Revenge 1.09

'Remember, inside the viper's nest, you must be a viper too'

We've all got accustomed to the viciousness of the senior Grayson members and the ruthlessness of Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp). However this week, several other protagonists revealed their real colours.

Daniel’s friend Tyler (Ashton Holmes) has been slowly becoming more villainous over the past few weeks, but this episode saw him rise to whole new level by conning young entrepreneur Nolan Ross (Gabriel Mann). His attempt to get Nolan on his side whilst beating Daniel to a spot in the Grayson’s company was devious yet Tyler hadn’t counted on the strong alliance between Emily and Nolan to outwit him. By also persuading Ashley (Ashley Madekwe) to ‘raise her game’ in order to climb the social ladder, Tyler incensed some of his own desire for social reign in his girlfriend and surely set up things to come.

Cara (Margarita Levieva) as she’s known to the Hamptons also showed more of her scheming nature by not taking Emily’s money or flight to Paris. Instead she chose to toy with Jack Porter (Nick Weschler), seducing him and then revealing her ‘real’ name as being Amanda. The moment that Jack told of ‘Amanda’s return’ was clearly devastating for Emily, yet due to her dual persona she had to keep a unaffected expression – VanCamp highlighted her talent by showing Emily’s despair whilst maintaining the fake front. Amanda’s deception surely makes a romance between him and Emily completely off the cards, yet makes us frustratingly root for them all the more.

Charlotte and Declan’s deception of Mrs Grayson as well as Conrad’s removal of Lydia from the manor behind Victoria’s back put the finishing touches to an episode full of deceit, mystery and aptly titled ‘Suspicion’. This episode seemed like a stepping stone to the rest of the series, setting up more plot twists and leaving many questions unanswered, the main one being: who exactly is the mysterious Satoshi Takeda?

Aired 23/07/12