Revenge Series Finale Recap: Did Emily Thorne Get a Happy Ending?
[WARNING: The following story contains spoilers from the series finale of ABC's Revenge. Read at your own risk.]
Most people quit watching Revenge years ago, probably sometime around when time this happened. But for those who stuck it out, Sunday's series finale was when all that time and devotion was supposed to pay off -- when viewers would finally see Emily Thorne get her revenge on Victoria Grayson. And technically, the finale did satisfy that, but it was so rushed and so nonsensical that it was almost hard to believe this was really the end.
For those of you who quit watching or never even started, here's a Revenge refresher: Emily Thorne is Amanda Clarke. She really likes the infinity symbol. Her dad David was dead, but then he wasn't. Victoria was dead and then she wasn't. Victoria was dead again and then she wasn't. Emily and Jack are in love, but still aren't together for no reason whatsoever. Nolan married a crazy girl Louise. Daniel died and his ex-girlfriend Margaux joined #TeamVictoria. Courtney Love killed Emily's boyfriend Ben, because Courtney Love will do basically anything if you ask her.
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Got it? Me neither. Let's move on to the finale. Victoria shows up to meet Margaux fresh from watching the lead singer of Hole stab Ben to death. Margaux gives Victoria an identity change. Victoria gives Margaux a bad case of WTF when Victoria reveals the corpse she passed off as her own was her actually mother's. Our minds right now:
(via)
Then, as Revenge does, it one-ups the crazy by having Emily confess to the murder of Victoria, who wasn't really murdered because she faked her murder by defiling her own mother's corpse (in case you were still having a hard time processing that). In Victoria's defense, her mother did deserve it. In a flashback, we see that a very sick Marion spent her last minutes alive wheezing through an absolutely brutal takedown of Victoria in which she revealed that Victoria's father is the man who raped her as a teenager.
But while Victoria is reminiscing about burning her mother's corpse, Nolan is apparently hacking into the maximum security prison where Emily has been transferred thanks to her guilty plea. He works his mojo. Emily escapes. Technology FTW! Emily wants to flee the country as soon as possible, but instead lets Jack stroke her hair and reminisce about his dog Sammy (RIP). They have sex, because being an escaped convict and talking about death in the house where your ex was murdered is hot.
When Jack is out to get breakfast, Emily leaves and puts on a crappy wig and glasses in preparation to leave the country incognito without saying goodbye. She really should have just stayed and had the awkward morning-after conversation with Jack, since Courtney Love snuck into the house and stabbed him as soon as he returned. But don't worry. The cops show up mid-stabbing and Jack is taken to a hospital, alive. But the shock of almost having her umpteenth lover murdered prompts Emily to finally realize it's time she up her revenge game plan against Victoria. Inspired, Nolan vows to use his sensei powers to take care of Margaux, and Louise arrives out of nowhere and offers to help. How did Louise know where they were? Can you really just wander into the ICU willy-nilly? Who knows/cares?
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When Jack wakes up in the hospital, he's miraculously fine. In fact, he's so fine he asks David for Emily's hand in marriage. They shake hands and smile, as though Courtney Love didn't just stab Jack in the gut. And speaking of Courtney Love, she proceeds to track down Nolan and stab him in the hand. He quickly turns the tables by Tasering her. Nolan apparently had already called the cops before she showed up. And that, my friends, is the anticlimactic end of Courtney Love, assassin.
Louise then leads Emily straight to Victoria, who was prepared for such a betrayal. She had the construction zone rigged with security cameras, ensuring that if Emily does kill her, she'll go to prison for the rest of her life. Emily doesn't give a #$&!%, but before she can shoot Victoria, David shoots Victoria in the chest. As the father-daughter duo declare their love while a woman lay dying at their feet, Victoria picks up the gun and shoots Emily.
They are two sides of the same coin. Yin and Yang. Symbolism.
With absolutely no transition, all of the sudden we see Emily and Charlotte at David's grave. Cut to a flashback of Emily speaking to her father on their snowy porch as they casually mention how the judge granted him compassionate release for killing Victoria. He tells Emily to look at the infinity carving. He dies. Emily says she was meant to die and that revenge is bad. This all literally happens in the span of two minutes. You almost can't believe it's real, because it all happens so fast and makes so little sense.
In yet another abrupt cut, Emily is suddenly getting ready for her wedding to Jack. After tying the knot in front of what I assume is a room full of strangers, since Emily Thorne has exactly two friends that aren't dead, Emily and Jack announce they're going to set off and sail the world. In preparation for this, Emily gives Jack a puppy, because nothing says "fun sailing adventure" like potty training a puppy on a small ship.
Nolan, who's all sad now that he doesn't have a bunch of excuses to break the law and watch his loved ones die, is approached by a hot man in need of help proving his mother's innocence. Nolan's happy. Emily's happy. Everyone's happy. Except Victoria, Ben, Daniel, Declan, Fauxmanda, David, Aiden, Conrad, Katherine, Padma, Satoshi, Gordon, Malcolm, Pascal, Frank, Lyman, Helen, Carl, Trask, Jimmy, Edward, Colleen, Nate, the other Edward, Lee, that third Edward, Paul, Roger, Sammy and everyone else who died on this show.
What did you think of the Revenge series finale?
