The moral of this week’s new episode of Revolution, “The Children’s Crusade”: nothing weighs more heavily on a conscience than watching others suffer for our sins. Nowhere is this more radically demonstrated than when our man Miles finally finds himself moved by something other than Charlie’s harping about Doing the Right Thing. He realizes that his duties as former evil assistant overlord of the Monroe Republic included unwitting orphan-making. When Our Heroes encounter ragtag Lord of the Flies refugees, something inside Miles’ head asks: won’t someone think of the children?

Lest the audience believe we’re the only ones confounded by this reversal of Miles’ stance on non-interference, Aaron also questions his change of heart. Miles has few words for it, but everyone else gets the picture. Miles may be a warrior bred, but the sight of so many Lost Boys de-parented by the soldiers of Bass is more than he can shrug off. One orphan in particular named Michael (Colin Ford from We Bought a Zoo) has a brother named Peter who’s been captured and forcibly recruited into a “soldier factory”, where kids are dragged, trained, branded, and added to Monroe’s ranks. If this mission wasn’t compelling enough in its own right, the only reason it caught anyone’s eye in the first place is that Peter reminds Charlie of her own captive brother Danny. Thus does Danny have to sit on his hands for another week while Our Heroes indulge in another altruistic diversion. Fortunately Danny isn’t scheduled for execution this week, either.

The master plan: Charlie will sneak herself into the school, pretend to be enlisted, snatch a master key, free Peter, not get murdered, and everyone’s happy. The early steps in the plan go well, but Charlie’s attitude writes checks that her body can’t cash; she’s captured, knocked around, and traumatized with a permanent Circle-M Ranch brand burnt into her arm. Permanent scarring represents yet another step in Charlie’s journey to becoming Hardcore.

Since Charlie took too long to save the day, Miles, Nora, and Michael (who’s not supposed to be helping, but he’s to Charlie as Charlie is to Miles — and for once, the characters are aware of irony) sneak into the waterborne school and have several seconds of satisfying fight scene. Alas, they’re surrounded by the henchmen of the nefarious Lieutenant Slotnick (Josh Coxx, a.k.a. Joshua Cox from Babylon 5), who seems sinister enough but whose name reminds me too much of Joey Slotnick from The Single Guy for me to take him seriously. With our more able-bodied fighters surrounded, how will they get out of this mess?

Once again, Aaron accidentally saves the day. While babysitting the other Goonies in the basement of a lighthouse, the pendant he’s been carrying around since Ben Matheson’s death chooses this exact moment — i.e., while he’s trying to teach his students how to hide like a mouse from an evil search party — to glow, to activate, to kick on the lighthouse generators and create a fantastic light-show that distracts Slotnick and his men long enough for Our Heroes to regain the upper hand and slaughter them all so no one escapes to tell Monroe about the working electricity they just witnessed. Charlie adds another notch to her victim head-count, while Aaron eliminates two himself in a desperate attempt to catch up from last place.

(In a nice odd touch, one of the kids expresses a special sort of incredulity because he’s never heard the sound of a working generator in his entire life. Wait’ll the series ends someday with everything back in place and you get to discover the joy of video games, kid. Your head will explode.)

In a logical postscript, Miles — who saw Aaron guarding his precccccioussssss pendant in an earlier scene — puts two and two together, and forces Aaron to admit it was responsible for what just happened. Charlie also wanders along and forces Aaron to start the exposition over so she can learn secrets, too. Aaron comes as clean as he can, considering the pendant wasn’t his design, but a parting gift from Charlie’s dad Ben before he was murdered. Now that all of them know what they have, it remains to be seen what sorts of temptations, challenges, and slap-fights will occur between them over the ownership of this powerful MacGuffin.

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, Rachel Matheson likewise finds herself backed into a dark, horrible corner by her own conscience. Not only did she inform President Bass about the existence of the Twelve Pendants of Power, she also supplied him with names and addresses for their last known holders. Fifteen years of hospitable incarceration and undetectable torture must have broken her spirit pretty thoroughly. Rachel apparently thinks that Monroe will ask the twelve owners nicely, but when he brings in one Dr. Bradley Jaffe (Conor O’Farrell, one of the Initiative’s superiors from Buffy season 4), Rachel’s good-cop goes so poorly that Monroe also has Jaffe’s daughter brought in for torturing as well. After fifteen years around Monroe, you’d think she would be able to anticipate his black-hearted cleverness and not give up innocent names to him. Rachel ends the episode wracked with guilt, tears, and a lesson learned the hard way: squealers are terrible people.

Also meanwhile, two other subplots reveal choice information to propel the series mythology further along:

1. Flashbacks reveal that the invention that wiped out electrical works worldwide was the brainchild of a tiny start-up owned by Ben and Rachel Matheson, who later sold out to a Department of Defense official named Flynn in exchange for the means to save the life of troubled unborn Danny. Flynn is played by Colm Feore, most recently seen as Laufey the Frost Giant king in Thor. I remember him more disturbingly as the Satanic baddie from Stephen King’s Storm of the Century. Suffice it to say that when he half-smiles, horrible things are about to happen.

2. Remember Grace? The nice lady who also owns one of the Twelve Pendants, as well as a computer setup with 56K modem? We return to her again for the first time since episode 2, still held captive by the mysterious man named Randall.

His full name? Randall Flynn. DUN-DUN-DUUUUUN. To be continued!

I, for one, welcome Feore’s addition to the cast. I also have to admit that this was probably one of the best episodes since the pilot. The gang is slowly coming together and shaping into a real team. Miles is losing his selfish motives and not fleeing introspection so quickly. Charlie’s quest for Hardcore was easier to take seriously this week. Aaron once again finds ways to be useful (albeit some still thanks to dumb luck), but shines particularly well when he stands his ground with Miles, who wants to destroy the pendant. Nora got short shrift this week, but takes center stage next week. I’m not sure if Michael, Peter, and the other Bad News Bears will be sticking around, though it seems hard to imagine Our Heroes just leaving them to their abandoned dump and wishing them well. He could at least teach them all a few cool sword thrusts first.