ABC’s Revenge: Top 5 Fan Theories

If you’ve been watching Revenge on ABC then chances are you’re wondering how the first season of the show is going to pan out.

Each week we watch as seemingly sweet Emily Thorne extracts another photo, newspaper clipping or memento from that wooden infinity box and remorselessly pursues someone who wronged her father all those years ago.

“I want to destroy his life,” Emily reminds Nolan in last Wednesday’s episode, when he urges her to stop after destroying a man’s career. And just like that the audience is reminded of our heroine’s singular and sinister ambitions.

Is there anyone who can stand in her way? Victoria Grayson perhaps, the one woman with the intelligence and instinct to realize she has welcomed a viper into her home?  Or what about Daniel Grayson, an innocent young man who has been caught up in Emily’s plans for the crime of falling in love with her?  Can Daniel teach Emily how to forgive before it’s too late? And what of the brooding Jack Porter, the man tantalizingly poised to throw a sexy spanner in the works, or even Nolan Ross, the one man with knowledge of Emily’s true identity?

With so many characters in play, literally anything might happen by the end of the season.  Here’s our Top Five Revenge Fan Theories on how things may play out.

1. Daniel Grayson is Emily’s Half Brother

This particular theory may not actually be so ‘out there’ after all.  We know via flashback that Victoria and Emily’s father David were lovers. But how far back did their relationship go?  Could David Clarke be Daniel’s father?  It might go some way to explaining Daniel’s ‘fish out of water’ demeanor in his own home and his obvious discomfort with his family’s wealth and status. Of course, this would mean that Emily has been putting the moves on her own half-brother.  Would this revelation cause her to snap and put a few bullets in his back?

Josh Bowman as Daniel Grayson

2. Nolan Ross is the Last Person on Emily’s Revenge List

We’ve been assuming that Emily’s revenge plan is like a pyramid-shaped hit list with district attorneys, unfaithful husbands and slimy lawyers at the bottom and Victoria Grayson sitting prettily at the top, but what if Victoria is not Emily’s final destination, but Nolan Ross is instead?

This would be a rather heartbreaking development because despite his flamboyance Nolan seems to be a nice guy who just wants to make friends.  Nolan reassures Emily in practically every episode that he owes his fortune to David Clarke, yet we see Emily repeatedly push him away. She didn’t even say thanks after he bought her that million dollar beach front property!  Could Emily’s intense dislike of Nolan stem, not from her desire to work alone, but from something else? Just how squeaky clean is Nolan, and exactly why does nobody like or trust him?

Nolan and Emily: Friends or Foes?

3. Emily is Victoria’s Daughter

If we can go with the idea that Daniel may be Emily’s half-brother, then it’s only a short hop, skip and a jump to entertaining the notion that Victoria may in fact be Emily’s mother.  Picture the scene. Victoria and David, meet, fall in love and secretly have Amanda together.  But Victoria is expected to marry into the right social circle and humble David just doesn’t measure up.  She keeps her daughter’s existence a secret and marries the socially mobile Conrad Grayson instead.

Unhappy for much of the duration of her marriage, Victoria finally decides that she wants to be with David instead and so the pair resume their affair some seven or eight years later.  No?  Then why aren’t we told anything about Amanda/Emily’s mother? Judging by the flashbacks, Victoria is the only woman in David’s life.  And when you think about it, aren’t Emily and Victoria very alike in personality?  There would be some truly delicious irony in this one if it turned out to be true. Victoria is spending all her energy trying to protect her family without knowing that the young woman she is desperate to reveal as a fraud is actually her own child.

If Victoria does indeed turn out to be Emily’s mother, will it make a difference when it comes right down to it?

David and Victoria: Did they share more than just a past?

4. Victoria and Emily End up Working Together

We’ve been witnessing some serious guilt issues building up with Victoria in recent episodes.  How sick has she become with all the lies and the coverups surrounding David Clarke? Very, if last Wednesday’s episode was anything to go by.  For the first time, we saw both Emily and Victoria on the same side of the fence where an ambitious politician with a dirty past was concerned.  So much so that people around her began to suspect Victoria herself of the setup.  Victoria was David’s lover, Emily, his daughter.  These women share a strong connection, even if they don’t realize it. Could guilt and revenge be two sides of the same coin? With Victoria on board, who knows how Emily’s plans might take flight?

Shared Agendas?

5. Emily’s Father was Actually Guilty

This is the bizarrest one we’ve heard yet. What if after all her plotting and planning, Emily discovers that her father David was not as squeaky clean as she first supposed?  This revelation would essentially reset the series, making a second season open to literally any possibility.  What would Emily do next? Continue to pursue her father’s opponents, knowing they were acting in good faith? Come clean to Victoria? Finally ditch Daniel for Jack? Work to redress her former actions?  We hope this is not the case because there’s a certain sense of satisfaction in watching the guilty gets theirs that would be muddied by the possibility of their innocence. Revenge and Revenge works best when its straightforward.

Is Revenge best served straight up?

What what did you think of our top five list of Revenge Fan Theories? Got any theories of your own that you’d like to share? Drop em in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you.

Revenge airs on ABC, Wednesdays 10/9c.