In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Revenge is back and in its first episode in months, the gang hits the ground running.
First up is Emily, whose says she's got slight swelling and Em assumes that's what caused all her blackouts last episode – like the one that led to her waking up in Conrad's bed. Her doctor's not so sure and neither is Nolan, but Emily insists that when her brain's swelling subsides, so will the episodes. The problem is that they're getting worse and fast.
With Nolan's help, she figures out that she didn't sleep with Conrad. He was actually helping her because she told him that she was afraid of Daniel after he manhandled her at the end of the last episode. She's not sure about the rest of their deal-making, which is a problem because Daniel is desperate to figure her out.
At some point in her scheming, she called Conrad's ex-wife and big-time lawyer, Stevie Grayson, to come help her with her divorce proceedings because apparently there are no other lawyers anywhere between the Hamptons and Los Angeles. While blacked out, Emily tells Stevie that she loves someone else, that Daniel is cheating on her, and that she wants a divorce, but when she comes to, she says that she's going to work it out with Daniel. But upon that lie, she blacks out again and visits Aidan, begging him to take her back. He won't and runs out to his car, where Niko finds him and drugs him.
Naturally, Emily has to come to the rescue and Niko leaves her a hint to draw her out to Takaeda's old house where Aidan is held captive. We find that in one of her blackouts, Emily hid the katana under Aidan's bed, which led to him almost being killed. When she saves him, he keeps her from killing Niko and then has a chat with her: He doesn't believe her blackouts are real (probably because they sound like a rather ridiculous excuse), but even after she convinces him that they are, he says that she needs to get help. Sadly, it looks like there's no reconciliation for these two in the near future – even if Aidan does end the chat by saying he doesn't care if she can't have kids, he only wanted (past tense, ouch) her.
By episode's end, Emily and Nolan come to an uncomfortable conclusion: Em's mom had the same blackout problem and no therapy worked for her. She's panicked because the alternate personality that comes out when she blacks out is hurting the wrong people. First she's barren and now she's a loaded gun. What more does this woman need to deal with?
The rest of the Hamptons set has their own issues while Emily's head is all foggy. Jack and Margaux are buying a house together, but she's preoccupied with Conrad, who's trying to use Voulez to cozy up to her father. Charlotte wants a job at Voulez, which her father gets for her while Daniel throws her a giant birthday party because that's apparently all he knows how to do.
Meanwhile, things are rather terrible for Victoria. Patrick burned down the gallery and brought Brennan into repair it so that he'd have a chance to kill his rapist father. Patrick changes his mind when Brennan talks about regretting never getting to know his estranged son or be with the boy's mother so Patrick decides not to electrocute him (and the talk wasn't even that great), but winds up killing him later when he and Victoria get into a tussle at the gallery. And if Patrick being wracked with guilt isn't bad enough, Stevie also shows up with the deed to the land for Grayson Manor and according to her divorce agreement with Conrad, it actually belongs to her. Victoria is officially homeless.
And in one final twist, Stevie piles on the truth bombs: she wants to know all about how Conrad wronged Jack because she says that she's his mother. Man. There isn't a single woman who can be with Conrad and not stray. Sucks to be that guy.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!From the first moments of Revenge's long-awaited return to the small screen, we know something is terribly wrong, because Emily is doing that shifty eye thing she does when things are getting hopeless. We open on Emily getting an MRI and she learns that her brain is recovering well, but the blackouts are still a very real thing. Emily hopes that the swelling is the reason for said blackouts, but even when the best neurosurgeon money can buy tells her they don't seem to be related, Emily believes she's above the laws of nature. Good luck with that, lady friend.
At that moment, Jack and Margaux are house hunting and while he's thrilled to pick out the modest house he can afford. And while he should be kissing the ground when Margaux -- heir to a media empire -- says she's happy to live anywhere with him, he's worried about her not being able to handle whatever Conrad's end game is. But he forgets that Margaux is more cunning than he gives her credit for.
Down on the beach, Charlotte is busy asking her big brother for a job at Voulez -- ah, the unrelentingly easy life of the East Coast elite offspring. Daniel informs her that he can't because he was fired, but he'd love to throw her a killer party because that's all he knows how to do anymore.
After showing off her new throne and establishing for the audience that her marriage with Conrad is coming to a legal end, Victoria runs to the burned down gallery where Patrick has betrayed her and hired his father, Brennan, as the new contractor. Cue Victoria's horror face. She wants Patrick to fire Brennan, but that's not going to happen.
Emily's practicing a similar look when she visits Nolan and sees Aidan's bags all packed and ready to go. She's upset, but she's more concerned about her memory gaps than her broken heart (for now). Nolan grabbed the security footage from the South Fork Inn and thankfully, it appears that she didn't in fact sleep with Conrad. But there may a bigger problem; she did speak to Conrad in the bar and make a phone call in his presence. Because Emily apparently doesn't know that cell phones have this handy call log feature, she says she can't figure out who she called from watching the video. Dear God. Luckily, we're onto the real issue: she is confident that these blackouts are just a temporary, accident-related issue… which means they definitely aren't.
Immediately after her heart-to-heart with Nolan, she gets an L.A.-based call from the person she phoned in Conrad's presence: it's Mrs. Grayson, who's now a divorce lawyer and apparently there is a dearth of such professionals in any town between South Hampton and Los Angeles.
At the Manor, Daniel is planning Charlotte's party, which apparently requires that he wears matching clothes with the party planner. She says that Emily is a lucky woman because Daniel is a great guy. Sure, if it weren't for the part where he shoots people he's mad at and then manhandles them later! He knows that she spent the night with Conrad and because he hates her, it seems he thinks something sexual happened.
At Voulez, Conrad holds a creative meeting without Margaux and she is furious. He wants to get her father's attention with the magazine, but it's been her mission to prove herself to her father. Conrad is a dream thief, clearly.
The day, when Emily meets with the former Mrs. Grayson, Stevie, she learns that she told the lawyer that she was in love with someone else and that Daniel had been cheating in their home. Emily refutes it, telling Stevie she's going to work it out with Daniel, but Stevie says that she can tell Emily is in love with this other person. Not sure how you can tell that, but okay, Mrs. Ex-Grayson.
Upon hearing the truth, Emily blacks out and winds up at Nolan's -- in different clothes, somehow -- and tells Aidan she can't lose him. She practically attacks him and kisses him furiously, attempting to force her way back into his heart. He pushes her off and says that this can't happen right now and that if she wants to have a conversation, she can call him when he gets to London. Unfortunately, he doesn't make it to London because Niko is waiting for him outside armed with the knowledge that he killed her father. She drugs him and dumps him into his own trunk before tying him up at the exact spot where he killed Takaeda and threatening to kill Emily when she comes to rescue him. Too bad this woman doesn't understand the part where Emily can't die because then this show doesn't exist.
Conrad visits Stevie and he tells her that he's divorcing Victoria. He apologizes for how he handled himself in the past and hands her some "information" that will make up for his misdeeds and take out Victoria. She boldly throws the envelope away in her hotel garbage and tells him she's good, but we know she's just going to read it as soon as she leaves.
Back at the gallery -- where Patrick definitely hasn't fired Brennan -- Victoria's son is preparing to electrocute the supposed rapist. But first, he asks Brennan if he has any regrets and on cue, Brennan says that the wishes he could have known his estranged son and been with his mother (Victoria). These "sweet" words are enough to convince Patrick not to electrocute his father, and keep in mind this guy tried to kill Conrad not too long ago.
Nolan finds Emily sleeping on the swinging bench in front of her house like a vagrant. When she explains her discussion with Stevie, Nolan pieces the easy connection together for us: Blackout Emily tells the truth. Too bad she's living with the enemy and totally unwilling to leave and protect herself. And just like that, she blacks out again and wakes up in full party garb at Charlotte's celebration. She has a requisite icy conversation with Victoria before Charlotte tells her that their exact conversation happened just a half hour before. Whoops.
comes Conrad, who tells her he's keeping the suite at the South Fork Inn on reserve in case she ever feels unsafe around Daniel again, but Emily's not so sure that was Blackout Emily's only goal in teaming up with Conrad. If only she knew what that goal actually was.
Daniel has a similar desire and it surpasses his desire to figure out what Conrad is doing with Marguax and Voulez. His former partner confronts him and attempts to apologize for firing him in order to save the entire magazine from folding and he's not having it. She then tries to ask him if he knows why Conrad is after her father, but is too distracted by his obsession with the wife he supposedly hates with the fire of a thousand suns. Later, Daniel enlists Charlotte as a Voulez spy, but that's after Margaux has taken matters into her own hands and booked a ticket to visit her father before Conrad gets ahold of him.
Brennan shows up at Charlotte's party and he's chatting up the birthday girl when Victoria leaps across the party to curb this interaction. He says he came by to get approval on miscellaneous contractor stuff, but then he takes a moment to basically tell Victoria that he knows she wants him, but it's not clear if he knows that she's Vicky Harper or not. Whatever his angle, she was absolutely right about him being a creep who clearly can't read human signals.
At his house, Nolan shows Emily a video of her once she blacked out and to be blunt, she's acting like a crazy person. Nolan wants to lock her up "like a werewolf" in his guest room, but that wouldn't allow her to save Aidan, so we move on to that plot point: She finds Niko's clue about Aidan's abduction and realizes that Blackout Emily must have left the trained killer a clue about her father's death. Mega whoops.
Emily finds Aidan at Takaeda's and immediately fights Niko. Aidan pointlessly releases his restraints as Emily predictably defeats Niko (remember, she's the best at everything as per the rules of this show). Aidan begs Emily not to kill Niko because while Niko deserved to be honor-killed, he hopes she doesn't suffer the same fate as her father. As if we needed proof that Aidan was more humane than Emily.
In a scene that feels completely unnecessary (until we learn why it definitely isn't a few scenes later), Stevie stops at the Stowaway for old time's sake because she knew Jack's father. She introduces herself as the ex-Mrs. Grayson, which prompts Jack to say that she made the right call because Conrad is basically a horrible person. She seems to accept that for what it is, but when she sees baby Carl she smiles, cancels her flight and asks her assistant for Conrad's number that she somehow didn't already have.
Naturally, Victoria is furious that Brennan is still working on the gallery and comes by to tell Patrick just how pissed she is, only she didn't take into account the part where she's on a soap opera and when you talk about someone, they're almost guaranteed to creep in and hear you. Brennan slinks into the gallery and says he heard it all and that he didn't rape Victoria, she wanted it. She denies his explanation and the situation almost immediately devolves into a physical fight where Patrick slams Brennan's head on a table. As Brennan's blood pools from his head, Victoria takes Patrick's phone so he can't call an ambulance. Instead, she leans over Brennan while he dies (and leaves a horrible blood stain on her gallery floor) while she whispers "Relax, honey," as he once did to her. Later, Patrick isn't sure he can move past actually murdering someone, but Victoria assures him everything is just peachy now that Brennan is dead because her take on reality is seriously flawed.
Back at Takaeda's, Aidan naturally has some questions about why Emily framed him and apparently, so does she. She tries to tell him that it wasn't her and that she's been having blackouts, but Aidan thinks she's full of it (probably because this rolling blackout plot sounds like complete malarkey). Still, she says that she didn't want him dead and that she doesn't remember pushing herself on him earlier this episode, he believes her. Still, there's no reconciliation on the horizon for these two. She says that she can't give him a family and he says he didn't need that, he just wanted (past tense, folks) her. Then he insists she gets help before she hurts someone and it appears he's not willing to let that someone be him any longer.
But it's hard to hold too many grudges against Emily, because in the scene Nolan finally rips the band aid off and tells her the truth: He thinks that she inherited her mother's mental problems which -- surprise, surprise -- included these rolling blackout symptoms. What short memories we have. The worst part is that Mama Emily couldn't fix her blackouts, so our Ems probably won't be able to either, so get ready for this obnoxious plot to continue, dear viewers.
Although Brennan is now out of her life, Victoria's problems are still rather grand. The paper that Conrad gave Stevie turns out to be the property deed to the land Grayson Manor rests on. She won all of Conrad's undeveloped land in the divorce and as it turns out, Conrad bought the plot before their divorce was final. Victoria and her replacement throne are officially homeless.
But she's not exactly happy with Conrad either. She says that he's going to pay for what he's done to others. And that vague threat serves as a segue into what might the most ridiculous shocker yet: Stevie runs immediately to the Stowaway, where she demands to know Jack's Conrad stories because she is (don't mind my eye roll) his mother. That's right, not a single one of Conrad's wives could stay married to him without straying to the townsfolk. But apparently Lydia saw something -- bless her weak, little soul.