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Revenge Series Finale: Dig Two Graves, But Not For Yourself

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In all my years of watching television series finales I have never wanted the lead of the lead of a show to go down with the ship. Until Revenge.  SPOILER ALERT.  With all of the conniving and twisting and red sharpies, how was there a happy ending for Emily Thorne/Amanda Clarke? How was she going to live with herself knowing that she caused so many deaths (Aidan, Daniel, Ben, Declan to name a few)?  I went into watching the Revenge series finale with the knowledge that Emily was sure to die at the hands of Victoria or in some crazy accident with Nolan looking on, not being about to do anything.  I was shocked to find out that not only does Emily get her final revenge on Victoria (albeit her father pulled the trigger), she lives and gets to marry the love of her life, Jack.  
How is that possible? Before I answer that, let’s talk about the episode and the half-hearted, crazy 4th season.
Season 3 ended with the shocker that I saw coming - David Clarke is alive.  Season 4 picked up with David navigating his way back to Victoria and his daughter while Emily was taking over Grayson manor after putting Victoria in the loony bin.  I have to preface how the season started because it had the makings of a great season - Emily would reunite with David and they would continue the revenge plot or someone would knock some sense into Emily and she would come to realize that revenge isn’t everything it was cracked up to be.  Boy was I wrong. Revenge brought in the David Clarke storyline that he was being held against his will to do the bidding of a madman whose motivation we never really understood.  Emily and Victoria’s bickering and “revenging” was drawn out to the point that I stopped watching live and DVR’ed the final 12 episodes. The plot lines and twists were too much to take in and too over the top.  
Revenge would have been better off skimming the season from 22 episodes to 12 and ending it before it became what it did.  Emily could still have had her happy ending, but there didn’t need to be any of the middle plot points (Jack getting involved with another crazy woman, Malcolm Black, Daniel dying).  Nothing seemed to connect or flow in the way the first 2 seasons had.  The entire season felt like the writers were trying too hard to make the last season work. It was too much of a bad thing. Except for the series finale.

The series finale did bring the “perfect” closure to Emily’s story for many viewers (not me).  Victoria is dead, she gets to live the rest of her life with the love of her life (Jack), and she gets away from the Hamptons. Her revenge plot is done. The only snag is her father was the one who killed Victoria so she wouldn’t go to jail and he died of cancer right before her wedding to Jack.  The episode itself had a flashback to season 1 and reminded me how good this show was when it first came out. It was daring, intriguing and left you wondering at every commercial break what would happen.  For Emily, this was not the ending I would have wanted.  As I said in the beginning, I have never wanted a main character of a tv series to go down with the ship but I did with Emily. To me there was no way she could have lived with herself knowing the pain and death she caused in her wake (yes Victoria and Conrad started it all by being the manipulative people they were but if it wasn’t for Emily some if not all the people who died would still be living).  Even in the middle of the episode I was still not sure what would happen because Emily didn’t know. She was prepared to go down fighting, she was prepared to die. Living was something she didn’t realize was possible and then at the last second she wanted a life with Jack.  That didn’t sit well with me. I want a happy ending for characters don’t get me wrong but the entire 4th season Emily kept saying to herself, to Nolan that how can she have the life she wants with all the damage her revenge plot has caused (especially after Aiden was killed by Victoria)?

I know I am rambling but it pains me to see that she lived.  She should have died heroically and at the hands of Victoria. To have Emily and Victoria die would have been the best ending to the Revenge story.  “When you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

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