her the info, and she sold it to the press since she’s hard up for cash. False, but totally believable of a snake like Ashley.
The logical step is to politely invite Ashley to get the hell out of the Hamptons. As Emily and Victoria stand by, emotionless, Ashley tries to clear her name. She knows Jack was trying to kill Conrad. Victoria says she gave Jack the gun. Ashley knows that Conrad tried to lure Jack into the bombing at Grayson Global. Yeah, using Ashley’s phone. Oh, but at least she made her own money instead of inheriting it all. Right, says the girl who just tried to make Emily hand over her fortune. After calling Em and Victoria evil, Ashley reluctantly hops on the plane and disappears as Emily is accepted into Victoria’s precious family. That was remarkably easy, but at least Ashley is finally gone.
Once Victoria says she’s family, Emily decides it’s time she makes it official. To cheer Daniel up, Emily says they should get married before the end of the summer on August 8th (which is, duh, double infinity) because she said she’d always imagined something wonderful would happen on that day. Yes, something wonderful, like the complete and total destruction of the Grayson family.
But it seems that Emily doesn’t really have to do much to get these warring socialites to destroy each other. When she returns from the hospital, Charlotte admits she scared off Patrick and then says she’s moving out of the Manor, which Conrad has just threatened to take away from Victoria. But the hospital visit seems to have changed something: Conrad comes home and tells Victoria the house and the Graysons aren’t going anywhere. What do you hold in those deep "arctic pools," old chap?
We’ll have to wait until week for that answer, but we do finally found out what happened to Aidan – well, only in so much as we know Daniel didn’t kill him. He’s in one piece and on Victoria’s balcony, ready to partner with her to take down Emily. Wait, why? Because she decided to stay on her revenge path after Aidan lied to her? And because she wouldn’t go away with him? And because she stayed with Daniel, just like she said she would? Or because he wasn’t stuck in prison?
One thing’s for sure, this is all a set-up to make us think Aidan’s the one who pulls the trigger on Emily’s wedding night, but if we know anything about Revenge it’s never the first suspect, especially not when the first suspect is a mega-handsome British spy.