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In the land that electricity forgot, Charlie, Miles, Maggie, and Aaron are still tromping all over Illinois looking for Danny. Miles attempts to go off on his own to find a friend of his, Nora, who can help them blow things up and also locate Danny (I think Miles puts a bigger premium on the former), but Charlie follows him like a mopey-eyed puppy. Miraculously, she only almost gets herself and/or others murdered like once or twice.
Along the way Charlie and Miles have a clash of opinions on what's right and wrong. See, Miles thinks that pretty much anything you have to do to stay alive is right, while Charlie still thinks it's a bad idea to stab people in the throat, even if they are trying to kill you. Silly Charlie. Eventually they find Nora and Charlie learns to shoot first and mope about it later.
Left behind by Charlie and Miles, Aaron tells Maggie about the shiny silver doohickey Ben entrusted him with before he died. He says Ben told him to bring the MacGuffin to a woman named Grace, who is the shotgun-wielding algebra teacher who saved Danny's life last week. Grace, as we learned, also has a MacGuffin, and she has glorious power! Also, someone has gotten into her house and it doesn't look like she's happy to have him there.
And over in Sebastian Monroe's camp of grouchy people, Charlie's mother, Rachel, is alive and looks pretty healthy for a prisoner (maybe? Or maybe she ran away from her family because they are all such WHINERS). Monroe pops up to tell Rachel that Ben is dead and he's kidnapped her son, and she's going to tell him everything she knows about turning the power back on.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Revolution: The power went out. Fifteen years later, Charlie's dad got murdered so she and her giant teeth showed up in Chicago and ruined her uncle's life. And now you're caught up.
We flash back to one week after the blackout. I'm hoping it didn't happen in summer, because if all the power went out in, like, July, wouldn't ninety percent of Arizona be dead with in a week? Anyway, little-kid Charlie tells her mom she wants to wear her ballet slippers, but Mom recommends walking shoes, because they're going to do like Dora and walk out of the city. Ben is bustling around packing things -- including a revolver. Charlie's mom instructs Charlie to keep an eye on Danny and never let go of his hand. It's very "Jack! Rose! Jack! ROSE!!" You just know Charlie would shove anyone off that door so she wouldn't freeze to death in the north Atlantic, though.
Outside, the Mathesons are pulling the kids and all their worldly possessions in red wagons through the streets of Chicago, which are already starting to look like an apocalyptic wasteland. And then we're in the present day, and Charlie is looking at the skyline dourly. Maggie asks if she's all right. Aaron is slumped over, clearly not enjoying all this there-and-back-again shit. In the distance they hear some metallic clanking. "Where's Miles?" Charlie asks.
He is to a train and having another swordfight. Obvs. Because NBC taught Billy Burke how to swordfight, and they will damn well get their money's worth out of those lessons. Miles punches out the bounty hunter he's been dueling with, putting an end to the fight in the most Harrison Ford of fashions, and is about to skewer him through the throat when Charlie intervenes and is all, "You can't murder this guy who clearly wants to murder us!" UGH. Too stupid to live, this one. Miles relents and Aaron helps him drag the bounty hunter off to a boxcar, which they will lock him inside. As we pull out, we see that Nate is on the other side of the train.
The travelers arrive in Pontiac, Illinois. As they walk through a marketplace, a street preacher is saying that God caused the blackout, and Aaron observes dryly, "Great, they're having a sale on heroin." See, Ron Paul was wrong, people do need the government to keep them from doing hard drugs! Although I would probably turn to opiates sooner than later when my TV stopped working. Is there even a reason to live if I can't have Tami Taylor in my life?
Some militia guys are beating the shit out of some other guy, and Charlie asks what he did wrong. (I really wish the show would get a handle on how old and/or mature Charlie is supposed to be. She's supposed to be a skilled tracker and hunter, but she has the emotional intelligence of a fussy toddler. Wouldn't it make sense that growing up without any modern conveniences and having to live off the land would make her more self-sufficient and able to read subtle cues rather than this weird, awkward moron she so often seems to be?) Maggie says maybe nothing, who knows with these militia people? And Charlie gets all panicky and grabs at Miles's sleeve, asking what they're doing to rescue Danny. Miles points out that they're going to need help to find Danny, since Monroe has more troops than one ex-Marine, a former Google engineer, a doctor, and a bratty teenager who's all right with a crossbow but has the brains of a turnip. "Where are you going?" Charlie whines. "Uh, this place called Shut Up and Stay Here," Miles replies. I like Miles.
In another room, Miles asks for someone named Nora Clayton and gives the guy at the bar a lump of gold. The bartender wants to know who's asking, and from behind Miles, someone says his name. Obviously it's the bounty hunter he didn't kill. Stupid Charlie. "Should've killed me when you had the chance," the bounty hunter says. Miles agrees, and asks if they can call it a draw. But apparently Monroe has too big a bounty on Miles's head for him to let it go. Several thugs bring out Aaron, Maggie and Charlie, with knives to their throats. Miles denies knowing them, and says he's just trying to bang Maggie. The bounty hunter says then Miles won't mind if he cuts Charlie up, but Miles kind of does mind, dammit. His men put Miles in handcuffs and lead him away. Charlie is the worst.
As the bounty hunter's men are leading Miles out into the marketplace, he goes all Jason Bourne on them and, still handcuffed, incapacitates like three people, finally almost garroting the bounty hunter with his handcuffs while asking where Nora is. The man gasps out that she was arrested for stealing militia gold and sent to a work camp. Miles breaks the guy's neck this time, as Charlie watches, judgily. Oh my god with this one. Maybe she'd prefer being gang-raped in a 747?
Giancarlo's, er, Neville's wagon train. Danny is again chained in the wagon. A shot is fired, and Neville asks Danny what that sounded like to him. The wagon train comes to a house with a huge dead deer hanging upside down out front and Neville knocks on the door. The homeowner comes outside and Neville starts rhapsodizing about how his wife cooks venison steaks. I can see how this tendency would get a little trying for his men, who are all, dude, it is hot and we are tired and can you maybe skip the villain-iloquy for once? He asks the homeowner how he killed the deer. "Crossbow," the man said. The loud kind of crossbow, I guess. "And I suppose he got this buckshot from a bar fight?" Neville asks. The man begins to protest, and Neville reminds him that it's illegal for people in the Monroe Republic to own firearms, except for militia members. Well, that's an interesting new twist on the Second Amendment. The penalty is death.
Neville asks again if there's anything the homeowner wants to tell him. The man reluctantly reaches inside for his shotgun and tosses it on the lawn. Neville tells his men to search the house anyway. They approach, and the homeowner shoots the first man. Neville draws and kills the homeowner. He kneels by his gut-shot soldier. Another soldier brings out an American flag and shows it to Neville. "Burn it," Neville says. "Burn everything."
Monroe's camp. Johnny Crowder picks up a knife and starts carving on a bound man's face. Monroe interrupts him. Monroe asks "Sergeant Strausser" what he's doing. Nope, he's Johnny Crowder. And if Boyd existed in this TV show, he would be in charge of everything. Johnny says he was interrogating a suspect, and Monroe says, "Not like this. We're not animals." Johnny hands him the knife. Monroe introduces himself to the bound man. He asks where the rebels are and promises to return the man to his family. Monroe says the rebels are bombing his camps, killing his men -- they're terrorists. He says he just wants his subjects to be safe and happy. The prisoner says the people aren't happy, they're afraid of Monroe. But he's not. Monroe smiles and picks up a different pointy object, then sticks it in the prisoner, rather lethally. Ick.
Campfire. Maggie is patching Miles up. She asks Aaron for her Swiss Army knife, and, searching for it in her bag, he pulls out an iPhone and asks why she's keeping this useless piece of glass and plastic. Miles tells Charlie, "time I tell you I want to kill somebody, let me kill him." He has a point, as usual. Maggie's work is apparently done, because Miles stands up, puts on his jacket, and says he'll meet them in Lowell, Indiana, in two weeks. (You know, I bet Pawnee would be doing just fine without any power. I would go live with Ron Swanson in a hot minute.) Miles says he has to go get Nora, who is very good at blowing things up and whom they need in order to get Danny back. Charlie protests, but Miles leaves anyway.
The morning, Maggie and Aaron wake up and Charlie has done run off, because she is a feckless idiot. Maggie copes with this by hollering Charlie's name. Maybe if we'd seen even one minute of Charlie being able to handle herself without practically wandering off a cliff and not noticing till four paces into thin air, Wile E. Coyote-style, I wouldn't want her to fall down and die already quite so much. But I do. And she obliges! Well, she falls down a hill and sprains her ankle.
And then Nate shows up, because he has been stalking her. When he comes close to try and help, she handcuffs him to a post. She rolls away lithely, uninjured. So she has maybe an ounce of guile. She asks Nate why he's following her, and he repeats what we learned last week: he's supposed to bring her and/or Miles to Monroe. She whines a little about how Nate used her to find Miles, and he's like, um... yes. Because that is how the world works now. From her attitude you'd think everything was safe and peachy, like, a week ago, rather than everything being Hunger Games-brutal for most of her life. She walks away, leaving him cuffed to a pole. Well, she would if she was smart. But the lure of a cute boy is too much, and she turns back and asks if his name is actually Nate. It's not. He says he was following orders, and she asks why he saved her back at the Grand. He doesn't answer.
Maggie is shoving things in her pack, and Aaron is trying to explain that the two of them lack the tracking skills to find Charlie. Aaron assures Maggie that Charlie will find Miles and that they'll see her again. She holds up her iPhone and says she keeps it because the only pictures of her kids are inside it, and it's getting harder for her to remember what their faces looked like. She starts crying and says there's no way to know who they'll see again.
Prison wagon. The gut-shot soldier is in the wagon to Danny, and he's not doing well. Neville says he can die fast or he can die painfully, offering him a small vial that will let him drift away. The man takes it and downs the bottle. Neville gently tells him that he'll be with his family soon, warm and rested and fed. He dies.
Charlie, alone in the woods, looking like a particularly avant-garde Vogue fashion spread. She stumbles across a deflated basketball and flashes back to sitting outside a school with her mother and Danny while Ben gets something from inside. The ball gets away from Charlie and a skinny, dirty man intercepts it, talking to her. He's nice to her for a minute, then tells Charlie's mother he'll smash Charlie's face in if she doesn't give him all their food. Charlie snaps out of her flashback when Miles sneaks up on her. They have the same argument about her coming with him, and she says it's her responsibility to take care of Danny, that since their mother died she never let him out of her sight, until the day she went off to pout like a brat (her words, actually) and Danny got grabbed. She pleads her emotional case with Miles, and it seems to be working. Ugh, Miles. You're supposed to be tough.
Back at the abandoned nerds' camp, Aaron tells Maggie about the MacGuffin. He says Ben told him to bring it to Grace Beaumont in Grant Park, Illinois. As Aaron talks, we see that Grace is the shotgun-wielding algebra teacher who took Danny in last week. Aaron doesn't know who she is, but says, "What if we could get the power back on?" Grace, of course, has power. But they don't know that. Yet.
Maggie and Aaron are hiking along overgrown railroad tracks, discussing Ben's final instruction, to take the MacGuffin to Grace. Aaron says he doesn't know what Grace knows, and Maggie says, "This doesn't make any sense." Aaron says he thinks maybe it does, that the blackout is what doesn't make sense. Uh, yes. We have all registered our objections to that particular suspension of disbelief. Aaron says the blackout shouldn't be permanent, that they should be able to fix it, but so far they haven't been able to. But if the blackout was man-made, then he thinks there's a fix. Probably.
Neville and his men bury the gut-shot fellow. As Neville concludes his prayer, Danny sniffs derisively. Man, has this kid got a death wish. Neville tells Danny to say what he's thinking. He says he can tell that Danny doesn't like that Neville killed the homeowner with the guns and "the rebel flag," but that he thinks the Monroe Militia is the only thing preventing total anarchy. Danny says that he thinks Neville tells himself that because he likes to kill. Neville starts throttling Danny and says he appreciates his honesty.
Miles and Charlie are tramping through more woods. They see a bunch of prisoners wearing tattered rags, yoked together like sled dogs, pulling a flatbed with a helicopter on it. That does not look fun at all. One of the prisoners, Miles says, is Nora. The man in front of her falls down, and when he doesn't get up, a guard shoots him in the head.
Nighttime, prison camp. The guards are patrolling the sleeping prisoners with torches. Nora's awake, and looks fantastic considering she's been dragging a Black Hawk through the wilds of central Illinois. Hard labor must be good for the skin. Miles sneaks up behind her and she says, "Buddy, I'd keep your hands off--" before realizing it's Miles. He goes for her shackles, which are unlocked because she's already picked the locks. She hesitates, and another prisoner asks Miles to take him if Nora won't go.
Miles rushes Nora into the bushes, where she thanks him sardonically and says she was on the chain gang on purpose. Her plan was to steal the warden's sniper rifle. Charlie can't believe someone would go to all that trouble for a rifle, but Nora says it's priceless on the black market. She says she was planning to slit the warden's throat, but now their element of surprise is shot to hell. Charlie explains the Danny story and Nora can't believe anyone would be this dumb. Miles asks Nora to come with them because she owes him. She says she'll help, but she wants the gun first.
In some sort of abandoned shack, Nora is assembling... things. It kind of looks like she's making a bong, but eventually it takes the shape of a makeshift gun. But it only has a range of a foot, and the warden knows what both Nora and Miles look like. Charlie volunteers to take out the warden. Miles doesn't believe she can do it. He says she'll choke rather than shoot someone in the face over a gun. Charlie climbs way up on her moral high horse and starts speechifying about how she's going to do it for the slaves down there, and asks Miles and Nora, "What the hell's wrong with you?" To start, I bet they've had precious little sulking-with-my-box-of-memories time over the last decade and a half, princess. Nora gives Miles a WTF look, and when Charlie asks what she needs to do, straps the gun to her wrist.
The slaves are picking up their traces when Charlie just comes wandering out of the woods. A guard tells her to drop her bow, and she raises her hands and says she was hunting. The guard brings her over to the warden and Charlie flashes back to the hungry guy threatening to snap her neck if the Charlie's mom didn't give them all the food. Ben comes outside and points a gun at the hungry guy. He slowly releases Charlie and takes the wagon of food. Ben tells the man to stop and threatens to shoot him. The man walks away with their food, and Ben doesn't shoot. Ah.
The warden, up on his horse with the rifle, asks Charlie where she's from. In her flashback, Charlie's mother shoots the hungry man in the back. In the present, Charlie shoots the warden dead in the chest. He drops the rifle and the guard and Charlie wrestle for it. Nora and Miles come out of the woods to help. There is more swordfighting as Charlie and the guard wrestle over the rifle. She gets control of it and blows the guard away. Hurrah! Moral high ground ceded!
And the aftermath. Miles concedes that Charlie handled herself well, and she gets all emotional about how she killed two people and that "things shouldn't be like this." Yeah, well, they are. Again, you'd think someone who's grown up with this as the only world she knows would be better adjusted to it.
Nora has taken her shirt off to treat the sword cut across her abdomen, and Miles sees the American flag tattoo between her shoulder blades. He recognizes that the tattoo means she's joined the rebels, and says she's not planning to sell the rifle, that she's going to give it to the resistance. Charlie asks what he means by rebels. Miles says, "A bunch of deluded, bleeding-heart--" "Patriots," Nora interrupts. "Trying to bring back the United States." Miles tells Nora she'll be lynched for this. She says she plans to take out Monroe first.
Grace's house. She's typing away on her Only Computer in the World. She hears a knock at the front door. Whoever it is greets her by name. She slams the door and runs upstairs to her computer, typing frantically: "Randall is here." He also has a MacGuffin. And what looks like an electric shock baton. I am concerned about Grace.
At a large brick building that looks vaguely familiar (did they have the Continental Congress there or something?), Monroe unlocks a room and walks inside. "Rachel?" he asks. "They treating you well?" Rachel, it turns out IS CHARLIE'S MOM. She's alive. And she hasn't aged a day, so her prison must be located over the world's untapped reserves of Crème de la Mer. She thanks Monroe for his hospitality and he says it's nice to see someone from the old days. She says she liked him better back when he was a womanizing drunk. Well, yeah. Womanizing drunks tend to be fun. Look how well playing one has worked out for Jon Hamm. Rachel asks why he's come to visit. He tells her Ben's dead. She doesn't react much, and says, "You're lying." He says he didn't want it to happen, and that he's sorry. Then he tells her that he has her son. That gets a rise out of her. Rachel tries to stab Monroe with her pen, but he gets her in a chokehold and says if she wants to see Danny, she's going to tell him what she knows about Ben and the power and everything.
time: Miles, Nora, and Charlie join the rebels. Or do they?
Nora has taken her shirt off to treat the sword cut across her abdomen, and Miles sees the American flag tattoo between her shoulder blades. He recognizes that the tattoo means she's joined the rebels, and says she's not planning to sell the rifle, that she's going to give it to the resistance. Charlie asks what he means by rebels. Miles says, "A bunch of deluded, bleeding-heart--" "Patriots," Nora interrupts. "Trying to bring back the United States." Miles tells Nora she'll be lynched for this. She says she plans to take out Monroe first.
Grace's house. She's typing away on her Only Computer in the World. She hears a knock at the front door. Whoever it is greets her by name. She slams the door and runs upstairs to her computer, typing frantically: "Randall is here." He also has a MacGuffin. And what looks like an electric shock baton. I am concerned about Grace.
At a large brick building that looks vaguely familiar (did they have the Continental Congress there or something?), Monroe unlocks a room and walks inside. "Rachel?" he asks. "They treating you well?" Rachel, it turns out IS CHARLIE'S MOM. She's alive. And she hasn't aged a day, so her prison must be located over the world's untapped reserves of Crème de la Mer. She thanks Monroe for his hospitality and he says it's nice to see someone from the old days. She says she liked him better back when he was a womanizing drunk. Well, yeah. Womanizing drunks tend to be fun. Look how well playing one has worked out for Jon Hamm. Rachel asks why he's come to visit. He tells her Ben's dead. She doesn't react much, and says, "You're lying." He says he didn't want it to happen, and that he's sorry. Then he tells her that he has her son. That gets a rise out of her. Rachel tries to stab Monroe with her pen, but he gets her in a chokehold and says if she wants to see Danny, she's going to tell him what she knows about Ben and the power and everything.
time: Miles, Nora, and Charlie join the rebels. Or do they?