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Nora, last seen falling into Monroe's filthy mitts, manages to withstand three weeks of torture before she breaks and tells him where Miles and Rachel are. John, last seen getting clubbed in the head by Miles and then defecting to the Monroe cause, had been complicit in the Nora-torturin', even injecting her with a psychedelic concoction of his own creation. He gets disillusioned and smuggles Nora out the back and down to Atlanta.
After Monroe threatens to kill Randall, because Monroe gets really itchy if he doesn't get to murder someone every day, Randall convinces him to hold off on the killing by telling him about the existence of the Tower, which is full of all sorts of delightful, even more murdery weapons. So they scamper off to Colorado, which is where…
Rachel and Aaron have also arrived. Rachel's plan is to kill Monroe, creating a diversion so Aaron can get inside the Tower and turn the juice back on. Aaron thinks this is a terrible idea, because for some reason he still likes Rachel.
In Atlanta, Nora tells Miles that she spilled the beans, so he powers up his helicopter and they fly off to rescue Rachel, with Charlie, Jason, Neville, Jim, John, and Commander Ramsey in tow. When they stop midcontinent for fuel, an assassin in their ranks dispatches the pilot and Ramsey. After much shouting and threatening and misdirection, it turns out Jim is the assassin, because the Monrovies kidnapped his wife and so he promised to kill Miles, Neville, John, and Ramsey. But he only gets one out of four before Jason kills him. Such a shame. Jim was fun to have around.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Revolution: Randall and his minion John hooked up with Monroe (guess that's how Monroe got the drones he used on the rebels last week). We found out that Rachel is a terrible, selfish, almost irredeemable character who is willing to let everyone in the world die on her whim. Jason almost got blown to bits in the drone attack, and Nora was taken into Monroe custody.
Nora's prison cell. Hair status: still pretty good, considering. Quite shiny. A guard brings her a box and tells her to open it; inside is a Marion-in-Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark¬-style white dress so Nora can get all tarted up to have the world's most uncomfortable dinner with Monroe. He greets her as an old friend when she arrives, and pours her a glass of wine. She's not so dumb as to drink it.
Monroe strokes her glorious hair while they banter tensely about how Monroe wants to have Miles's things -- including Nora's vagina, obviously. But the real reason he's brought her to this lovely dungeon is to ask where Miles is. Rather than reply, Nora grabs a wine bottle, smashes it, and tries to slash Monroe's face open with it, but he disarms her easily and pins her to the table, hissing, "I. Tried. To. Be. Nice."
And then we're with Monroe's enhanced interrogators, who are beating Nora and half drowning her, all the while asking where Miles is. She replies that Miles is probably banging their mothers, and then on day fourteen John shows up and injects some yellow stuff into Nora's neck. A week later, Nora's barely conscious. The soldiers tell John to give her more of whatever he's been shooting into her neck. He makes a token protest, but when he threatens Nora with the needle again, she breaks and tells them Miles is somewhere in Atlanta. Now they want to know about Neville. And Rachel. Nora tells them what she knows. When she says Rachel is going to the Tower, John makes a subtle "oh shit" face.
Randall lies to Monroe about the Tower, telling him it's an old DOD installation that's no longer important, but Monroe replies that John told him the Tower can turn the power back on for everyone. He's not pleased that Randall didn't share this information, and since we saw how he treated Jeremy, who was his friend, last week, after Monroe hollers, "I don't like you," he tells his guards to kill Randall.
Randall pleads that Monroe needs him, that the pendants and amplifiers aren't enough, and that John can't get Monroe into the Tower, where all the really fun stuff is kept. "Turning the lights back on is the least it can do," he says desperately. Still with a gun to his head, Randall explains that there are things in the Tower that even the president didn't know about before the blackout, weapons that will make the drones look like paper airplanes. He promises to give those weapons to Monroe. John confirms that Randall is telling the truth, and Monroe calls off his assassins. A very relieved Randall suggests, "Road trip?" So Monroe, Randall, and some minions hop in a chopper and gallivant off to Colorado.
Back in the dungeon, a guard lets John into Nora's cell after John tells him he's there to execute Nora. Pervert guard is sad, as he wanted to fuck Nora. Inside, Nora, who's strung up like a marionette and still hallucinating, watches John approach with another hypodermic of yellow stuff. He apologizes and sticks the needle in her purplish, bruised neck again.
Colorado. Rachel and Aaron slog through the rain. She says they're almost there.
In Atlanta, Jim is none too pleased with Miles's new plan of Point All Remaining Weapons Toward Philadelphia, Push Button, and Try to Win That Way. He's all, I used to have a nice wife! And a library! Why'd you have to come ruin everything? Neither of them has news of Nora, which seems to concern them both.
Jason, who's up and walking around just fine after almost getting smushed to death last week, is trying to get Charlie to flee Atlanta for Texas since Monroe's troops are advancing. She asks him why he cares what happens to her, and he kisses her, but then sees some guy watching them. He runs off to deal with the nosy staring guy. Possibly by licking him to death, because I have seen no evidence to disprove my theory that Jason is actually a chocolate Labrador.
John is trying to drive out of Philadelphia, the streets of which are also packed with people fleeing the city, just like Atlanta's were. He has an amplifier in the front seat, to power the car, and unconscious Nora in the backseat, to lie there and look mostly dead.
Rebel army hospital. Miles rushes into a room where they have Nora in a bed, looking like absolute hell. Miles asks what happened, as if he's not nationally famous for how much he likes to torture people, so surely he can figure it out with his magnificent powers of deduction. Nora, conscious now, apologizes and confesses that she told Monroe everything.
Miles storms off to where they have John in an interrogation room. Sure, hospitals have interrogation rooms. As Neville, Jim, and rebel Commander Ramsey watch through the glass, Miles muses that maybe John used Nora to infiltrate their outfit. John replies that he's fed up with killing for Monroe and he wants to help Miles help Rachel, since Monroe is headed her way with an army. Miles accepts this really quickly and instructs John to take them to the Tower.
Miles tries to convince Jim to sit this battle out, since he has a family to go home to. Jim flatly reminds Miles that his wife won't have him back since she got a load of his murderous capabilities. "So you better put on a dress, because you're all I have left," he snaps before going off to fuel up the Magical Continent-Spanning Transportation Machine the rebels have at their disposal that explains how they can hop from Atlanta to Kentucky to West Virginia to Philly and now to Denver in the blink of an eyelash.
Neville pops up and says Foster has ordered him to ride along with Miles on the suicide trip. Guess who else wants to go? Charlie. to a helicopter, she nervously asks Jason if he's ever flown before. He did, as a tiny kid. She gets on board. Nora also thinks she's coming along, but Miles objects before John rattles off the list of nasty-sounding psychedelics he shot her up with, so maaaaaaybe she shouldn't be getting on any flying modes of transportation that don't have doors, hmm? She probably still thinks she can fly. Nora pleads with Miles to let her help while Neville and Ramsey cram into a tiny seat that neither of them looks too happy to be sharing. Their reaction shot is the funniest part of this episode.
In Colorado Springs, Monroe has set up camp. Major Franklin mentions the tribes to the north and south, saying they won't be too thrilled to have the Monrovies camped out on their doorstep, but Monroe just tells him to give them smallpox blankets so they won't be any trouble. Sure, he's a genocidal maniac who has his closest friends executed and was perfectly willing to burn his childhood sweetheart alive, but it's Monroe's racism that's a deal breaker.
Monroe says "the Tower" seems like a misnomer as he and Randall look into the entrance cut into the side of a mountain. Randall says it goes half a mile down into the earth. Which makes it a mine shaft. Not a tower. Randall puts his palm on the plate that should admit him, but his access is denied. Monroe wants to shoot Randall on the spot, but Randall asks for time. A small pack of mysterious figures, their backs to us, watch Randall and Monroe on monitors from inside the tower.
Milescopter. Jason and Charlie make mushy faces at each other in the back of the bus while he flashes back to when he confronted the guy who was staring at him. The guy extends his hand, showing the Monroe brand on his wrist, greets Jason by both of his recent aliases, and tells him he has a job for him. Back in the copter, they land at Fort Hanson, somewhere in the Plains Nation, to refuel. And my expert source on this subject tells me aviation fuel actually could last fifteen years, although it might be contaminated with water or fungus, so you'd want to get it from a storage site, not from a decaying plane. It's not the most unbelievable part of this episode, anyway. The pilot tells them to drain any planes, choppers, or fuel trucks they can find.
John goes off to fiddle something, but not before giving Nora the universal signal for "keep your mouth shut." Miles suggests that Nora stay here...on this abandoned air force base where she knows no one and there's no food? Jesus, Matheson, who made you Commander of Stupid Ideas this week? She tells him he's fine and he goes back to siphoning fuel.
Outside a shipping container, Charlie notices fresh red blood on the ground. She pulls the doors of the container open and finds the pilot, his throat cut, an X carved into the wound. Miles explains that it's a sign that a local killed him, that the Plains people don't want these assorted Mathesons and their blundering hangers-on intruding. Seems completely reasonable to me. When they get back to the chopper, the engine's been tampered with. Miles says Nora can fix the helicopter and he can fly it, but right now he's going to try and find the pilot-murderer.
In Colorado, Rachel and Aaron watch Monroe's men from the woods. She hands him Jane's book, which has the override codes to get into the Tower, and explains that after she kills Monroe tonight, he should slip inside in all the confusion. Aaron protests that the Monrovies will kill her, to which Rachel is like, DUH. She cry-stammers some more bullshit about Danny and Ben and commands him to turn the power back on.
Fort Hanson. Miles runs into Charlie, who wasn't being too stealthy -- which I guess is a good thing because Miles would have shot her -- and they run off together toward a noise: it's Ramsey, who's also had his throat cut. Ah, Mr. Oswald. We knew you in this dumb world so briefly. Miles sends Charlie for help -- what help? The just-add-water qualified trauma surgeon they've been keeping in a jar for just such an occasion? -- and tries to stop the bleeding and also get Ramsey to tell him who did this to him. Ramsey, of course, has a transected windpipe and can't exactly talk real good, so he just dies and Miles is all WHY DOES EVERYTHING BAD HAPPEN TO ME.
Charlie comes running back with Jason, John, Jim, and Neville. And one of these J names is going to have to die, because there are too many for me to keep track of. It's like recapping the damn Duggars. Miles says he doesn't think a Plains local killed the pilot and Ramsey and disabled the chopper. He thinks one of the people present did it. I think it's Nora. Who's conspicuously absent.
Inside the hangar, Miles makes everyone put their weapons in a bag. Charlie, who basically treats her gun like Lennie did that puppy at this point, reluctantly gives hers up. Neville is suspicious of John, and asks how, exactly, he just waltzed out of a militia prison with a hundred and ten pounds of unconscious rebel bomb maker slung over his shoulder. John asks, "Do I look like a killer to you?"
Neville, former mild-mannered insurance adjuster turned savage torturer and murderer, bites off his words when he says he's seen killers in all shapes and sizes. He's even more unwilling to give up his gun when Miles asks for it, and now points the finger at Jim, who's been missing lately. Jim exposits that he took the Magical Flying Machine to Annapolis a few weeks back and he's been fighting with Ramsey. This seems to placate Neville, who takes off his dozens of weapons and puts them in Miles's bag. Miles (who's still armed) locks the bag in a helicopter and goes off to find Nora.
He finds her facedown on the ground, with a knife to her, but when he flips her over, she hasn't had her throat cut. He shakes her awake and Nora, still pretty wibbly from the drugs, says she blacked out while going to get fuel; as Miles binds up her bleeding hand, he asks how she hurt herself. She doesn't know.
Back at the hangar, Miles believes Nora's story. Neville doesn't. John cuts in that all the drugs he slugged into Nora cause paranoia, hallucination, and psychotic behavior, so it's totally possible that she killed the pilot and Ramsey. Miles refuses to believe Nora's guilty, because this week the script says he loves Nora best and rates Charlie about as highly as a smear of pigeon shit on his shoe, but as he starts yelling irrationally, Nora cuts in and announces that she thinks she did do it.
In a flashback we see Nora kill one of her guards in Monroe's dungeon. In the present, she says she doesn't remember doing it. (So did John tell her she did it?) Miles tells her he knows her and he trusts her, and he knows she didn't commit these murders, but Nora cries that she broke and told Monroe everything. This seems to be news to Neville, who says Nora's a risk and they need to leave her here. Miles -- who had the exact same idea like ten minutes ago! -- is unwilling to hear bad words about Nora and decides to search everyone's bags. Jason tries to remove something from his, but Miles catches him and grabs the object -- a bloody switchblade.
Jason protests that someone planted the knife on him and asks Charlie to stand up for him. She just makes a cryface and asks about Billings, the guy she saw him talking to in Atlanta. Jason protests that he was just some Georgian, but even his own father doesn't believe that lie. Aaaaand we're back to square one with Willy and Biff Neville, the drama that chases its own tail and never ends. Jason confesses that Billings is from the Monroe Militia, and he told him that if Jason killed Miles he could have whatever he wanted. It's unclear if that offer came from Monroe, but Jason says he refused it anyway. Miles doesn't believe him and wants to shoot Jason, but Tom stops him. Jason flees. Miles chases him, with Tom on his heels.
Colorado. A militia soldier finds a recently extinguished campfire; while he's distracted, Rachel jumps on his back and strangles him to death with her belt.
Fort Hanson. Miles is just wandering around, kind of looking for Jason, kind of wondering what the ethics are of banging Nora while she's still all hallucinatey. He comes across John, who holds up the bloody switchblade and says Jason didn't kill the pilot and Ramsey -- the switchblade has a manufacturer's mark on it from Annapolis. "Know anyone who's been to Annapolis lately?" he asks, just before Jim jumps out from wherever he was hiding and shoots John. Guess that bag o' guns wasn't too secure after all.
Miles and Jim fight, then Miles uses his betrayed voice to say, "Jim.". You'd think Miles would be just a touch more jaded, considering all the people he's killed and/or screwed over and lives he's destroyed, but when it comes to his friends, seriously, the dude is made of tapioca. Jim's all, remember how you ruined my Stephen King-lovin' life? He confesses that the militia has his wife and they've threatened to kill her. Miles deduces that Jim was the leak that led the drones to them in Kentucky. Jim says his orders were to kill Miles, Neville, Ramsey, and John. Miles is still oddly fixated on how Jim used to be his friend. They fight, but just as Jim is about to fillet Miles, Jason shoots him dead. He walks outside to where his father was watching the fight, and brushes by Tom without a word.
Nora fixes the helicopter and tells Miles he looks like ten miles of bad road. She thanks him for being on her side. He climbs into the pilot's seat while the rest of their diminished rescue crew loads up. Charlie apologizes to Jason, who's still sore as hell about the whole you'll-make-out-with-me-but-you-won't-trust-me-not-to-murder-your-genocidal-uncle thing. Neville powers up the amplifier, Miles switches on the helicopter, and they explode into a fireball. Eh, just kidding.
Colorado. Aaron, divested of his glasses -- which, great idea, handicap the big slow lug further -- watches from the woods as Rachel, in a militia uniform, strides toward Monroe's tent. She has a grenade in her hand as she walks in. She pulls the pin. Franklin points his gun at her. Monroe greets her as Rachel makes her philosophical face and releases the lever.
week: Miles and the others rejoin Aaron and enter the Tower. Where Landry Clarke's dad is waiting for them.