Revenge Season 2 Premiere Review - Destiny

After a long hot summer of missing my favorite sudsy drama, Revenge finally returned to my TV screen and it hardly disappointed.

Taking a hand from season one’s playbook we open the episode with a flash forward.  Instead of a glitzy engagement party we’re underwater with a search and rescue team exploring a wrecked ship.  It becomes clear that ship is the Amanda and she didn’t go down on accident.  The divers head inside and we see a dismembered male arm floating in the water, and they call for the coroner.  So at the moment we’re lead to believe that this will be Jack, plaid sleeve and all, but as we all know from last season first looks can be deceiving.

Now we take a step back in time to three months before the wreckage, Memorial day weekend.  (Which is also around two months after the season one finale)  It was a good choice to have a small time skip as it really shook up where characters were and who they’re with now.  

Our revenge-seeking heroine, Emily Thorne, has apparently been out of the Hamptons ever since the crash, training in Japan with Takeda and a new guy whose name we haven’t learned yet. They think she’s there to continue her revenge mission against the Grayson’s, but it seems that she’s much more concerned with finding out who’s kept her mother, who she’d believed had died,  from her this whole time.  One of those people appears to be her father who visited her a mere week before he was arrested, and he wasn’t alone as he took Victoria with him. But too bad you can’t speak to the dead...

Emily has also gained a new roommate in Nolan, who sold his house and is working out so he won’t be a victim again.  This is going to prove useful to Emily if she chooses to utilize it, or at the very least will keep Nolan from bleeding too much this season.  If you were like me you were shipping Nolan and Jack in season one, when Nolan pays a visit to his old friend, keeping that ship afloat with a hug that lasts just a bit too long, he lets it slip that Emily’s back in town.  Oh Nolan, always trying to get his own OTP (Jamily or Emack god those names are both awful) together.  Poor Jack really seems to not be himself, and we find out that he’s been having a lot of guilt about Amanda and Emily. He’s also having issues with Declan and The Stowaway (which has currently been shut down by health inspectors.) He wants to do the right thing for everyone, but honestly he should be thinking about what’s the right thing to do for himself especially considering Amanda’s baby might not even be his.  

Daniel and Ashley are now hooking up and she’s completely taken over Victoria’s place at the Grayson manor. Daniel’s experiencing his own level of guilt except his guilt isn’t about Emily, instead it’s about his small role in his mother’s death.  It was nice to see that both boys weren’t completely brooding over Emily which will mean she has to use other means to get in with the Graysons, but it appears Daniel still might even be carrying a small torch for her.  At least enough of one where Emily’s former best friend Ashley didn’t let him know that Emily sent them a card after Victoria’s death.

Emily’s cards did make it to Charlotte however who’s currently in rehab and clean from drugs.  She certainly feels more mature from season one where I could barely stand her.  Of course she’s got worse problems than boy trouble right now. Her father is doing everything he can to keep her locked away in rehab, even faking her drug test results, so that he can get his hands on her half of the inheritance.  Little does Conrad know that his daughter is keeping quite the secret of her own from him; one that she whispers to Emily before she’s dragged away from her mother’s memorial service.

Luckily for Emily, that secret is that Victoria is still (not surprisingly) very much alive.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there was no way in Hell they would kill off Victoria so easily in the first season, and it was refreshing that the reveal wasn’t held back for several episodes.  She tells Emily that the government is keeping her safe while they build a case against Conrad, but as usual she’s a lying liar who lies.  Thanks to clam cam, we discover that she’s really being kept safe by the mysterious white-haired man, the same man who murdered Emily’s father. Victoria tells him that Emily’s a liability that needs to be dealt with just as they always do.

So there we have it, Revenge is back and while it’s on a new night I’m sure it’s going to find Sunday to be a great new home.  Emily is going to need to get her priorities in order this season to take revenge on those who took her mother from her, or continue her battle with the Graysons, unless of course those enemies turn out to be fully one in the same.