Summer may be over in the real world, but in the Hamptons it’s still in full swing. Revenge has decamped to the far reaches of Long Island for yet another season of soapy high-society sabotage, as Emily Thorne (née Amanda Clarke) searches for the truth about her family and rains vengeance on those who betrayed them. This year, we’re keeping track of her quest — and the schemes of her friends, allies, and sworn enemies — by declaring winners and losers for each episode. Discover who came out on top in last night’s episode, which kicked off with a maid scrubbing spilled blood off the Graysons’ floor, after the jump.
WINNERS
Nolan: Finally, things are starting to look up for our bisexual tech billionaire! Yes, he finds out via an attorney’s letter that his father died. But then Padma recovers his dad’s scrapbook of Nolan’s accomplishments, and he realizes that he truly did mean a lot to his old man. Then, of course, there’s the kiss — preceded by a truly Nolan-esque pratfall — and his impulsive plan to jaunt off to Paris with Padma. Honestly, we’re so horrified with the way Emily’s been treating him this season that we’re glad he isn’t around for the Amanda disaster.
Padma: Despite Emily’s attempts to monopolize him, Padma has landed her man, and now she’s on her way to France, bitches! She’s also discovered a check linking Nolan to David Clarke. Clearly she’ll be looking into that.
Daniel: OK, so his attempts to make nice with his dad were pathetically transparent, and Conrad put Ashley on the case. But Daniel surprised us by sniffing out his fiancée’s betrayal. By the end of the episode, she had dramatically resigned as Papa Grayson’s spy — unless that scene, too, was theater performed for the purpose of further outwitting our gullible hero.
Ashley: She’s broken free from Conrad and won back Daniel’s trust. Maybe.
LOSERS
Amanda: Things were looking bad enough at the beginning of the episode, when she left Jack. Then we groaned as she agreed to continue helping Emily with the David Clarke diary scam, despite that speech about how the increasingly obsessive and demented revenge plot is ruining lives. (Amanda! Don’t you realize by now that Emily couldn’t care less about what happens to you?) That all turned out to be foreshadowing for Amanda’s big moment, falling from the Grayson staircase and splattering on their floor in a big, bloody puddle. She’s still alive for now — but we leave her in a coma at the hospital with Emily’s mother, who might be even more of a threat than that nasty head injury. Her baby’s fate isn’t clear yet, either.
Emily: Aside from having all of the above on her conscience, Emily’s spying has yielded the revelation that her mother tried to kill her when she was a kid. While we know better than to trust Victoria’s word on that, the outburst jogged Emily’s memory, and we caught a vivid scene of Kara trying to drown the little girl.
Victoria: “She’s very close to figuring out that I hand-delivered Kara to Gordon Murphy,” Mrs. Grayson tells her husband. This would be very, very bad for Victoria — and she only has herself to blame after falling for Emily and Amanda’s doctored-journal scheme. On top of that, there’s the small issue that the woman the world knows as David Clarke’s daughter fell, perhaps to her death, in the Graysons’ home.
Adrien: His mission to get information from Kara doesn’t exactly go as planned. She tazes him and ties him up, leaving Adrien to channel MacGyver and make a bloody escape. He comes away with the knowledge that Emily’s mother is more dangerous than either of them could have known — but, of course, by now Emily’s realized that, too.
Conrad: He got no satisfaction from the Initiative, and then Ashley gave up her spying on Daniel. (Right, right — or did she?) And on top of that, the poor guy came home from his little business trip to the news of Amanda’s disastrous baby shower.
Jack: Next to Amanda, Jack had the worst week of all. Not only did he have mixed feelings about Amanda leaving (with his unborn child), but he learned that Declan can’t replace the items he stole, forcing Jack to come up with $20,000 to cover their value. Then the bar failed an inspection, and Jack found out that it would need $40,000 in repairs to reopen. That all happened before he got Emily’s call about Amanda — and before it was revealed (to us, not him) that the stolen-goods/inspection stuff is all part of the same scam to get Jack to sell the bar.
Declan: Seriously, can this character just step into a time machine and join a Victorian-Era Irish street gang? Truly, that is where he belongs.
Kara: She’s still an unknown quantity, but she does actually seem kind of disturbed to see the woman she believes is her daughter in the hospital, on the verge of death. If nothing else, we know that she’s been hiding from Emily for a reason, and she’s clearly on the verge of getting found out.
Charlotte: It wasn’t a big Charlotte week, but when you’ve just learned that you have a pregnant half-sister, and then she falls off your mom’s staircase and might die, that’s sure to shake you up a bit.