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Flashbacks confirm that Rachel and Miles used to bang, so yeah, he's probably Charlie's father. They also confirm that Rachel and Miles were always terrible, grim, selfish people who are more than willing to screw over and/or torture their loved ones to get what they want.
In the present, Rachel and Aaron's westward journey is stalled by Rachel's horrific leg wound. So she whips out the blinky thing she cut out of Danny's corpse, has Aaron build a computer out of odds and ends, and then he shoves the blinky thing into her gaping leg wound and it's all healed up. Unfortunately, some locals witness the "miracle" and want Rachel to fix their wounded ones, also. But Rachel is a narcissistic monster who tells Aaron that she's not playing this game to help others, she's playing it to kill Monroe because he killed her kid. And to hell with anyone else's kids who get killed on her quest. Good to get that out of the way.
In Kentucky, Monroe launches a drone strike against the rebels and the Georgians. Jason is badly hurt and his father has to rescue him, because Tom still loves his kid even though he's about as interesting as a block of wood smeared in ketchup. Charlie gets buried in a pile of bricks. She digs herself out, but both Miles and Nora almost get killed rescuing her. Nora's captured by Monroe's forces, which will not turn out well for her.
And in Philadelphia, someone takes a shot at Monroe. He immediately suspects his faithful lieutenant Jeremy, and has Jeremy executed, even though Jeremy wasn't behind the assassination attempt. This is why Monroe has no friends.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Revolution: The rebel gang kidnapped Danny Concannon and then set him free. Rachel asked Meredith Grey's mom for her help destroying the nanites -- whatever the fuck those are -- and Neville popped up like the bad penny he is. And then Rachel broke her leg and Nora threw her knickers at Miles. Separately.
Ah, another glorious morning in the flea-infested, scurvy-ridden Monroe Republic! In an Airstream, a militia soldier finds one of his colleagues presiding over a bunch of blinking screens. It's all very Matthew Broderick in WarGames. And like so many other things on this show, nothing will come of it.
In Kentucky, Miles and Nora are in bed together and her hair is fantastic. Seriously, it must be the nanites that make everyone's long, flowing Victoria's Secret-model locks look so glorious in the absence of things like curling irons and deep conditioner. Nora gets out of bed and puts on her clothes, and when Miles wakes up and grumbles (as Miles grumbles about absolutely everything), she tells him that the sex they just had was a mistake. He disagrees, because he likes having someone around to bang, and asks her what her problem is. She's convinced one or both of them is going to die soon, which seems like a good reason to have as much sex as you can, doesn't it? See, Miles is on my side.
The Neville men act out the latest iteration of their Father Knows Best traveling road show. Not surprisingly, Tom is still pissed about how Jason and the others left him to die last week. He picks up a handgun, racks a round into the chamber, and tells Jason to finish the job already, forcing his son to hold the gun against his chest. Charlie watches all this without moving an eyelid, because she's thinking about how she misses staring vacantly at her Star Wars lunchbox. Neville grits that he's not going anywhere and JD Pardo cries and wets himself again.
Jason stomps off to be moody about how majorly uncool his dad is, and Charlie chases after him like a puppy who ran face-first into about thirteen Botox needles. He rants about his dad for a while, and she's all, yeah, my mom is a selfish bitch, too, but she went rambling off to Colorado with my old math teacher, so let's pretend we don't need anyone together!
The untamed American West. Aaron is still freaking out about why that clipping of him was in Jane's notebook. Rachel's all, pardon me while I'm distracted by the COMPOUND FRACTURE IN MY SHIN. She thinks Ben knew something about Aaron and had reasons for keeping him with the Matheson family and giving him the pendant before he died.
They've mysteriously acquired some horses somehow, so Aaron wants to keep going, but Rachel howls in pain when he tries to pick her up. He is terrible at everything. He repeats that he's not going to leave her and hands over her backpack when she asks for it. She has something in there that might fix her leg, she says. Nanites! Everybody drink! It's a small vial with a barcode on it, not dissimilar from the thing Rachel cut out of Danny's dead body. She tells Aaron it might fix her, but on the other hand it might kill them both.
Kentucky. Looks like Monroe has fighter jets now, as one just zoomed overhead. Charlie runs off to ring the town's great big alert bell, screaming for Miles while she does. Ah -- not jets, drones. The drones fire missiles on the rebel-Georgian camp and Miles and Neville and everyone else try not to get incinerated.
Flashback, seven years after the blackout. At a stable, Rachel meets Miles, who really does not look his best in the buttoned-up-all-the-way-to-the-chin style that the Monrovies prefer. He explains to Rachel that he and Monroe wanted Ben to join them, but they didn't need Rachel. He asks her if Ben can turn the lights back on, and she says they both can, and then dresses him down for treating her like some barefoot housewife who doesn't know her ass from her elbow.
Ben's not interested in turning the lights back on, she says, but she is (even though what's keeping the lights off was keeping her son alive? Oh my god, show, could you pretend to care even a little bit about your own continuity?), and so she's willing to work with Miles and Monroe. Miles says they're going to go find Ben anyway.
Kentucky. Miles, blood on his face, wakes up surrounded by rubble and people screaming for help. He runs over and lifts basically an entire brick wall off Nora and pries her out of a hole in the ground. He asks where Charlie is. If there's a merciful TV god, one of those drones got a direct hit on her and Jason.
Ye Newe West. Aaron ransacks a computer-repair store for parts while Rachel, on the floor, fiddles with her bloody bandages and oozing leg wound. She looks like someone scraped her off a shoe, all sweaty and pasty. I suppose a disgusting injury with no medical attention will do that to you. She mutters about how the capsule she gave Aaron fixed Danny's lung tissue (but wasn't his heart the really serious problem oh my god why am I investing so much more thought in this than anyone at NBC?) and it can be reprogrammed to do almost anything, including fix her leg. If it works. If it doesn't, it'll probably do what Jane's rapist-frying device did. Aaron's all, sweet.
Miles and Neville survey the wreckage: they lost ninety percent of their men. Miles thinks Monroe's drones found them so easily because there's a mole in their ranks. Nora pops up to say Charlie and Jason are still missing, but they were last seen heading north. And then another soldier informs them that Monroe's troops are on their way -- hundreds of them -- coming from the north. So they need to put anyone who can walk on boats and flee, Miles says. He's going to go after Charlie. And Nora, suicidal Nora, is all, I banged you so I get to go with you! Neville, of course, can't let these two idiots go rescue his son alone.
Charlie is alive, but buried in a pile of rubble. This is not an episode for the claustrophobic.
Philadelphia. Jeremy is pleased with the drones' work, but Monroe just wants to sulk about his wound and how they don't have any proof that the strike killed Miles. Jeremy invites Monroe to come across the street and celebrate the slaughter, and when Monroe refuses, he asks for permission to speak frankly. He tries again to convince Monroe not to be that weird guy who pees in jars and never cuts his fingernails, and maybe succeeds in convincing Monroe to act like a person for five minutes. As they leave the building, they're attacked by snipers.
Rachel tells Aaron to plug the capsule into this contraption he's built from Jane's drawings, that the capsule will provide the power. He does and the monitor switches on. Aaron fiddles away at his code, then pops the capsule out again and just sticks the fucking thing in Rachel's open leg wound. I guess nanites are more powerful than septic shock? Sure, whatever. It's disgusting.
Rachel starts screaming as her leg knits itself back together in some nicely rubbery, Doctor Who-level visual effects. Lucky that Rachel's fixed now, because a small group of men with guns have found them in the computer repair shop and witnessed the healing. They're pretty insistent on Rachel and Aaron coming with them.
Miles, Nora and Neville watch as militia soldiers take weapons from the dead rebels and Georgians. Two of them carry off an unconscious Jason. The three amigos attack those two and Jason, who's beat all to hell, tells them Charlie was in the lookout tower when it collapsed. Miles yells at him, which seems really fucking stupid considering they're surrounded by militia, and Jason knows it. He wants to off himself since he's in such bad shape, they're surrounded by militia and there's little to no hope of him getting medical attention any time soon, but Neville says he'll take care of Jason and sends Miles and Nora to dig Charlie out of the rubble.
Flashback. Miles has brought Rachel back to her home, but Ben and the kids are nowhere to be found. She tells him she doesn't know where they've gone, and admits that she can't turn the power back on. It doesn't matter, though, she says, because she'll never let Miles find Ben, who might or might not be able to turn the power back on. (And I might believe her, maybe, if Ben had been living in East Chicagoville or wherever using an assumed name, or had left the Monroe Republic, or was taking any precautions at all not to get caught. But, uh, he wasn't.)
Rachel tells Miles that his grisly reputation as the Butcher of Baltimore precedes him, so why would she give him the power to kill more people? She tells him she's ashamed to have this monster in her family, and he grabs her by the neck and says that's not what she used to say. He moves his hand down her chest and gruffs that he used to care about her and thought she felt the same way. "We were kids," she replies, and characterizes their relationship as a "cheap and ugly fling" that she regrets. Miles moves as if he's going to punch her, but he doesn't -- just telling her that's not all she'll regret.
Ye Newe West. The kidnappers bring Aaron and Rachel -- who's walking just fine -- to a house where there's a sick boy on the couch. The man tells his wife that they found Aaron and Rachel when they were hunting, and that Aaron fixed Rachel's leg. He asks Aaron how he did it, and Aaron just stammers about how it was surgery. Kind of.
The man asks if they can help the boy, and while Aaron would like to flee, Rachel goes over to see whose lives she can fuck up in this town. The kid fell off his horse, the father says, and broke some ribs. Rachel pulls up his shirt and the boy has a hideous multicolored bruise on his chest. Rachel says they have to go get some supplies from the store and they can help. And, uh, don't they have to cut the capsule out of her leg?
Jeremy says all of Philadelphia is locked down and he swears they'll find the assassin who tried to off Monroe. Monroe pours some liquor and says they never did get that drink. He totally suspects Jeremy of setting up the hit, by the way. He says they were lucky not to get shot, especially Jeremy, who was totally exposed. Monroe sips his booze and says it was great timing that the shooter was waiting outside the bar.
They're both drinking from the same decanter, so Monroe probably didn't poison Jeremy just now, but as Jeremy turns to leave, the soldiers block his way. Jeremy swears he didn't have anything to do with the assassination attempt, that he's the only friend Monroe has left, but Monroe points out (correctly!) that his friends try to kill him all the time.
Jeremy's serving full-on realness at this point, and tells Monroe that he made Miles and Neville betray him because he's become such a sadistic, paranoid bastard. He says even if Monroe does take over all of North America, he'll do it alone, while suspecting everyone around him. Monroe thanks Jeremy for telling him the truth, and then leaves the room. After he closes the door, gunfire erupts inside. RIP, Jeremy. You and your big ears were decent. And funny.
Miles and Nora approach the collapsed building and shoot a militia soldier, which of course gives away their location to all the other militia soldiers. Firefight.
Charlie's trying to scratch her way out of her bricky grave with her fingernails. She manages to shift the rubble on top of her and crawl out of a hole, and almost right into the path of a bunch of militia soldiers. She backs into the hole, her hair still looking amazing.
The Nevilles' two-man Off-Broadway production of The Great Santini continues. Jason asks his father why he's helping him and Tom's all, because we used all the squibs on you so it looks like you're much more grievously injured! Tom confesses that he's done all sorts of bad things -- lying, murdering, torture, getting on a subway car and then standing right in front of the doors -- but leaving his only son to die alone is his bridge too far.
Aaron and the hunter from earlier return to the computer shop and he starts to explain as much as he can, but then Rachel wallops the hunter over the head and is all, let's go! She tells Aaron it's too late for that kid, so they need to run before he dies while they struggle to perform a "miracle." Man, that Rachel Matheson. Such a devoted humanitarian.
Aaron, patron saint of lost causes, protests that they should try to help people with their power, which is a completely foreign concept to Rachel. She says she's not in it to help people; she's doing this to wipe Monroe off the map, as revenge for Danny's death. And she's totally willing to let someone else's kid -- or everyone else's kids -- die. Aaron. Dude. Run. Well, amble.
Firefight. I'm so glad they resolved that whole ammunition-shortage problem, because my life doesn't have nearly enough people shooting endless rounds from automatic weapons at each other in it. Militia soldiers catch up with the Nevilles. Tom puts Jason down on the ground, then kills all four soldiers, but not without taking a slug in the shoulder.
Back in Rubbletown, Miles asks Nora to cover him while he makes a suicidal dash across a cleared area toward Charlie's pile of rubble. Nora tries to talk sense, telling him that Charlie might be dead and she doesn't want him to die too. Miles just repeats that he's not leaving Charlie for dead, because that's what he did to Rachel. He pops up from cover and starts firing. Nora makes a run for it across the clearing.
Charlie watches from her hole. When all the soldiers near her run toward Miles and Nora, she comes out of the hole and runs across the clearing toward them. Miles is literally in the middle of two women who are both running into the line of fire, and his expression is basically "more of this shit again. I just want to go back to Forks, where my biggest problem was my teenage daughter marrying the undead."
Flashback. Buttoned-up Miles tells Rachel, who's tied to a chair, that she's given him no choice in not spilling Ben's location. He kneels in front of her and says it's going to get bad for her, and that he's totally willing to torture her even though they used to have a thing, and even though they're family. He tells her he doesn't care about her.
A militia soldier tackles Charlie. They fight, but Miles interrupts and kills the soldier. He scoops Charlie up and she clings to him. They run back to look for Nora, but with no luck.
Philadelphia. Someone has cleaned up the Jeremy-shaped bloodstain on Monroe's office floor, apparently. One of his subordinates comes in to tell him they caught the would-be assassin: a Georgia spy. They say they tortured him and are sure he was acting alone. See, Bass? This is why you have no friends.
Atlanta. The Nevilles made it to medical attention, so Jason -- considerably less smeared in red Karo syrup -- wakes up in a hospital bed. Charlie's there and fills him in on the details. He apologizes for leaving her, and she's like, that's fine, but tell me, are your ribs broken or can I climb on top of you and dry-hump? They make out. Tom Neville, back in fighting form, witnesses the making out and tries not to vomit.
Miles yells at a Georgia Federation soldier that he wants him to find Nora. The man protests that Monroe has wiped out most of their spies. President Foster interrupts and tells Miles she's lost too many men already and can't risk losing him as well. She closes the door and exposits that the drone strike wiped out half her army in a week and pretty soon, "Monroe is gonna come marching into this city like Sherman." Very subtle. She asks what brilliant ideas Miles might have, because if he doesn't have any, she's going to surrender and try to save as many lives as she can.
Ah, there's Nora. The Monrovies have captured her, and Monroe himself is there for the interrogation. Well. Bet she's going to regret that tattoo in a minute.
time: Monroe puts Nora through the Marion-wears-a-white-nightgown-for-Belloq sequence from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Miles gets a helicopter. And Charlie and Jason make out some more, but he might be the mole, so that's bad.
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