Revenge - Two Graves - Review: "A Bittersweet Goodbye."

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” -Confucius

On September 21st, 2011, we embarked on a journey of revenge, alongside Amanda Clarke, as she came to the Hamptons and slowly made her way through the upper society, in the critically acclaimed first season of “Revenge.” The anti-hero, on a quest to make the people who had wronged her pay, instantly made her way through our hearts and now, almost four years later, it’s on May 10th, 2015, that this journey came to an end. And let’s just say, it’s been one hell of a ride.

It’s been a bumpy, sometimes inconsistent road, but it’s one I’m glad to have stuck with until the very end as “Two Graves” closes the final chapter of “Revenge’s” four year run. Looking back at the cast, at the characters I fell in love with, which are no longer among the living, it’s been a deadly road.

This show has been a dark, deadly road, decorated with twisty plotting and incredible acting. It showcased a unique and catchy premise, an unconventional battle of good versus evil. “Revenge” has been paradisiac sceneries, beautiful costume designs, and a great, catchy soundtrack. It’s been a show which I’ve played hot and cold with, but could never shake off. It’s been a show with whom I fell in love with, and which I will greatly miss, as it took its final bow.

“Oh, I knew this wasn’t over.” - Victoria

The ultimate showdown was always going to be between Victoria and Amanda. She was her nemesis, the one person in whom Emily Thorne seemed to find her match, her equal. And while it took 4 years to see Victoria in baggy jeans and a hoodie, during that time span, there has been an astonishing array of moments between the leading ladies, my favorite being the altercation in the graveyard which ended with a shovel in the back of Victoria’s head. Adding to those brilliantly acted moments by Emily VanCamp and Madeleine Stowe, in “Two Graves,” laid their final battle.

Emily traded the orange jumpsuit from last week’s episode for a beige one when after learning of Ben’s murder, she pleads guilty to Victoria’s murder and gets sent to a maximum security prison. Nolan, a la Michael Scofield, had planned a prison break, in preparation for the time they would need it and I have to applaud his planning ahead. An escape that seemed immensely simple, when your sidekick is blessed with technological superpowers, had Emily pretty easily (Way too easily for my liking though…) out of her prison cell, and into the street of New York, where she can get back her advantage in her war against the Queen.

“A bed just opened up at Bedford Hills Correctional. Let’s put her in it.” -Amanda

The plan, for Amanda, had never been to kill Victoria. Seeing her victims suffer had always been enough for her, and that moral compass had kept her on the right side of darkness, playing with a line she wasn’t willing to cross. This line, that’s been crossed countless times by Victoria, and now, also crossed by Margaux, who burdened with being Victoria’s only family left, lets herself get convinced that a ghost assassin is the best way to end the war.

Victoria went to her funeral, which was very Tom Sawyer. After realising none of her remaining kids had shown up, after realising she’d alienated the last of her blood relatives, and upon hearing Louise’s Eulogy, Victoria decided to tell her the truth. I strongly believed Louise was going to fall at one hundred miles an hour when she’d realise she’d been betrayed by the woman she called her guardian angel, her make-shift mother figure, but I hadn’t expected her to react rationally. I expected her, so desperate for affection, for family, just like Victoria, to believe what Victoria was saying. I remained incredibly skeptical of the red heads behavior and was certain she was bringing Emily to Victoria on the Queen’s order, but I was wrong. She realised how much hurting Victoria caused.

I couldn’t say Louise redeemed herself, but I can say she finally made the right choice, sided with the right people, and form the looks of it the merry band of revengers forgave her for her temporary lapse in judgement. She was wrong, she was naïve, but she didn’t cross any line for Victoria like Margaux did, she was just blinded by her need for acceptance, her longing for a family.

Amanda’s prison break has her on “America’s Most Wanted List” and while Nolan is working on it from his end, Jack and Emily are at the house where Victoria hid out, finally getting their freak on, in Victoria’s dead mother’s bed.

“I guess I’m just scared. This whole mess isn’t over yet, and I don’t know how it’s going to end.” -Amanda

Jack and Emily were a long time coming. They had an incredibly long, very frustrating courtship where they never seemed on the same page at the same time. They had shared one kiss, back in season 1, after the death of Sammy, Amanda’s childhood pup, raised by Jack, a symbol of their time spent together, of their childhood dreams. They shared a moment, and a kiss, at the bar, in the first episode of the show’s third season, after Jack had learned of her true identity, but they were never able to commit to each other. There was always something with the universe pushing them apart. Their romantic entanglements were stopped because of Daniel, of Aiden and then Ben. Their relationship was halted due to Faux-Amanda, and Carl, sidetracked by Margaux.

It had been a long time coming and while I could see the chemistry in the past, their contrived road to one another had me lose faith in them, or simply stop caring. After this final episode, I don’t think it’s possible not to root for them again, not to be completely, utterly over the moon for them. It’s just not possible to be cold in face of these two together, who had to brave storm upon storm to find each other again, to find their happy ending.

Jack comes back from the post sex food run, to find Emily gone to prove the dental remains of the fire weren’t Victoria’s. Instead of Emily, he finds White Gold, or more accurately she finds him, in the house, were she gets the jump on him. He fought, and it was great to see Jack in action, Jack giving out a few punches, but in the end, he was still no match for the trained assassin, who plunged her dagger in his guts. Nolan and David, concerned and worried after learning of Margaux’s connections to the mercenary, in one of the rare moments on the show, rely on outsider help. They call the police, and I just have to wonder how this phone call went about. But they manage to get their point across because a SWAT team arrived on scene to a barely conscious Jack, and no assassin, getting him to a hospital where he remains in critical condition.

"I trained for four years with the most dangerous sensei I know. I can handle her.” -Nolan

Emily, aka the master of disguise, gets through the police infested hospital lobby to get to her boys, and upon seeing Jack, lying there, upon realising the lengths Victoria is willing to go through, Amanda’s line blurs until it disappears completely. Nolan is not there to stop her, to control her murderous urge, he’s there to help, and she’s willing to let him. Finally, after four years, she trusts him enough to let him take care of a hired assassin by himself, and it was a big moment for them, for him. Amanda maybe thought him ready, but I was scared out of my mind for the billionaire. He’s always had the brains, but it’s the hand to hand combat I feared he would fail if it came down to it.

Nolan handled the White Gold debacle incredibly well, taking a page out of Emily’s playbook. Prying on Margaux’s guilt, he managed to have her work with him instead of against him to take down the hired assassin. He took a freakin' knife in the hand before being able to taser the woman, and this take-down will be among the most bad ass thing he's done for his friends.

Margaux could have walked out unscathed by this war between the two leading ladies which she had no business in to begin with, but long ago, she decided to side with Victoria. She tried to take down Emily, and in trying to do so, she crossed a line, a line that can never be uncrossed. Her decisions resulted in the death of an innocent bystander, it resulted in Jack lying in a hospital bed and it wasn’t something she was willing to push under the table, without consequences.

“I started this to get justice for Daniel. He once told me not to abandon my soul like he had. He redeemed his by saving a life. I need honor him and redeem mine.” -Margaux

A couple of episodes back Margaux had attempted to save her soul, by calling the assassin off, but it’s in the series finale episode that she finally manages to do it, live by the justice she preached. Margaux seemed to find her redemption in “Two Graves,” an episode centered on the theme in which decisions define who we are. She found redemption when she decided which kind of person she wanted to be, which kind of person she could live with. I love that she finally acknowledged Daniel as his sacrifice and that it weighed in the balance. In the end, after a turbulous season, she did the right thing, the honorable thing and I can safely say, I can say goodbye to the show without any more lingering hatred for Margaux.

Louise, the other person Victoria tried to lead down a darkened path, lead Amanda, who can only find solace in the woman’s death, to her. Despite the camera’s, despite having to spent a huge portion, if not all, of her life behind bars for it, Amanda’s willing to do it. She was tired of the fight, ready to finally pull the trigger and end it. It’s only fitting that Victoria would dress up for the occasion, and I somehow think there’s something to be understood with having dressed Victoria in white and Amanda in black as their final altercation went down. The lines have definitely been blurred on good and evil, and life, a series of events, there is no black or white, no person completely good or bad.

I’m still not sure whether bringing David back from the dead was the good choice, but it’s the choice they took last year, and they had no choice to run with it in the show’s final season. “Two Graves” was finally David’s moment, his final stand, his time to protect the daughter he’d lost 20 years ago.

In a last ditch effort to bring Emily down with her, when her plan to have her spend the rest of her life in solitary confinement failed due to David, Victoria shoots Emily in the back in the emotion-filled, brilliantly put together moment.

“Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.” -Me

That’s all I kept saying during the incredibly long commercial break following the blood bath. I don’t think I’ve ever been this scared for a character’s life before, everything about the way they shot this scene was perfection. It was tense, as my heart was beating at a thousand beats per minutes, trying to escape my chest during the five minutes during which I damned the commercials.

Amanda survived the shooting, and she outlived her father, who, on a cold winter evening, succumbed to his illness, with his daughter, on the porch of their beach house. He’s at peace and he’s done his job. He saved her soul. He saved her from having to spend her life in jail, but most of all, he kept the promise he had made his 9 year old daughter, seated on the steps of their beach house. He was there when she needed guiding; there to bring her back on the path of light, when hers had become darkened. That was his purpose, that’s why they chose to bring him back, for the love between the father and a daughter, overpowering the darkness of revenge, a nice conclusion to his story.

I would never have pegged a happy ending for Amanda Clarke, not after everything she’s done after all that happened. Never in a thousand, would I have guessed this ending to this incredibly dark and twisted show, but I can’t help but feel incredibly good about it.

“Upon embarking on a path of revenge, Confucius warns that one should dig two graves. Confucius was right. The second of the two graves was meant for me, I was only saved by my father’s infinite love. I know now that revenge bring only darkness. I couldn’t see the light until I followed my father’s advice to try and forgive. It’s not easy, but my father once said that nothing worth doing ever is. Well, with one exception.” -Amanda

The last portion of the episode, and of the series, was so joyful, as they showed Amanda and Jack’s wedding. It was so unlike everything that I’ve come to expect out of “Revenge” that I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop but it didn’t. It was truly a blissed moment, surrounded by the people they love that are still left standing, because as they acknowledged, their road to happiness was peppered with death, indirect victims of the war.

I love the idea of Jack and Emily, and it was there day, but as always the interactions that overpowered the rest were between Nolan and Emily, the “couple” that always made the show for me. While I never wished them to be romantically involved, it’s their incredible chemistry that helped me through the tougher patches of Revenge. Their friendship, though unconventional, remained strong. They're two outsiders who found each other, and built something together, and became family along the way. As he walked her down the aisle, like he had once done when she wed Daniel, I felt incredibly at peace with everything. He’s just so happy for them, has been the one rooting for them even when most of us had given up.

“I consider myself lucky, most morality tales don’t have a happy ending. For some reason Karma decided to spare me, but not without leaving deeply edged wounds.” –Amanda

The final episode was filled with call backs to the show’s first season. There was the Angus and Julia Stone song we heard in the pilot. There was a Sammy 2.0. (Or the cutest pup, ever!) There was the beach house and infinity symbols in the sand. There were the quotes and a young Amanda Clark. This episode felt complete, like the show went back to its roots, to its beginning, closing the infinity loop this show represents, and gave the show closure. But the episode also showed that even when life gets good, Amanda can never truly get rid of Victoria, a scare that will never heal. Even dead and buried amidst the Grayson Graveyard, she continues to haunt her subconscious and most possibly continues to live on through her. (Charlotte, what the hell?)

“Two Graves” marks the end of the journey we’ve shared with the cast, with each other. Lately, few shows have been able to stick the landing, have managed end the show in force. The series final was in absolutely no way what I expected it to be, but executive producer, Sunil Nayar, alongside the incredibly talented writers, cast and crew, managed to close this chapter in a way that you can’t help but feel satisfied, feel at peace.

“Revenge” has always found its strength in the cliff-hangers, in the shocking twists and deaths. “Revenge” has consistently been at its strongest as each season ended and the series final is no exception, it was action packed, gut-wrenching and filled with shocks. It was an episode for destruction, but also an episode for redemption.

“Two Graves” was great episode to say goodbye to the show and to the characters I’ve come to care for and which I will remain saddened to leave behind.

“Well played, Ams. Well played.” –Nolan

Well played everyone,
And thank you for four great years.