Last season, Revenge ended with the cliffhangers of Victoria and Lydia presumably being blown up in a plane, Emily learning her mother was alive, Amanda coming back pregnant after Emily and Jack had gotten closer, and Charlotte overdosing on drugs. The season 2 finale airs this Sunday night – so we’ll have to wait and see if they can top last year. In the meantime, here’s a recap of the season so far to prepare you for the big night. Feel free to speculate in the comments on how you think the season 2 finale will go down.
The Queen Lives!
"So, it's true. Even the devil himself didn't want you." –Conrad to Victoria
Last season ended with Victoria supposedly being blown up in an aircraft, but we all knew she wouldn’t stay dead long. We’re not too far into the season before we learn that Victoria is very much alive, hiding out in a cabin, and working with Gordon Murphy, a.k.a., the white haired man, or Bill Buchanan from 24. She’s in contact with Charlotte, who is being kept by Conrad in rehab even though she’s been clean of drugs for a while, because Conrad wants her inheritance. Victoria also apparently wants her inheritance, and when she discovers that Conrad was successful in stealing it, reunites with Conrad to plot her coming home party.
They concoct a plan that frames Gordon (who stopped being so helpful when he realized Victoria couldn’t pay him) for kidnapping Victoria. Emily, however, has been spying on Victoria since she learned from Charlotte that Victoria was alive, and Gordon realizes Emily has tape that could exonerate him. He and Emily talk, but that soon turns violent when he tries to kill her. He’s instead killed by Aiden.
While all ends well for a while for Victoria and Conrad, the kids aren’t too pleased to learn what their parents were up to. Daniel’s irked that they lied to him about Victoria’s kidnapping, when in reality she planned to flee the country with Charlotte. Charlotte’s not pleased to learn that they framed her biological dad, after Amanda lends Charlotte David’s journal.
Mom’s home
We start off with Emily trying to recover memories of her mother. Not pleasant ones. Her mentally unstable mom, Kara, is trying to drown her as a child. Emily is saved by her dad. Emily learns her mom was institutionalized and was later broken out of the institution by Gordon, who was ordered to kill Kara by the Graysons, but married her instead.Aiden tracks Kara to a motel, who later comes back to town to investigate what happened to her husband, who has gone missing. Kara also unites with fake-Amanda, who is in the hospital at the time. The two work through their issues, and Emily works through hers. Kara is sent out of town with stabilizing drugs and cash after she’s stopped by Aiden from executing the Graysons, which she attempted after she learned they had set up David.
Mason Treadwell returns
The writer from season one comes back to cause more trouble. He realizes Amanda isn’t Amanda when he sees she doesn’t have a childhood scar. Amanda, with Emily’s help, convinces him the scar was surgically removed, but Treadwell later learns that Amanda and Emily were in juvie at the same time and puts more pieces together. Emily frames Mason for Gordon’s murder and offers him a bribe. She tells him she’s really Amanda and promises to let him publish her story if he’ll stay quiet. It doesn’t seem like a good deal to me, but for some reason he agrees to take the offer and go to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.Down on the Docks
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This all comes to a head in the mid-season finale, when Jack and new-mother Amanda have a honeymoon from Hell, and are trapped on their boat with murderous Nate Ryan. Amanda had tried to get Jack out of his situation with the Ryans by borrowing Emily’s laptop with blackmail footage of the Graysons, and using that to blackmail Conrad into helping Jack. It works for a while, until Nate Ryan dangles visions of a casino development on the docks in front of Conrad’s greedy eyes, and Conrad gives Nate the go-ahead to kill Amanda.
Emily and Nolan figure out that Jack and Amanda are in trouble, and head out to the seas on a rescue mission. They find a shot and unconscious Jack in a boat, and Nolan brings him back to shore for medical treatment. Emily, meanwhile, heads out after The Amanda, which still has Amanda and Nate onboard. She almost succeeds in rescuing Amanda, but Amanda goes back to the boat for a necklace given to her by Emily and is critically injured when Nate explodes the boat.
Amanda dies, and Jack is left a bitter widower with a young baby. Jack has no memory of who saved him, but he does some digging and finds that someone matching Nolan’s description rented a boat. Nolan makes it look like Kenny Ryan’s boat, but Jack later learns it wasn’t Ryan. Jack teams up with Ryan, who has tape recordings his brother made of his dealings with Conrad, and the two work to bring Conrad down to revenge the deaths of Amanda and Nate.
Jack pretends to support Conrad politically to get closer to him. During a press conference, Jack, with Nolan’s help, transmits some of the recording of his meetings with Ryan into his earpiece, and a flummoxed Conrad says he’s going to reopen the investigation into David Clarke’s case. Jack also tells Victoria about Conrad’s role in Amanda’s death and that he has audio evidence of it.
Aiden and the Initiative
We meet Aiden at the beginning of the season and learn he has a past with Emily, but had ditched her to search for his sister, who had been kidnapped by the Initiative. The two have trust issues but become closer as the season goes on.Aiden’s story continues with the Intitiative sending him a video of his sister in a crackhouse and baiting him to kill Victoria. Emily talks him out of it, and the Initiative responds by sending him a video of his sister being killed. Aiden at first blames Emily, but Nolan finds evidence that Aiden’s sister had died much earlier.
Aiden later gets his revenge when he kills Trask – the Initiative member responsible for the death of his sister – but finds that revenge is only empty. Aiden’s efforts to lead Emily away from a similar end put him in a confrontation with Takeda, and Aiden kills Takeda.
Victoria and Her Sons
After Daniel ousts Conrad as leader of Grayson Global, the Initiative works to pull Daniel into their clutches. Daniel is introduced to Helen, who works for the Initiative, and she encourages him to make a number of questionable transactions. Conrad and Victoria suspect Helen is trying to entrap Daniel, the way the Initiative did with them years ago to force them to set up David Clarke. Victoria tells Daniel the truth, convinces him to play along, and then kills Helen in a confrontation. She frames Amanda for Helen’s death, but Amanda had since died at sea.We also learn that Victoria had given up a child from a teenage pregnancy after she was raped by her stepfather. The son had been paid $5 million to stay away, but with Emily’s assistance, the truth gets out, and Victoria’s secret is revealed during an interview with the press.
Adventures at Nolcorp
We knew from season one that David Clarke had given start-up cash to Nolan years ago. This season introduced a new twist to that history. Because of Clarke’s contract with Grayson Global, the Graysons have a legal claim to controlling interest in Nolcorp. To help advance Emily’s revenge plans, Nolan agrees to release proof of this connection, and Daniel is able to use this boon for Grayson Global to oust his father and take over the corporation at the ripe old age of what, 22? 23? I don’t know, but it feels like he was a college intern just last year.There’s drama and infighting between Nolan’s past and present lovers and CFO’s, which results in Nolan falling for Padma, who he later learns is working for the Initiative because the Initiative has kidnapped her father. Nolan is sympathetic and in love, and he and Aiden try to rescue her father by arranging a trade with the Initiative: Padma’s father for Carrion – an old invention of Nolan’s that can bring down power to all of Manhattan. The trade is poorly planned, poorly executed, and the Initiative leaves with both Padma and Carrion. Aiden later discovers that Padma has been killed and Nolan is heartbroken.
Nolan’s search efforts for Padma bring him in contact with the Falcon, a legendary hacker who apparently works for the Graysons and the Initiative, and was connected to both the framing of David Clarke and Padma’s kidnapping. Although Nolan admits to being outmatched by the Falcon, he manages to lure her out and trick her into getting access to her computer by winning a bet in a Street Fighter game challenge. Nolan exposes her to the authorities as the infamous hacker and helps Emily bring down one more person who played a role in her father’s fate. The presence of Carrion, now in the hands of the Initiative, is felt again in the final moments of the previous episode. When Nolan and Aiden try to bankrupt the Graysons, there’s a massive power outage, presumably triggered by Carrion.
