Revenge

So season 3 takes place 6 months after the end of season 2 and we immediately have major changes. We have new characters in Patrick and Margot. We have Daniel and Emily having been together and isolated for the last 6 months, we have Nolan released from prison. We have Jack hating Emily and Ashley being a very aggressive gold digging whore.

Jack gives Emily a deadline to finish her revenge quest under the threat of outing her. Aiden is nowhere to be found. And Emily gets rid of Ashley.

Nolan and Emily being besties is easily the best part of this show, they are truly adorable. At the very end of the first episode we get Aiden back.

And we have nepo baby moment number 2, Daniel decides he’s going to help Margot run a fashion magazine…with no experience whatsoever. Not in writing, photography, actual business, nothing. This dude is simply rich, that is his only skill.

Charlotte starts losing trust in Emily, which actually seems to hurt her because she is on the short list of people Ems actually cares about. Charlotte is also finally clued in to how shitty Conrad is. She tells him that he deserves to die miserable and alone, which is obviously true. But after that interaction he starts to show some vague amount of remorse. Unfortunately at this point it's a little late for the audience to feel bad for him, he feels whatever he feels, guilt, remorse whatever because he thinks he's dying. Emily manages to get the now priest that helped take down her dad to try and convince Conrad to confess.

“I’m finally making a name for myself” Daniel you fucking nepo baby, you can not possibly build anything for yourself you came from a family of billionaires that granted you every opportunity. Even the magazine is something you only have because an old rich friend came into town and wanted to sleep with you. And you think that is building it on your own?

Conrad realizes that he doesn’t actually have Huntington's disease, and now he thinks he’s beat God. He also finds out that someone tried to kill him in his car accident.

Victoria, Aiden, Conrad and Emily are all stuck in this game of Emily and Aiden trying to take down the Grayson’s and Victoria and Conrad are actively doing things to go against Emily’s plans.

The scenes with Victoria and Patrick are very sweet, she is very much like Cersei from Game of Thrones, she is a heartless bitch but she does truly love her children and would do anything for them.

Conrad’s singular soft spot is Charlotte, she confesses to trying to kill Conrad. And he melts immediately, no anger or hostility, just an apology and an embrace.

Nolan and Patrick are super cute, I love them.

Charlotte started off just a sweet, broken young girl but as of now at the beginning of season 3 she is too much like her mother. Getting Sarah fired just so she can hire her to try and get her and Daniel back together is wildly manipulative.

This is the season where everything really starts to fall apart for Emily. At the beginning of the show Nolan, Jack, Amanda, everyone in her world was a willing foot soldier for her take down plan. But by this point so much has been lost Amanda, Declan people have died and been hurt and jailed and so her willing foot soldiers are a lot less willing now. They have grown minds and emotions of their own and they don’t want to jump when she says too as much now.

Nolan and Ems are back to being our favorite brother sister partnership which I much prefer to them fighting. They've learned from each other, they love each other.

Jack finally taking off his wedding ring is so so heartbreaking. My biggest fear is losing my husband and I saw how long my dad kept his ring on after my mom died. A widower taking off his wedding ring is one of the most upsetting things to happen.

Conrad is writing his memoir and in response Margot starts digging into his background so she can essentially beat him to his own story. Lydia Davis pops out of nowhere (apparently not dead) to be Margot’s source regarding the conspiracy of the David Clark case. She pops up at the Grayson’s throwing all of Victoria’s clothes over the balcony.

I know that I really end up not liking Margot because she gets in Emily’s way a lot but as an individual character I adore her. She is strong and determined and she knows what she wants, and she doesn’t stop until she gets it. She’s incredible. I actually kind of like her and Jack, they kind of grow on me. I really didn’t like them at first but they’re okay as a couple.

Emily faking a pregnancy to keep Daniel in line is hilarious. Victoria is shocked and then immediately skeptical, it takes a psycho to spot a psycho I guess. Victoria saw through Emily from minute one.

Lydia really just came back to go back to Conrad, these people are a special kind of stupid. He’s the one that knew the plane she supposedly died on was going to blow up.

Now I have no idea how long this show was originally intended to go on for but they could have easily closed out the show at the end of every single season AND halfway point. The writing feels so well thought out and planned that if the show got unexpectedly canceled the audience would still get a satisfying ending. That is a difficult feat and it's truly good writing, especially on a network show when you could quite literally get canceled at any time.

Aiden and Emily are my favorite and I know how they end and it just is so upsetting. They are perfect, he knows exactly what she’s going through, her kind of loss, her anger, he completes her and they really needed to end up together.

Also It wasn't until the wedding episode where I realized that the initiative just kind of gets dropped as an entity. Like they were the drive behind the second season, they were the reason for the framing of David Clarke, and then they just disappeared. I'm gonna call that lazy writing for no other reason other than we just get no explanation for it.

Conrad throws yet another wrench in Emily’s plan by bringing Lydia onto the yacht. This puts a lot of people that want Emily dead in the same place. Lydia, Victoria and then Daniel finds out that his little mistress tried to kill herself, making her drunk and angry, and allowing Lydia to expose Emily to Victoria. Daniel is the one that ends up shooting Emily making her the 3rd person he’s shot over the course of this show. The dumbest boy in school is rather trigger happy.

Like a mother-like son, Patrick is also a little psycho. Attacking Nolan to get Emily’s box for Victoria.

Emily was ready to walk away from her Revenge quest and go be with Aiden but she finds out that because of where her injuries were she can’t have kids. That news rededicates herself to her cause.

Daniel is so so stupid, he thinks he has the power and the gumption to take on Emily and his father but he is so out of his league. And now that he’s fighting against both of them? Truly pathetic.

Niko is on one, screwing Aiden, staying with Nolan and practicing peeling skin off of Mangos….she’s got so many issues though I would think that finding out that Aiden is the one that killed her father would put a damper on their relationship.

Sarah is also a little crazy and a lot stupid, taking on Emily is a wildly bad decision. Ems of course gets what she wants, because as previously stated Daniel is out of his depth.

Emily has started having really intense blackouts, really long gaps of time that she can’t account for. Aiden helps her snap out of it using the same technique Takeda used to use to help her access her subconscious.

We have so many new characters that seem to flood in at once, Stevie Grayson (Conrad’s first wife and Jack’s biological mother), Javier (Nolan’s friend from prison), and Pascal (Margot’s father).

Daniel makes it his mission to get a divorce from Emily, and she gave it to him on her terms because that stupid boy is always 12 steps behind.

Emily and Jack are in a good, friendly place now so she encourages him to give his mother a chance, she is also his person to talk to when Jack tells Margot to explore her options in her career. Season 3 has great relationship writing between Aiden and Emily and Margot and Jack. It's the best we’ve had so far.

Conrad can’t keep a woman, both of his wives not only had affairs, but they got pregnant and had children by those affairs. I just think that's funny because I know the bar is low here but he’s easily the worst person on the show.

Aiden is bought back into Emily’s cause when he finds out that Pascal had something to do with his father’s death.

Victoria is on a mission to prove that Emily is after her family, which of course, she is but Vicky’s been looking crazy this whole ass time. And considering that she kinda still feels guilty over what she helped do to David Clark, finding out what Emily is after would actually be hilarious.

This is where Margot starts to get really irritated, Daniel tries to convince her that Jack has feelings for Emily and she gets jealous and questions him about it, the next episode Jack witnesses an interaction between Margot and Daniel that he doesn’t like, he gets a little jealous. And she says “we’re friends, I don’t like jealous men” but she was a jealous bitch not 2 days ago…

Javier is a fucking problem child, he literally never shuts up, just spilling his guts to Charlotte about Jack and Nolan and Emily.

Pascal and Margot get a heart to heart moment that is actually really nice. And knowing what happens soon is making that sad.

AND AIDEN AND EMILY GET BACK TOGETHER. Yay I seriously love them so much.

Mason thinking that he could play Emily was just so stupid, even after knowing what Emily is capable of he thinks he’s got a leg up? STUPID.

Margot needs to get her shit together, she goes to celebrate with Daniel instead of Jack and he is clearly interested in her. And then they don’t talk when Jack is in LA and she blows him off when she gets back.

Another thing that I will say about this show is it's a little ridiculous how massive this conspiracy is. I mean David’s assistant, the judge and the lawyer all make sense but Pascal, Mason, the therapist, Gillian, just seems like a whole lot of people to keep track of.

Daniel and Margot sink their teeth into Javier which of course pisses off Nolan. And another revenge plan is born.

Ah the red marker, we haven’t seen it in a while but it does ground the show. Victoria seems to have finally caught the fuck up, at least mostly. She realizes that Emily is after revenge for David Clark but not so far caught up that she realizes that Emily is Amanda.

Emily poses as a homeland security agent in hopes of getting Pascal to confess to his role in the takedown of David Clark. Victoria and Daniel get themselves involved and god damn these fucking Grayson’s keep ruining my poor Emily’s plans of very justified revenge.

The My Clone launch is a huge plot moment, Daniel and Margot think they are on top, Javier tries to demonstrate the app but Nolan ends up demonstrating that he is the better tech guy. Which results in Javier getting kicked out of his own app. And Conrad kills Pascal by pushing him into a helicopter propeller. Jack figures out that David Clark might be alive. Daniel continues to be the dumbest boy in school, he lies to his mother about communicating with Conrad and he was, you know, in communication with Conrad. He very much is turning into his father.

Charlotte is “abducted”, and used to blackmail Conrad. Emily is escalating her timeline. Out of no obligation, her urgency seems to be more motivated by desperation. She feels like she doesn’t have any other options, she’s been at this for two years with not much to show for it.

“Emily Thorne is a machine, that’s why I created her. I had to figure out not to feel”

Aiden and Jack have a moment, talking about Emily. I really love that Aiden calls him out about Jack wanting Amanda, but the Amanda that he knew when he was a kid, not her as she is now.

Daniel straight up admits that he’s abandoned his soul so that he could hide, cover up, live with everything that his parents have done. Great transition into Charlotte unknowingly getting Conrad to confess to everything on live TV. Immediately after Emily breaks into tears, which makes perfect sense because this poor girl has been fighting this fight for so long.

After her victory Jack comes over to tell Emily that her father might be alive.

Also Victoria “grieving” Pascal is so annoying. Acting like he was the love of her life when she was rekindled with him for a matter of days, she was in love with Conrad, and David and that artist guy. I’m not convinced the woman has any real emotions. She sure loves to act like the victim though, when she is the problem.

Victoria has finally caught up to the fact that Emily is really Amanda Clarke, and though she feigns innocence and likes to play the victim she continues to try and take Emily out despite claiming she still feels guilty over what happened to David. Charlotte kind of calls her mothers “love” for David into question and I love that. In fiction awareness is the best.

My most upsetting moment of this whole ass series is Aiden dying. So many bad things happen in this show, but Aiden’s death is so upsetting. It happens right as Emily starts finally getting what she was fighting for and the fact that Victoria does it is even worse. This bitch took away her father and her childhood and then killed the man she loves AND staged his dead body in her house…you have to wait so long for satisfaction in this show.

A security guard lets Conrad out of prison. Shortly after he gets confronted by a very alive David Clarke who stabs him.

At the end of season 3 we have Javier back in Nolan’s good graces, Stevie Grayson back in California. Conrad bleeding on the side of the road, Victoria stuck in the looney bin where Emily carefully placed her (just as Victoria helped do to Emily’s mom), David Clarke alive AND Charlotte traumatized from her kidnapping getting Jack arrested for it. Now I understand that is a batshit crazy statement and a lot of stuff to take in, but we are only 23 episodes away from resolution in season 4.