In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Back east, Tom and Jason Neville escort Allenford onto a Washington-bound train, and while they're riding the rails, Neville sees an apparition: it's his undead wife, Julia! And she's not exactly folding a thousand paper cranes, you know? So Tom and Julia bang and then she's reunited with her son and the ongoing Family Neville plot against the patriots has its Lady Macbeth restored.
A flashback confirms that Rachel and Miles did have an affair before the kids were born and Rachel offered to leave Ben, but Miles turned her down. In the present, Monroe wants to run for it, since he's already had a near-death experience and wants to find the son Miles hid from him. But Miles insists on sticking around, even though he's so sick from the rancid infection in his festering hand that he passes out… but not before confessing his undying love to Rachel.
Aaron and Cynthia escape patriot custody, knocking everyone within a three-block radius bunnies in the process, and take refuge in the decaying hulk of Willoughby High School. While Cynthia sleeps off her getting-stabbed-and-then-mysteriously-healing hangover, Aaron chats with a spooky little kid -- a kid who, it turns out, Cynthia can't see. Because the spooky kid is the human embodiment of the nanites. He explains that Aaron invented them and when Aaron thinks "kill," they kill. Aaron is horrified, because Aaron is still thinking about concepts like right and wrong (and the silly social embargo on flame-broiling murder) with his pre-blackout brain.
The patriots and Dr. Horn hunt Aaron and Cynthia through the school, with Horn steadily sicker due to his massive brain tumor. Horn corners Aaron and demands to be healed, then shoots Cynthia as an inducement. Aaron holds his dead woman in his arms and commands Kevin to kill all the patriots. But then the little bastard fucks off because Aaron hurt his feelings and Cynthia stays dead.
Think you've got game? Prove it! Check out Games Without Pity, our new area featuring trivia, puzzle, card, strategy, action and word games -- all free to play and guaranteed to help pass the time until your show starts.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Revolution: Dr. Horn tortured Aaron to find out how he can control the nanites, only Aaron has no idea. Rachel considered murdering her own father to eliminate Horn. And Ms. Justine's husband shot her dead.
Miles, Charlie, and Rachel are preparing to make their suicidal attack on the patriot bunker to rescue Aaron and Cynthia. It's the three of them, with maybe six guns, up against thirty or forty soldiers. But they're the Fightin' Mathesons! They don't give a fuck! They're about to charge in when Miles suddenly decides to give a fuck—he hesitates when he notices all the patriot soldiers who should be guarding the bunker are flat on the ground. There's a motionless crow among them, and a dog as well.
Miles checks one for a pulse and says he's just bunnies, not dead. So they stroll right in through the open door. Passing more bunnies soldiers on their way in, they ascertain that Gene's nowhere to be found. Charlie picks up one of Aaron's boot prints and they guess this is Aaron's handiwork. "Seriously…what the hell's going on?" Miles asks. Dude, we've been wondering that since the Tower. They follow the tracks.
Behind a closed door, they find a few more bunnies soldiers, a man-sized hole in the wall, and no Aaron. The soldiers are starting to come to, so Miles insists they beat feet, even though Rachel is suddenly soooooo concerned about her traitor daddy and wants to faff around looking for him.
Train station, somewhere back east. The Nevilles escort Allenford to his train while Allenford bitches about Jason's presence, since he's escaped from a reeducation center. Tom emphasizes that Jason's presence isn't optional, and then tells his son, "Smile, boy. We're going to the White House."
Willoughby. The patriots are all groaning over their desks, clutching their heads. One reports to Horn that it looks like Aaron just walked out through a wall, into "the tunnels." And I totally believe that all small Texas towns have an elaborate network of underground tunnels. This is why there are all those urban legends and George Strait songs about the mole people of Amarillo.
Miles, Charlie, and Rachel have emerged from a tunnel into a foggy field. Charlie picks up Aaron's trail again. Miles is also curious about the existence of the tunnel, and about the weird, totally-not-Texas-summer-y weather. He blames it on the nanites and asks Rachel to explain, but she's suddenly concerned about Gene, whom she wanted to kill like, twenty minutes ago, and insists she has to go back. Charlie wants to go with her, but Miles asks them to stay and help him figure out "this X-Files weirdness" and find Aaron before they go gallivanting back into the heavily guarded town where they're all wanted for murder.
All the intra-Matheson mishegoss is interrupted by the arrival of a whole troop of patriots, also looking for Aaron, as evidenced by the presence of Horn in a wagon. Miles is all, now will you believe that we should stay here outside the walls? And maybe we should go to Iowa or something?
Aaron wakes up in the trashed library of the abandoned Willoughby high school. Cynthia's across the room, still bunnies. He pulls up her bloody shirt—there's no wound on her abdomen, where the patriot soldier stabbed her at the end of last week's episode. He hears a noise and investigates, almost having apoplexy when a silent little kid surprises him.
Aaron asks the kid if he saw who brought him and Cynthia in; the kid says Aaron walked in under his own power, carrying Cynthia. Aaron doesn't remember a bit of this, because nanites are a hell of a drug.
Monroe, doing his postapocalyptic version of Blue Steel, watches patriot soldiers stalk through the fog. Elsewhere, Charlie curses when she loses Aaron's trail. Because Charlie sucks at everything. They're bickering awfully loudly for people who are supposed to be hiding, and when three soldiers appear out of the mist, the Mathesons quickly slaughter them. They don't do so quietly, however, and are about to be arrested by a few more soldiers when Monroe appears to slaughter those idiots. "I'm Batman," Monroe quips. Miles rolls his eyes and Team M flees through the woods.
On the train (see, Joe Biden was right, the Northeast Corridor is a great and sustainable way to travel), Allenford examines a piece of paper with that vaguely backward-Arabic-looking script on it, like the coded message Ugly sent Ms. Justine. He leaves his seat and asks Jason where Tom is. Neville is investigating why the train stopped; he looks out the window and sees a silver-haired man claiming his luggage, then greeting with a kiss…Julia Neville. Looking distinctly un-barbecued by the wrathful nuclear flames of Atlanta.
Aaron pours some sort of beverage into Cynthia, who's barely conscious. The spooky kid asks if she'll be okay, and Aaron says he hopes so. He asks if he's seen the kid around town, because he looks familiar. The kid evades, and says he's been looking for his parents when Aaron inquires after them. Spooky's from Spring City, Oklahoma, he says. Home to the second-biggest ball of twine in the world. Sounds idyllic compared to this shithole, Aaron thinks.
A patriot soldier, making the most comically threatening I'm-hunting-you face, watches them through the window. It's like he hasn't heard Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is closing and he's auditioning for Green Goblin. It's so campy.
Shaw, the patriot who recruited Gene, examines the bodies of the soldiers Team M killed. Horn is behind him, frowning with all his powers of constipation—although he could just have a headache from arching his right eyebrow so high it joins with his hairline (and on a man with Zeljko Ivanek's tonsorial topography, that is an achievement). He's starting to go into one of his inevitable self-aggrandizing flashbacks when Shaw interrupts to say they should wait until the fog lifts to continue searching for Aaron. Horn overrules Shaw and tells him to ride back to town and have Ed send every man he has so they can find Aaron now. "I'm out of time," Horn says, because like Rachel Matheson, he considers himself the most important person in the world.
Monroe secures the cellar doors under the barn where he's taken the Mathesons. Miles immediately starts bitching about what a poor job Monroe did of protecting Aaron, and says Monroe now has to help them find him. Monroe's all, second lease on life! Fuck all y'all! (So actually it's a lot like his last life.) Monroe wants Miles to tell him where his son is so he can go find him. And probably ruin his life.
Miles pulls his sleeve up and shows Monroe his hellish forearm of infecty infection. Monroe tenderly feels Miles's forehead and simpers, "You're burning up, you moron. You need a doctor." Miles confesses that he can't really fight with that useless club of flesh-eating rot at the end of his arm, so he needs Monroe to help with the Aaron effort. Monroe is unconvinced that Aaron is worth dying for.
Miles growls that he disagrees. And…what has convinced him of this? Last season Aaron walked from Chicago to Philadelphia while whining about the chafing, they discovered that he wrote the code the DOD used to turn off the power and therefore inadvertently made all this shit possible, and then he failed to stop the bombs from falling on Atlanta and Philly. That's about it. Tell me again why Aaron is so important?
So Monroe scoffs that Miles gone soft, "like a puppy holding a kitten," but Miles refuses to tell where Li'l Sebastian is unless Monroe helps them rescue Aaron.
In other illogical Matheson news, Rachel's busy making a duck face while Charlie promises her mother they'll rescue Gene after they get Aaron. Because all their plans lately have gone so well. Rachel flagellates herself for a while about planning to murder her own father, then tells her daughter (whom she's left for dead at least twice) that she loves her. If you loved her, Rachel, you'd get her to do something with that stringy fuckin' mop on her head. It is a disgrace.
Flashback, six years before the blackout. Miles, in BDUs, gets off an airport shuttle. Rachel, who's tricked out in bangs and eyeliner that don't make her look younger (as this is supposed to be twenty-one years ago), but more like she's dressing up as Julie Bowen for Halloween, woundedly asks if he was planning to leave without saying goodbye. He says, "We can't keep doing this. He's my brother." Man, Miles is so Charlie's father. They make some more guilty adulterous small talk, and then Miles tells Rachel to go start a family and "be happy."
Rachel offers to leave Ben if Miles says he loves her. Miles swallows hard and replies, "I don't love you." Rachel cries that she doesn't believe him, but Miles leaves. Yeah, those are some bangs of misplaced paternity if I've ever seen 'em.
In the foggy forest, Horn stares up at the sky. Spider-Man Patriot runs up and says he's found Aaron.
Train. Neville enters the dining car and stares at Julia until she notices him. He comes closer while she quietly freaks out, then he walks right past her. Julia's companion is saying to the other couple dining with them something about getting "the United States back on its feet again…proud of the job we're doing here," so he's obviously involved with the patriots as well.
Julia excuses herself and runs after Neville, following him into a baggage compartment. They fall on each other and make out like band geeks.
Charlie stumbles across another footprint while the rest of the M party wonders about where all the soldiers have gone. Rachel thinks they must have found Aaron, and Charlie follows the trail.
In the school, Cynthia wakes up. Aaron promises her they'll get away, but Spooky Kid doesn't want them to leave. Aaron offers to take him with them, and Cynthia asks who he's talking to. So Spooky Kid is a figment of his imagination.
"We fixed her. We brought you back to life. We just want to talk," Spooky Kid Made of Nanites says. Aaron's WTF face is actually getting a little overused at this point. Maybe make up a new one, Orth?
Aaron storms through the school, Cynthia on his heels asking what the hell all that was. He confesses what Spooky Kid said, and she swallows it all, then tells him to go talk to Spooky Kid. Because even a hallucinating pyromaniac is better than her shitty ex-husband. She promises to be right beside him and he says, with no little affection, "You're crazier than I am." Cynthia becomes the first person on this show to crack an actual smile in, like, six episodes when she wryly replies, "That's why you love me."
Sex train. Julia zips her dress up and Neville tucks his disheveled shirt back in. She hesitantly asks about Jason, not wanting confirmation that her son is actually dead, and Neville briskly replies that he's on the train. Julia gulps and Neville's all, care to explain why you're not dead?
Julia does her best Scarlett when she says she and her friend Theresa left Atlanta when it "started to fall." They found a house outside the city to hide out in, and they were there when the bombs fell. Neville mutters, "Thank God you're alive," in the same tone a normal person would say, "I will piss on your grave," then growls, so, about the old white guy you've taken up with?
Julia says he's her husband. She thought Tom was dead so she latched onto this guy to survive. And she appears to have done so with no little comfort. When she asks why Neville's on the train, he replies that the patriots dropped the bombs, and he was planning to kill the president as revenge for Julia's death. Er, "death." Julia Lady Macbeths, "I love you," with that particular glint of sociopathy in her eye, and as she buttons Tom's shirt, she commands him not to kill the president, but to keep his job while they burrow deeper to further their own ends.
Aaron finds Spooky Nanite Kid in a classroom, where the wee apparition is examining a map. Aaron says he thought the kid looked familiar—he's Kevin, Aaron's friend from third grade. Kevin replies that they played The Legend of Zelda together, and when Aaron wonders how the kid knows that, he replies, "We're everywhere. We're in the air, in your head." And it takes Aaron this long—although to be fair, he was recently tortured—to figure out that Kevin is made of nanites. "You woke us up," Kevin says.
Flashback to Aaron in the Tower, about to shut the power off. "What if we end the world?" he asks Rachel. She assures him they won't. WANNA BET, ASSHOLES? He presses a button and everything goes black, then we cut to Monroe, who was out on the Colorado prairie somewhere, watching a truly pants-wetting-inducing lightning storm.
Back in the school, Kevin tells Aaron that he made them. Aaron acknowledges that he made a lot of things, "but never an A.I. Haley Joel." Kevin, luckily, is an apparition frozen in the mid-nineties, so he gets the joke. He asks if Aaron's been to Spring City, Oklahoma, to see its second-biggest ball of twine. Aaron snaps that he doesn't want riddles, he wants real answers. Kevin, maddeningly vague, replies that Aaron made them, and they just want to help. When Aaron says "kill" in his head, they kill, he explains.
Aaron pleads with Kevin to leave him alone and go away. Doesn't that mean he'll drop dead? Kevin just looks toward the windows and says, "They're here." Outside, Horn and the patriots are closing in on the school.
Train of fuckery. Jason's staring out the window when Neville brings Julia in and introduces her as Mrs. Doyle. He explains, "She's a little turned around" and instructs Jason to bring this nice lost lady back to her husband. (It's…a train. There are two directions.) Jason just gapes like a fish and does as he's told. It's nice that Julia was able to escape Atlanta carrying her collection of tasteful sheath dresses.
Team M has caught up to the patriots outside Willoughby High. Miles leads the charge of the light brigade. Monroe's the last one in, because what the hell is he even doing here, he wonders. They split up to search.
Horn wobbles blearily through the halls, although it's hard to tell that he's supposed to be near death, because Zeljko Ivanek looks so cadaverous in all of his roles.
Aaron and Cynthia have barricaded themselves in the library like Lex and Tim in the Jurassic Park kitchen. A velociraptriot walks in and starts stalking through the aisles. Aaron and Cynthia find another exit and flee.
Rachel and Miles look for the Pittmans in a classroom, and then Miles's eyes roll back in his head and he pitches forward onto his face. Rachel clutches at him ineffectually and then he shows her the gruesome arm of gangrene. He tells her to go without him, but she does that infuriating Elizabeth Mitchell thing where she locks her jaw to pretend she's having an emotion and refuses to leave.
Charlie and Monroe move through a hallway, her whispering for Aaron. Alerted by a noise at the opposite end of the hall, they hide in a crossing hallway as if to pop out and massacre the oncoming patriots. But then Monroe spots an exit, shrugs, and bails. Charlie's hair just lies there and cries for a hot-oil treatment, and then Charlie stuffs herself in a locker to hide from the patriots.
Rachel had thoughtfully wedged a chair under the doorknob of the room she and Miles are hiding in, but someone's trying to break it in. Miles, suddenly an inch from death, whispers that he never should have let Rachel go, because she was always the one. He passes out. She makes giant weepy eyes at him, then, when a patriot breaks the door in, guns the intruder down before grabbing Miles's face and exhorting him to wake up.
Aaron and Cynthia's mad flight through the halls stops at the point of Horn's gun. Horn, his hand shaking, weepily says, "I've been looking for you," and Zak Orth finally decides on a facial expression that isn't "Oops, I crapped my pants," hardens his gaze, and clearly thinks, "KILL."
Aaron politely asks Horn to let them go, and Horn agrees he will, if Aaron gets rid of the tumor in his head the way he saved Cynthia when she was bleeding to death. (He left the room. How did he see that?) Aaron protests that Horn doesn't understand how it works, and Horn screams at him to stop lying, then cries about how much pain he's in. Aaron's all, oh, like how you were carving up my skin last week? Did it hurt like that, you mewling twit?
Charlie creeps out of her locker, right into the waiting hands of a patriot, who flings her against the wall hard enough to jar loose her janky weave. But Monroe appears to save the day, killing the two soldiers. And for like THE FIFTH TIME, he doesn't do it quietly enough, so a whole pack of their buddies are immediately upon Our Stupid Goddamn Heroes. Charlie and Monroe flee, again, some more, through the gym, then take a stand behind a pile of debris and exchange fire with the patriots. I miss when this show had a bullet shortage.
Horn points his gun at Cynthia and threatens to kill her if Aaron doesn't fix him. Aaron screams for help while Horn counts to three. Aaron begs for more time, saying he thinks he can figure it out, but Horn shoots Cynthia. She collapses on the ground in slow motion. Jesus, this poor woman. Out of the fridge, into this shit. Aaron clutches her in his arms, then looks up from under his stringy bangs. Kevin is standing to him.
"Where were you?" Aaron asks. "You told me to go away," Kevin replies. Aaron tells Kevin to kill Horn, and just like that, the good doctor goes up like a torch. "Kill them all," Aaron mutters. All over the school, patriots burst into flames as Charlie, Monroe, and Rachel watch, none of them looking too sad. Monroe looks a little turned on, actually. Miles, bunnies, just makes his gray death face. Flaming Horn twitches and flails while Aaron just stares dully.
"Why didn't you just ask me to heal her?" Kevin asks Aaron. Aaron says he does want his help, yes. Kevin's confused about all Aaron's conflicting orders. "I want you to heal her," Aaron stammers. But Kevin disappears. And Cynthia stays dead.