Life is so much more interesting in the Hamptons. At least, it is in the soap world of Revenge, where it’s a high-class hotbed for the exploits of the rich, beautiful, and irrevocably corrupt. Though it’s quite different for the beguiling Emily Thorne (née Amanda Clarke), who’s returned to the Hamptons of her childhood with a hefty agenda: to learn the truth about her past, and retribute those who framed her father for a heinous crime he didn’t commit. We’re keeping weekly score of Emily’s endeavors, and the many others of our favorite Hamptonians, by calling each episode’s winners and losers. Following the show’s recent renewal for a third season, last night’s two-hour finale, “Truth,” made good on its name, and did not disappoint. As the city’s power comes on, the lights – and indeed truths – come out. For the last time this season, discover the finale’s sole winner and losers below. It’s been a pleasure revenging with you.
WINNERS
Conrad: As the lights return to the city, the incorrigible dirty politician Conrad Grayson gears up for his final victory, to become governor of New York. After learning from Victoria that Jack and Ashley have been accomplices in plotting against him and plan to sabotage his campaign, Conrad reaps his vengeance by sending Jack a text message from Ashley’s phone (which he’s niftily hacked into), to meet her at Grayson Global at 4pm. Jack makes his way there, but expert revengers Emily and Nolan are quick to catch the scheme out, and endeavor to stop him. But it’s too late. While everyone’s receiving (no doubt hacked) “LONG LIVE DAVID CLARKE” text messages, and as Emily nears the Grayson Global building, there’s an explosion and debris starts falling overhead. She goes into the building to find Jack, and hears a man groaning in the dark. As she goes to help him, convinced it’s Jack, a firefighter evacuates her. Jack makes his way to Nolcorp instead, since he got Nolan’s message warning him not to go, and Emily learns that he’s safe. Of course, Conrad assumes, at this point, that he’s dead, so Jack has to keep a low profile. (It turns out that the groaning body in the building is actually Declan, who’s carried out of the building on a stretcher.) Conrad is a first responder on the scene, and a little too organized in the face of mayhem, not to mention grateful for the convenient fact that Grayson Global employees had been sent home earlier that day. When he later lets on to Victoria that he was responsible for the chaos, and divulges that the Initiative doesn’t exist (rather, it’s “a consortium of savvy business persons” that cash in on people’s fear), his wife is unspeakably enraged. Consequently, she refuses to be at Conrad’s side for his winning speech, but it doesn’t really matter to him that she’s not there: Governor Conrad has all the power he could ever need without her.
LOSERS
Regina: Stuck at the bank with Charlotte’s pesky boyfriend, Regina spends the blackout mocking Declan, and wondering what her lovely friend sees in the dweeb. But when she pulls out her (somehow working) phone to watch the video of her kiss with Charlotte, Declan’s onto her game, realizing she’s in love with his girlfriend – hence Regina’s sudden impetus to sabotage their relationship. In a flurry of vehement denial, Regina’s grateful when the lights switch back on, at which point she’s out of there swifter than you can say “David Clarke.”
Declan: Declan thinks he’s done with Regina, until he hears that she’s laid a claim against him, telling Charlotte – with forged bruises on her face and arms as “proof” – that while they were stuck together, he hurt her and took her money (which she’d craftily planted in his pocket). After some hesitation, Charlotte ultimately sees through Regina’s game when Declan calls her to tell her about the video – and that he knows about her pregnancy and couldn’t be happier. Naturally, Declan learned the news from Victoria, ever the meddlesome mother, who found her daughter’s positive pregnancy test in the trash (initially, she thought the test belonged to Emily, but Daniel corrected her). Of course, Victoria is less than congratulatory, and warns Declan to stay away from her daughter – which he’s obviously not going to do. He’s a Porter, after all.
Charlotte: As she walks away from Regina, though she’s lost a new friend, she and Declan seem stronger than ever; her baby daddy’s even excited about her pregnancy. But when Declan gets caught up in the explosion at Grayson Global, fate befalls him and he winds up on a hospital bed. After an unconscious spell, Declan wakes up and looks terrible, but puts on a brave face as he sees Jack (donning a surgeon’s garb so as to appear inconspicuous, courtesy of Emily) and Charlotte, who he assures would make a great mother. Following Declan’s advice, after a long day, Charlotte leaves to rest. While she’s sleeping, however, we learn that Declan – who has kept it a a secret that he had required heart surgery, and then suffered an aortic rupture – has died. As he confided to Nolan before his death, in case he didn’t make it, he wanted to make Charlotte smile one last time, which he did.
Jack: When Jack returns to visit his brother a second time, he finds the bed empty and Nolan in tears, with a video on his phone that Declan had recorded for his brother with his departing words. Demanding to know where his brother is, Jack is (understandably) devastated and furious. The writers of Revenge sure have been unkind to poor Jack Porter, who’s had his father, wife, dog, and brother all die on him in the space of two seasons. Jack, who has up to now been tiptoeing the line between slick and angry revenger has just crossed over into angrier territory. On the move, Jack is ruthless, and heads straight for Grayson Manor, where he tells Victoria the news of Declan’s death at gun point – though really he’s looking for Conrad.
Takeda: Yes, the revenge maestro has made it posthumously onto our loser list this week, as Emily and Nolan discover, along with his dead body, his own “infinity box,” full of photos. In one picture, a suspect’s face is circled and Emily makes it her mission to find out who this man is, since she believes he must be responsible for his murder (of course, we know from their duel last week that Aiden killed Takeda). When Emily traces this supposed perpetrator online with Nolan, they learn that he’s an assassin named Gregor Hoffman, and when Emily later visits Daniel at Grayson Global, she spots him working at there as an IT guy. Later, we also learn that Hoffman, who appears at Conrad’s victory speech, awaiting a nod from his boss, is the detonator of the disaster that ensues at Grayson Global.
Aiden: When Emily tells Aiden about what happened to Takeda, he lies to her until she spots the cuts on his arms that suggest he’s the culprit. Aiden also reveals to a fuming Emily that he knew that Takeda had his own revenge mission – since his fiancée was on Flight 197 when it crashed – and that he had killed Takeda to help her, begging her to leave town with him. Of course, Emily insists that she didn’t need his help, and advises him to leave without her. Indeed, with his cover blown (now that the power is back, Daniel’s aware that Aiden drained funds from the Amanda Clarke Foundation), Aiden should have been getting out of the city, and the Hamptons, but instead he’s brought himself to the epicenter of the drama when he hears about the bombing at Grayson Global. He wants to help Emily find Jack (Nolan had let slip to Aiden earlier that she had once considered ditching her revengenda for Jack, and wouldn’t consider it again). Of course, returning wasn’t a good idea, and Daniel points him out to the cops, who manage to detain him at the Canadian border. Aiden’s not held for questioning for too long, however, as the FBI announce their inquiry has taken a new direction.
Nolan: About to leave Nolcorp to meet Emily at Conrad’s victory party, and to thwart Jack from killing Conrad, it’s clear which direction the FBI are taking, as they arrest our beloved Nolan Ross. Held for questioning, a bleary-eyed Nolan tells his interrogator about the Initiative, and mentions their hand in Padma’s murder, though they seem skeptical since Nolan withheld that information at the time, and therefore reason that he could be lying now. In response to Nolan’s objections, the FBI pull up CCTV footage of his many prison visits with David Clarke, and a video of Padma (this is probably what Trask had her do when he captured her earlier in the season) confirming that she had a relationship with Nolan and that he had a strong connection to Clarke, who she ostensibly believed to be a despicable person for his involvement in the crash of Flight 197. Nolan also tells the FBI about Edith Lee (the Falcon), but of course, she’s denied her involvement and conveniently told them that Nolan’s solely responsible for Carrion. Though we’re sure Nolan would rock an orange jumpsuit, we suspect it’s not quite his style.
Daniel: Learning that his father’s a truly deplorable person – as Conrad mentions his effort to “mitigate” the disaster, having gotten Daniel out of the office and ordering his son to send home employees – Daniel can’t wait to flee from his parents. But when he pops over to Emily’s to propose that they leave for Paris tonight, he’s surprised by Aiden, fresh from the FBI’s office, who’s come to tell him to stay away from Emily in what seems to be one last endeavor to help his now ex-girlfriend. (Last we saw Aiden, he had told Emily he was on his way, and had given her the key to a villa where they had spoken of living together, telling her that if she ever wanted to meet him there, she could.) Having tipped off the cops about Aiden, though he now realizes Aiden wasn’t responsible, Daniel’s still no Aiden Matthis fan, however, and takes the opportunity to have it out with him in Emily’s living room. As Aiden throws him to the floor, Daniel spots a gun that’s been knocked out of its drawer. Later, when Daniel meets his father at his victory speech, he requests a change of shirt; he has blood on the one he’s wearing – which we can safely presume belongs to Aiden (whether he’s dead or alive we’ll surely find out next season). As Daniel resumes his position on stage next to his father, sporting a clean white shirt and a winning smile, he proves that he’s a Grayson to his core.
Victoria: There’s no Initiative. Her lying-scoundrel husband is now a professional lying scoundrel. Emily Thorne’s turning up at Grayson Manor uninvited again, to chide her and take away her children. Speaking of which, another uninvited guest drops by – her long-lost son, Patrick – causing her to spill her nightcap in most dramatic fashion. Meanwhile, her favorite offspring, Daniel, can’t wait to go to Paris with Emily to get away from her. And in the morning, she’ll have to tell her daughter the news that the father of her unborn grandchild is dead. A happy Mother’s Day this was not for Victoria Grayson.
Emily: It’s been a long day for Emily Thorne. She found the dead body of her revenge teacher, Takeda (a sign perhaps, that her revenge path is doomed?), and then learned that her boyfriend was responsible. On top of that, Declan’s death dealt a hard blow, and she’s more worried than ever about Jack, and now has to stop him from killing Conrad – single-handedly, apparently, since Nolan is being detained by the FBI. Despite her efforts to delay Conrad from taking the stage by warning Ashley that Jack is after him, Ashley complies with Emily’s request, but at Conrad’s tasteless remarks about using Declan’s death for political gain, allows him to take the podium without qualms. Clocking Jack in disguise on a nearby balcony, she runs after him, and puts herself in the line of the gun that he’s pointing at the stage, at Conrad and Daniel (for a minute, it seems as though he’ll shoot Daniel to be controversial). To stop him, Emily looks Jack in the eye, and implores him to look at her. “On some level, you’ve probably known it all along,” she says to him, before she reveals the one truth we’ve all been waiting for: “I’m Amanda Clarke.” And there the season ends, leaving us in the dark once more.