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Finally, Revenge has actually split up the unhappy couple at its center. It's only taken months, and while some of those months were hiatus, we've still spent too much time watching Daniel try to make an menacing angry face.
But how did we get there? It's a long and winding road, of course.
First, Emily suspects that Stevie knows something about her father's demise, but Jack wants to have a mom for a minute, so Em promises to back off. Later, Stevie reveals that she was a David Clarke supporter, that she found evidence that could help him, and that she thinks Conrad faked her DUI results to get her disbarred and off the case. Jack, Nolan, and Nolan's ex-con buddy who gave the house arrest cops Nolan's address on his own (we can't even open that can o' worms) work a ruse to get Jack into Stevie's old law firm's server, where he nabs the evidence Stevie mentioned. It's a note that to Conrad that says the person “handled TWM” and the “DC plan.” DC is obviously David Clarke, but that's all we know.
At first, Em says she won't look at it out of respect for Jack's wishes, but later, when Nolan brings it by and shows it to her, it takes two seconds for her to pick her target: the note's author, who she thinks is Margaux's father Pascal. So much for cold turkey, Ems.
Pascal is in the U.S. because Margaux wants Conrad out of Voulez. Instead, Pascal spends his time turning down Conrad's offers for a merger and buying Victoria fancy gowns and hitting on her relentlessly. Conrad is furious, so he tells Margaux that her pops has been cooking the books to make it look like Voulez is making money when it actually costs him millions of dollars – didn't this mag just start a few months ago? There's no way it'd be making money yet. Still, Margaux bites and unfortunately for her, Pascal later announces he's here to stay. Great.
But then comes the big finale: When Daniel and Victoria show Emily the photo of her kissing Aidan and offer her a hefty settlement to split, she says she'll cry on the stand and implicate Daniel as the shooter. Victoria finds another way to get her when she sends Daniel's P.I. after Aidan, who appears to be in Bermuda. She uses her brain (no way!) to deduce that if Emily isn't with Aidan, she's in the Hamptons to target the Graysons. Wow, Vic. It only took you three whole years.
At the opera that night – where absolutely everyone we know is in attendance because that's how Revenge rolls – Charlotte gets a tip from the Voulez tip line that says Emily's records of her fake pregnancy are public. (Wait, I thought Voulez was a fashion magazine, not a tabloid rag. And since when is Charlotte a reporter? I guess that magazine and Miss Charlotte do whatever's convenient to the story these days.) Victoria takes this as an opportunity to publicly (and cattily) denounce Emily as a gold digger in front everyone. Emily is caught by paparazzi as she storms out – apparently they got the tip too. The day she gets divorce papers, moves out, and Daniel tells her the settlement is gone and her threat to out him as the shooter is moot because she already said it was Lydia. See? He's not that dumb.
The whole time, we're assuming that Daniel or Victoria did this – Emily even accuses Daniel when they're at the opera – but later, it's revealed that Emily leaked the records herself. She wanted the Graysons to think they won and she and Jack are about to go after Pascal, who she thinks is the author of Stevie's mysterious note. Huzzah.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We open as Daniel triumphantly shows Victoria his P.I.'s photo of Emily and Aidan kissing. This dog-with-a-bone smile is the happiest we've ever seen this kid.
, Emily checks into Stevie's prison visit to David Clarke back in 1997. Em found that Stevie signed in using her maiden name, so she assumes that Stevie was concealing her Grayson identity for evil. Nolan -- ever the wise one these days -- suggests that perhaps she was concealing her wrong-doing from Conrad and that she should probably pause the witch hunt before she ruins Jack's mother without knowing what side she was on. But Emily does what Emily wants, so she "runs into" Stevie right outside of her AA meeting, where Jack is waiting to pick his mom up. He begs Emily to leave his mother out of whatever it is she's after now. He only just got the woman into his life, after all.
At Voulez, Margaux's father, Pascal (who doesn't look old enough to have a daughter who runs a magazine), is in town. Margaux asked Pascal there to fire Conrad, but Pascal says he's handling it his own way, which means playing tennis with Conrad and turning down his offer to merge their companies. Conrad insists that he wants in on Pascal's media empire because information is power -- he does know that magazine publishing isn't exactly the most lucrative business these days, right? The Graysons must be a-hurtin'.
Thankfully, Victoria interrupts for no reason other than to let Pascal hit on her inexplicably. We learn that Pascal introduced Victoria and Conrad, and apparently he's regretting that now. His gaze is just about as lecherous as the cartoon wolf from that Paul Abdul video. Straight up.
Margaux returns to the Stowaway to meet Jack and say hello to suddenly older Carl -- seriously, this kid must be eating his Wheaties… with a growth hormone sprinkled in there. She asks to meet Stevie, Jack is into it, especially since Margaux is so upset that her father is being a total cad. At least someone has a sane parent for once on this show.
Since she can't speak to Stevie directly, Emily gets intel from Conrad. She asks why he had her bring Stevie out to the Hamptons -- good question -- and he says that he did think Emily wanted a divorce, but mostly it was to make Victoria insane. She says that Stevie was on her way to rock bottom once and Conrad agrees, and for some reason is willing to mention that she once tried to insert herself into his business before trailing off into his midday scotch. Connie, don't you know that's as good as an admission of guilt on this show?
Back to Stevie, who says she's proud of Jack and wishes she could have been in his life sooner. She thinks that she perhaps "things" (like the photo of his dead wife) would have turned out differently (like his dead wife not being dead). Then -- because it's strange this hasn't come up sooner -- Stevie mentions that she visited "Amanda's father" in prison and that she thought he was an innocent man. She asks if Amanda thought so, and he says that she did, but that he thinks that everyone who followed that path wound up hurt because of Conrad. (He's right.) Stevie doesn't push him, but she does realize that Amanda seemed to be best buds with the most recent Grayson convert, Emily.
At that moment, Emily is called into the study at Grayson Manor so that Daniel can show off his pretty pictures of her kissing Aidan. They tell her she's going to get a pretty settlement to leave and never come back, but she pulls a dramatic preview of her could-be tearful testimony should they take her to court and notes that she could tell a judge Daniel forced her to blame Lydia for shooting her. With that, Emily waltzes out and Daniel -- like an aggressive guard dog -- launches after her and growls "I want her out" as mommy dearest holds him back.
When Emily comes home, Nolan is confused. He thought she wanted a divorce, and she says she'll get one when the time is right. They kill time talking about Daniel tracking her until Stevie shows up and asks Emily to tell her who she really is. She finds it odd that Emily was Amanda's maid of honor, and says that Em was either double-crossing the Graysons or double-crossing Amanda. She says that Emily called her into town under false pretenses, so she doesn't believe anything she says, but when Emily gets teary and says Amanda was family, Stevie is all ears. Stevie admits that she thought David Clarke was innocent and that when she tried to help David, she was pulled over and got a DUI. She says the Breathalyzer was rigged (by Conrad) and she was disbarred. (Cool, but that's not how Breathalyzers work; they're pretty scientific, woman in AA.) Stevie is touching on conspiracy theory territory, but Emily says she promised to let this go for Jack and shuts the conversation down.
Nolan gets home and his friend Javier from prison is bumming around his house. He says that Nolan told him he could crash with him if he had nowhere else to stay and, well, he has nowhere else to stay. Nolan was his mentor and Javier wants in on Nolan's big thing, but like an older brother to a younger pest, Nolan only gives him a day to get it together.
At Grayson Manor, Victoria re-hires Daniel's P.I. to do a favor for her, but is interrupted by Pascal. He's dropped by with a few women from your average makeover montage because his pals -- oh you know, just Dolce & Gabbana -- gave him a gown to give to Victoria for the opera later that night. She turns him down, but accepts the dress. Waste not, right?
Stevie visits Jack at the Stowaway and tells him that she visited Emily, but Emily sent her away out of loyalty to Jack. She says if they want to do right by Amanda and David Clarke, they need to fight the Graysons. She then gives a sort of impassioned speech about fighting for underdogs like David -- that's why she's a divorce lawyer, because she like to make millions of dollars off the less fortunate halves of divorced couples. Very noble.
While telling Jack about her noble plight, Stevie mentions that she lost a special piece of evidence to her law firm when she was disbarred, so Jack and Nolan set up a ruse to get into the law firm's archives. Nolan has set up a meeting to discuss all his new ventures while Jack walks right into a room with a giant sign that says "Archives," because law firms love to make things really obvious. Unfortunately for Jack, this law firm isn't a fan of putting dates on things. So he has no idea what to take. He texts Nolan, who is busy dropping LL Cool J lyrics to his could-be lawyers. Instead of helping Jack, he sets him up with Javier, who solves the law firm's filing system riddle rather quickly. Piece of cake.
At Voulez, Margaux gets bold and tells Pascal to leave her magazine because she makes her own success. Conrad relishes bursting her bubble right then and there: Pascal has been cooking her books to make it look like she's turning a profit when really she's losing money -- the magazine has been up and running for how long? There's no way she's turning a profit yet. Are you delusional, Margaux? Daughter dearest calls her father an evil man, which seems a bit far for this transgression alone, but Pascal is pretty wretched for saying that he knew she couldn't run a business. Still, he's more sexist than evil.
Victoria delivers news from Daniel's P.I., who found Aidan in Bermuda. This is good news for her and Daniel because it proves Victoria's theory: that Emily is after the Graysons themselves, not money. That's why she offered Ems a huge settlement, because she knew she'd refuse it. She says that they need Emily under their roof a little longer to really smoke her out, but Daniel is done. He wants Emily out of his life. And personally, I don't see how either side in this battle is gaining anything from this stale, obnoxious and wildly unhappy union. So -- for the first time ever -- I agree with Daniel: Get Emily out of there.
At her cottage, Emily refuses Jack's attempt to deliver Stevie's files from the law firm. She says that he needs to take care of his mother, but not long after that, she's opened the drive and looked at Stevie's evidence. Emily won't say what it was, but it's given her a new target. I guess that means the red sharpie is making a comeback.
Finally, we get to the finale. Everyone's arriving at the opera: Emily and Daniel's mutual disdain, Charlotte's miraculously blooming career (she was an intern last week and now she's heading up the gossip division of Voulez, which is a fashion magazine?), Victoria's distaste for Pascal's constant attention and Jack and Margaux's family issues. It's all rather brief, but Pascal does manage to ruin Margaux's night by announcing he's staying a while. Great.
During the opera, Charlotte gets a tip from the Voulez tipline -- did the magazine just become Radar Online? Why is it dealing in gossip? The tip is about Emily's records of a fake pregnancy and Victoria takes the opportunity to publicly shame Emily while the rest of the society guests watch. Then Emily leaves in a melodramatic slow-motion run while Daniel looks on with a smug smile and paparazzi flash photos.
As Emily moves out the day, Daniel smiles like a kid on Christmas as he hands Emily the new divorce papers, sans settlement. They remind her that after this public deception, she'll never be able to tell the truth about Daniel shooting her without looking like a vengeful, desperate woman. They're thrilled to be rid of her, but they're still worried about finding out whether or not she's targeting them.
Nolan tries to kick Javier out of his house, but Javier says that he gave his parole officer Nolan's address for his house arrest -- I'm sorry, don't they usually check these things out? Javier's got some new development ideas and Nolan thinks they might be useful to him. Nolan, haven't you learned that all of your friends betray you? Stay away, my friend.
Conrad meets with Pascal and Pascal makes it clear that he'll never merge their companies. Conrad says that he could get him the one thing he never had: Victoria. Pascal seems to be listening. I'm sorry, since when is Victoria a chess piece that Conrad can wield? Try never.
Jack stops by to see Emily and check on her after the gossipy reveal. When she's blithe about it, he realizes that she planted the information herself and demands to know what her new plan is. He doesn't want to sit on the sidelines because she's getting justice for Declan and Amanda. She doesn't want him involved, but he says that he got her evidence so he's in now. Good point.
Emily gives in and shows him the evidence from drive. It's a note to Conrad saying "TWM" is handled and that the "DC plan" is intact. DC is obviously "David Clarke," but "TWM" is a mystery. She says that she thinks the note is from Pascal because he wrote her a similar one before her wedding, and she doesn't want Jack involved because he loves Pascal's daughter. But Jack is tired of watching her wreak havoc and he wants in. Does this mean Aidan needs to worry about losing his lady love?