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Miles, Charlie, and Nora shlep on down to Georgia to try and prevent Monroe from blowing up Atlanta. The man Monroe sent with the nuke is, of course, yet another person Miles has wronged, in this case his former protégé Alec. Miles trained Alec to be a vicious, remorseless killer, but then he sold Alec out and sent him to be tortured in Texas after Alec failed to assassinate the general in charge of the Texas military junta or whatever they have down there. Alec is kind of pissed about that and repeatedly tries to kill Miles.
Miles gets arrested and brought before the president of Georgia, Kelly Foster, whom he also horribly wronged at some point in his past as a black-hearted bastard. Foster threatens to castrate Miles, but then lets him go so he can stop Alec, which he does, ultimately killing him. Charlie and Nora aren't much help. And then Foster tells Miles she can give him men and weapons so the rebels can join the war she's planning to launch against Monroe.
Rachel and Aaron, trekking west in search of the Tower, run into Rachel's old colleague Jane Warren, played by the crazycakes vice president from Scandal. After Jane roasts alive a couple of bandits who were trying to rape Rachel, she introduces the love of her life, Beth, who it turns out has had cancer for the last sixteen years, but has survived because of the same technology that kept Danny alive—and that's keeping the lights off. Jane is adamant that Rachel give up her crazy quest, because if she turns the power on, Beth will die. Beth overhears and makes Jane tell Rachel what she needs to know. Rachel and Aaron plod on, westward.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Revolution: Monroe got power. Our heroes split up, with Rachel and Aaron heading west to the Tower, and Miles, Charlie, Jim and Nora continuing the anti-Monroe resistance. And the family Neville has gone rogue.
Philadelphia. One of Monroe's peons tells him the Nevilles have fled, probably because spies report that Jason Neville is still alive. Monroe is way more stunned and wounded-seeming than a guy in charge of an empire should be. All we've learned about Monroe is that he deals swiftly with traitors and any hint of dissent, so wouldn't that indicate that he's had at least a little experience with, you know, traitors and dissent? He says he's clearly been too kind and trusting since Neville felt he could lie to him. Captain Peon says he didn't know any of this, but Monroe doesn't think he can trust the captain not to betray him as well, since he and Neville were so close. Captain Peon protests that he's loyal, but Monroe shoots him dead anyway.
Galloping! Adventurously! The man on the racing horse stumbles into camp and Miles pulls him off the horse. The man is bleeding and Miles hollers for a medic, but he dies as Miles pulls a small, bloody square of paper from the messenger's pocket. He gives it to Nora and they tell Charlie four of their spies died to get them the news that Monroe sent the bomb to Atlanta. He's confident Monroe will use it if Georgia doesn't surrender.
Rachel explains to Aaron that this week they are looking for a Dr. Warren, who's an expert on the Tower.
Monroe Republic-Georgia Federation border. Charlie, Miles and Nora creep through the razor-wire fencing and she stops to look around, standing out in the open. Miles asks Charlie if she actually has a death wish, but she just muses, "I've never left the Monroe Republic." Miles mutters, "My God, you're a hick," and not for the first time regrets boning Rachel nineteen years ago.
Georgia has steam-powered buses and the occasional Vespa, it seems. Charlie just stares at everything, goggle-eyed. Wait 'til she sees Chick-fil-A. Miles exposits that Georgia is filthy rich because of the warm weather that lets them have a longer growing season. He's even heard they're trading with Europe. Nora asks how he plans to get into fortified Atlanta. His plan: They stake out a house that's flying the Georgia flag (which is, crucially, not the Georgia flag you might think they'd revert to, so thanks for that, NBC), and Miles tells Charlie to kill the guy who answers the door so they can steal uniforms and get through Atlanta's gates disguised as Federation soldiers. Charlie is totally okay with killing innocent people in cold blood now.
Charlie knocks. No one answers. So Miles breaks the door in and they find a bunch of teenage soldiers dead on the floor, all shot in the head. Looks like Monroe men's work, Miles says. Nora tells him the spare uniforms are missing, so Miles says they'll strip the bodies. Eeesh. Ooh, and he'll take this pretty Bowie knife to one of the bodies. Miles stares at it and says he's seen the knife before -- it was his. Someone named Alec did this, he says. Miles stomps off to have a tortured flashback.
Seven years after the blackout. Miles and Alec, in their Monroe Militia uniforms, sit at a bar and talk about some idiot kid who grew up to be a pretty fine captain, thanks to his mentor -- that idiot was Alec, and Miles is the mentor. Keep up, slow kids! Miles pulls out his knife and explains that his grandfather carved the handle and carried the knife safely through the Korean War. It went to Vietnam with Miles's dad and is something of a good luck charm since he also came home safely. He gives it to Alec and tells him to always come back alive.
Aaron and Rachel wander through a creepy forest. She warns him that when they find Dr. Warren, she shouldn't alarm or make eye contact with her, since she can be odd. And apparently she's also a mountain gorilla who finds eye contact to be a sign of aggression. Before they get to her house, they're accosted by two men who want to collect a "toll." Great, because there's been a definite drought of sexual assault lately in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. They attack Rachel and Aaron, but suddenly the guy grappling with Aaron stops, his face bubbling, his eyes filling with blood. The other guy drops Rachel and tries to help his friend, but they both basically cook to death in a matter of seconds. Aaron and Rachel lie on the ground and freak out as Meredith Grey's mom comes out of the woods, looking peevish. "Jane," Rachel gasps.
Jane (that would be Dr. Warren) is not particularly happy to see Rachel. Aaron wants to talk about the two crispy critters, but Jane, who's holding a palm-sized blinking object that maybe she controlled the burning with, just concludes, "Must be what God feels like," and then invites them home for sandwiches. Aaron has lost his appetite.
Georgia. Miles, Charlie and Nora walk into the city center, where all the good people of Atlanta are just milling about, all very nicely dressed and clean looking, in contrast with the grubby, heroin-riddled cities of the Monroe Republic. Miles tells them they need to find Alec before he kills as many civilians as he possibly -- since that's what Miles taught him to do.
Why does Miles keep having to remind everyone that he used to be an emotionless, psychopathic mass killer and he taught all of Monroe's men to be the same? This has come up like a zillion times before -- when they met Jeremy, when they met Drexel, when Charlie infiltrated the Good Ship Militiaville -- so it shouldn't need repeating and the continued revelations of Miles's essential badness shouldn't surprise anyone except Charlie because she's a dimwit. At this point Miles is waving a huge sign that says, "I'm bad! I'm damaged! Don't get too close to me because I betray everyone I love! Why won't the lambs stop screaming?!" Miles hands Charlie and Nora flashlights, which they can use as visual alarms to tell them when they're in range of the pendant powering the bomb. And I'm glad for so many reasons that NBC preempted this episode last week.
Miles's flashlight flickers on. He ducks into an alley and finds a backpack under a grate, but before he can grab it, Alec appears behind him and knocks him to the ground. They exchange awkward pleasantries. Alec has a scar on his neck, right under the collar, that wasn't there in the flashback. He says it turns out Miles's knife wasn't so lucky for him, and Miles tries to apologize for whatever terrible thing he did, but Alec just draws his sword and they fight.
Miles breaks Alec's sword and then they punch each other. Alec is about to choke Miles to death when Charlie shoots him in the shoulder with a crossbow bolt. He pulls it out, picks up the bomb, and runs. They chase, knocking over all these nice Georgia folks' stuff in their path. They lose him and split up. Miles catches up with Alec, who's taken a hostage. Miles doesn't particularly care about the hostage, but when the police show up after Alec shoots the hostage and escapes, it does look like Miles has murdered someone. They arrest Miles.
Jane's house. She brings Rachel and Aaron inside and calls to someone named Beth, who's thrilled to see Rachel. Rachel's shocked to see Beth, who doesn't seem to know about all the Tower stuff, because she just says she's just passing through on her way to Colorado. Jane sends Beth to feed chubbo Aaron, and then takes Rachel outside to ask why the hell she wants to go to the Tower. Turning the power back on, Jane says, will "destroy the nanites," and she asks why Rachel would do that when these nanites are keeping Danny alive. Rachel pulls out the thing she cut out of Danny's body.
Rachel tells Jane that Randall has the Tower, which doesn't concern Jane, who says that the nanites are also keeping Beth alive, eating away at her tumors -- she's had cancer for sixteen years. So that's why Rachel was so surprised to see her. Jane says the nanites do more than keep the power off, and she would rather keep everyone on earth in the dark -- and cause a whole bunch of other deaths because of lack of access to things like clean water and twenty-first-century medical care -- than sacrifice the life of the woman she loves. She tells Rachel to drop her quest.
Alec sneaks up on Charlie, grabs her, and they struggle while he tries to warn her about Miles. He guesses she's Miles's new protégée because she has no one else and wants to learn from Miles, but he warns that she's only a means to an end to him. She tells him Miles is her uncle because CHARLIE IS AN IDIOT. Alec realizes this means she's Rachel's daughter, and asks if she knows what Miles did to Rachel. Overhead, a helicopter distracts them, dropping pieces of paper with the Monroe symbol on them.
Charlie picks up a piece of paper: it's a warning to the people of Georgia, telling them Monroe is giving President Foster two hours to surrender or he'll blow up Atlanta. The old-timey typefaces are just adorable.
Miles is brought into the President's office. He appears to have some history with her, of course, because he calls her Kelly. They discuss Monroe's note, with Foster reading it aloud for the illiterate viewers among us. Miles asks Foster to let him go so he can help. She pulls a knife and holds it against his groin as she says she should slice him wide-open for killing her troops and what he did to her. Man, Miles. You have got to start using the campsite rule. Miles pleads that he can stop Alec. Foster thinks about it and very nicely doesn't cut Miles's balls off.
Charlie and Nora fret about what they're going to do, with Nora saying maybe they should just forget about Miles and go after the bomb. Miles pops up and thanks her for her concern, just as all the people of Atlanta start fleeing through the city's gates, all of them equipped with torches. Miles tells Nora that Alec will want to detonate the bomb where the most people are, so they follow the well-dressed mob.
Philadelphia. Nine years after the blackout. Monroe welcomes Alec home and leaves him with Miles. They hug and talk about Alec's last job: General Blanchard survived the assassination attempt, and worse, he identified Alec. Since they can't afford a war with Texas, Miles is giving Alec to Blanchard. Alec can't believe his mentor would betray him this way, but Miles says this is the job. Militia soldiers come in and drag Alec away while he pleads for more time to fix his fuckup. Miles stares hauntedly after him.
Atlanta. Running, screaming. Miles spots Alec up on a fire escape.
Jane's house. Rachel looks at Jane's drawings of the nanites, then digs through her office, looking for something. Jane interrupts her, holding the blinking thing she had in the forest earlier. Rachel says they've killed too many people, and pleads with Jane, saying she did awful things to keep Danny alive, and none of it mattered since he's dead now. Jane asks if she'd do it all again if it would save him. Rachel says she wouldn't.
Jane says she's disappointed and starts powering up her frying thingy, but Beth interrupts and asks if it's true, that Jane has known all along how to turn the power back on. Jane tells Beth she'll die if she does, but Beth tells her to help Rachel or she'll slash her own wrists. That seems to work because Jane pulls a book off a shelf and hands it to Rachel, saying it will tell her everything she needs to know. She kicks her out of the house. Poor Aaron. I bet Jane and Beth had nice beds.
Miles, Nora, and Charlie climb the stairs in an industrial-looking building, searching for Alec. Miles finds him. He's sitting, holding the detonator for the bomb, wounded. Miles asks if he really plans to blow himself up, along with all those people. Alec says it's the job and switches on the bomb. "That's what you taught me," he anvils. Miles tells him he was wrong, and says he's trying not to be the man he used to be, but Alec has come around to Old Miles's line of thinking (probably to keep from going insane in Texas): he agrees that Miles giving Alec up prevented a war.
Alec whispers that he survived in Texas for the republic, for Miles, and then when he came back, Miles was gone and it all seemed to be for nothing. Alec's radio speaks up then, and tells him to detonate the bomb.
Miles and Alec fight while the guy on the radio in Philadelphia repeatedly tells him to detonate the bomb, asking for a reply. Monroe gets on the horn and starts yelling, "Your mission is a go. Do you copy?" while Alec and Miles roll around on the floor, pummeling each other. Alec gets the upper hand, pulls Miles's knife, and is about to gut him, but Miles reverses their positions and stabs Alec to death. It has been a really stabby evening, guys. I am OVER IT. Charlie rushes in while Monroe's voice still echoes from the radio.
Some time later, Miles stares at a pendant and his knife. Charlie approaches and asks what Miles did to Rachel. He says it doesn't matter, but she presses for the truth. He tells her, again, that the people who trust him get hurt. Because he hurts them. Charlie doesn't believe him. Because she's a dolt. A Georgia soldier calls Miles in to see Foster.
She wants to know what happened to the radioactive material in the bomb, which is disassembled on her desk. Miles asks if she wants it so she can make a nuke of her own. Foster sits down and muses that her army outnumbers Monroe's two to one, and while he has power, she has money, and ships, and help from the English. (Aw. Poor Maggie. She could've gotten home if it weren't for those damn dogs!) If Monroe wants a war, she'll give him a war. Miles is all, GOOD FOR YOU, KELLY, and turns to leave, but Foster says she's going to attack Monroe from the south (again). She wants the rebels to open a second front from inside the republic. Miles says he doesn't have the manpower.
Foster brings Miles outside to show him the troops and weapons she's willing to give him. "Ready to be a general again?" she asks.