REVENGE Recap: Lineage

This week we explore the ghosts of Thanksgivings past, and see how the lingering influence of those bygone days has shaped the present for our favorite residents of the Hamptons.

We begin with Emily walking into a bar and talking to Aiden, who is bartending. The year is 2006, and It’s apparently their first meeting. Emily is actually there searching for someone else. Aiden tries to warn her to stay away from her target, but she’s a big girl and can take care of herself. In this bar, we learn, the bad guys like their girls young. Ashley is there, in line with some other  girls, waiting to meet a man named Dmitri Vladoff. She is sent to the restroom to wipe her lipstick off, it makes her look too old. She is crying in the restroom when Emily approaches and offers her help. Emily wants to know when Dmitri will be arriving at the club. Emily gets Ashley out of the club and gives her cash to help her out of her financial situation (the reason she‘s there in the first place).  Ashley comes through with the information and Emily is ready to make a move.  She meets with Takeda, who tells her that her father would be proud. Her presence at this bar is part of a mission Takeda has her on, and she tells him she’s ready.

Emily’s mission has to do with a young woman named Colleen whom Dmitri kidnapped some years ago. It turns out that this Colleen is the same woman Aiden wants to avenge. She was his sister, and she was stolen from them.  Just as Emily is presenting herself as a replacement for Ashley, whom she tells them was sick and had to leave, she sees Aiden stepping up with a gun. She stops Aiden from killing Dmitri, and Dmitri is thankful to the young girl with so much spunk. He takes her to a back room, but tells her first he has to take care of some business and leaves her there while he returns to deal with Aiden.

Emily genuinely likes Aiden. He tried to protect her when she first came to the bar, he‘s a good guy. She sneaks through some venting to get to the room where he’s tied up. As she cuts his ropes loose, she questions him about the downed flight her father was framed for, and wonders what tie there could have been between that flight and his sister. We learn that Aiden’s father worked in the baggage handling department at Heathrow. His sister was taken one week before the plane was downed.  He has other things on his mind, though.  He came to the bar to avenge his sister, and doesn’t plan to leave without it. Emily tries her best to talk him down, but Aiden shoots Dmitri repeatedly. Takeda rushes onto the scene and tells Emily to take Aiden and get away from there, which she does. In the present day, Aiden and Emily are in bed, and he laments how he wouldn’t have believed all those years ago that he and Emily would be where they are today. She admits to him that she blackmailed Takeda into taking him in, telling them that he had to take both of them or he would have neither.  She warns Aiden never to leave her again.

At Grayson manor, we learn Victoria has a mother! Not just any mother, either. Victoria has one that makes her look like mother of the year.  She contacted Daniel and the two of them concocted a reunion for her and Victoria. She has brought her current love interest, and Victoria is anxious to fill him in on the last Thanksgiving she and her mother spent together. When Victoria was 15, her mother was a gold digger with a penchant for bringing home pedophiles. She blamed young Victoria for attracting her suitors attentions. After a fight in which she kills one of them, she convinces Victoria to take the gun and shoot him. They can claim she did so to protect her mother from an attack and she will get off with a light sentence. Victoria does as she is told, and the plan worked…she got a short sentence in a juvenile detention center. By the time Victoria was returned home, her mother already had a new pedophile in her life. After seeing her boyfriend slip into Victoria’s room one night, she promptly threw her daughter out of her home and her life the very next day. Victoria’s mom feels no remorse for actions of the past, she tells Victoria she made her who she is today. Her current boyfriend doesn’t quite buy into that theory, however, he walks out on her and declares their relationship over. Little does she know that he was hired by Victoria to play this role, in order to give Victoria a chance to finally serve up revenge on her mother. Conrad pays the actor and later tells Victoria that he thanked them for the role of his life.

In contrast to the Grayson‘s willingness to take down Victoria‘s mother, they are very concerned over Daniel‘s efforts to take down Conrad in the present. Not because Conrad doesn‘t want Daniel to run the company, he actually seems to like the idea of his son taking his place. That would put Daniel in the Initiative‘s way, though, and he would be in danger. Conrad and Victoria vow to stop Daniel from  succeeding. Even as they have this discussion, Daniel is busy working on his plan. He has tracked down Nolan’s former lover and CFO, Marco. Marco set up the off-shore account for Emily, although he didn’t know that at the time. When he questioned Nolan about the fund having disappeared, Nolan admitted it was for David Clarke’s daughter, he was Nolan’s original investor. Marco wants no part of the company after this revelation, it’s blood money as far as he is concerned. When Daniel contacts him, he seems interested in hearing Daniel’s proposal.

Jack’s dad is getting a shakedown for protection  money from some bad guys on the water front. He wants to stand up to the thugs, and tells Jack that he’s moving their Thanksgiving to the boys Grandmother’s place. Jack suspects something is up, their turkey is already thawed, but he goes along. Carl really just wanted Jack and Declan away from the bar, out of harms way when he fights back. Jack, however, is always the boy scout and can‘t be counted out. He returns to the bar to see what his father is up to, and they are both inside the bar when  a fire bomb is thrown through the window. They get out of the bar okay, and Carl makes plans later after Jack is in bed. He goes after the thug responsible. While he argues with the man  about the danger he put his family in, the man is shot and killed from behind. Another store owner, a friend of Carl’s, was also attacked that night and his daughter ended up in the hospital. He tells Carl he had to do it, and Carl takes control of the situation and protects the other man. In contrast to the thug in the past, we see present day Declan sharing a drink with the new thug on the block, Kenny, and can’t help but wonder what price Declan and Jack are going to have to pay.

Revenge airs Sundays at 9/8c on ABC.