The end is here!

A capricious NBC allowed Revolution to remain on the air until tonight’s finale, “Declaration of Independence”, but didn’t officially cancel it until it was too late for the showrunners to alter their course, aim for closure, and/or toss in some last-minute nods to us stubborn, longtime fans. The season-long arc with Willoughby and the Patriots limps toward its anticlimax, alliances change too late, plot points are dumped by the roadside, and all the Revolution fanfic writers out there (if any) receive the parting gift of a permanently unresolved cliffhanger that could serve as a pretty bouncy springboard for any number of Revolution Season-3 NaNoWriMo novels.

How did our cast fare this week? Follow along one last time:

How they solve the nanobot torture plot: Picking up where last week’s failed electrocution left off, the nanobots inhabiting Priscilla direct their furious energies toward blowing up all the nearby appliances and gadgets, slapping Rachel and Aaron around a bit, and preparing to commence with murderous revenge so they can get back to torturing innocents for science. Meanwhile inside her own head, the real Priscilla — who for the last several episodes has been living in a virtual fantasy where she has two happy daughters — is awakened by the sound of Aaron’s desperate pleas. Through the power of True Love his begging penetrates layers of nanobot psychological defense and encourages Priscilla back to the surface and back in control. She passes out in his arms a moment later.

This none-too-flowery display of old-fashioned True Love is powerful enough to unhook the solid hold that the quadrillions-strong nanobot hivemind had on Priscilla. Their response: nothing. The house powers down. No fireflies fly in through the window and incinerate everyone. The house isn’t immediately struck by several dozen lightning bolts in a row. They just mutter “Curses!” to themselves in nanobotese and stop doing anything.

And they all lived happily ever after.

How they solve the mustard gas mass-murder plot: As the Patriots prepare to kill Texas’ own General Carver and all the innocents at the Memorial Day service, including the darling children’s choir singing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”, Miles, Charlie, Bass, Gene, and fifth-wheel Scanlon arrive in time to stop the flow of gas, confuse and frighten the crowd into bolting for the exits, and have a quick gunfight in which the day is saved by Charlie’s old friend, that crossbow she used to wield all the time until someone realized crossbows are heavy, take time to reload, and have zero advantages in close-quarter combat. That’s the closest we get to a sentimental callback anywhere in this episode.

Unfortunately for Our Heroes, spin-doctoring requires no electricity, and thus they’re later blamed for the whole Memorial Day panic. The next day President Davis cons an enraptured crowd into a patriotic chant of “USA! USA! USA!” as he swears them pesky Matheson boys are up to no good and the Patriots are gonna get ’em and they’re all but certain that their arch-rivals in California are responsible somehow and oughta be stomped while they’re at it.

At no point after the evening dust-up do we hear whatever happened to all those gallons of mustard gas. No one carts all those crates away, no one discusses the previous plan of dissolving it all in lye, no one notices how Miles’ ragtag team saved a lot of lives, and not even Our Heroes do anything except silently agree that we should never speak of the mustard gas again.

And they all lived happily ever after.

How Ed Truman, Patriot tool, solves his employment issues: When the Matheson family comes in with guns a-blazin’, Truman gets President Davis, General Carver, and a few other random attachés into a evac point in someone’s basement. Davis decides this is the last straw and implies at top volume that he’ll be murdering Truman shortly. Truman’s inspired, improvised response: he shoots and kills Carver and everyone else in the basement except Davis, then shoots himself in the arm. This staged scene, without modern forensics around to tear its flimsy premise apart, facilitates all the spin-doctoring and somehow convinces Davis to give ol’ Ed one last chance. Davis just can’t quit him.

Later, when things go sideways for all Patriots statewide, one of Truman’s last scenes is him exiting a Port-a-Potty, realizing he’s surrounded by an awful lot of gunfire, and running away to save his own bacon.

And they all lived happily ever after.

How they solve the dozens of armed Patriots chasing after them: Miles has a plan: before President Davis can leave town on the next steam train, they kidnap him and plan to wheedle a confession out of him. All goes well with the abduction except for the part where they’re chased by dozens of armed Patriots. In a tremendous leap of faith, Miles orders Bass to escort Davis back to the rendezvous point while he, Charlie, and Rachel hold off those dozens of Patriots, until they retreat once they realize they’re clearly outnumbered. Knowing full well that Bass has been wanting to dispatch Davis for most of the season, Rachel deems this plan stupid. Miles rebukes this rebuttal by declaring that hey, at least I’m expressing a positive emotion for once, so SHUT UP.

At some point between Bass’ escape with Davis and the latter conversation, those dozens of armed Patriots fall off the face of the Earth and are never seen again. Either they’re all too incompetent to handle a manhunt for three lousy subjects, they all clocked out because their shifts were over, or they were all tricked into walking off the same Wile E. Coyote desert precipice and fell to their deaths.

And they all lived happily ever after.

How they solve the Neville/Connor backstabbing alliance: Connor thinks his dad has become a weak-willed mess who’s all but pining for Miles to love him, resents being dragged away from his sweet Mexico gangster’s paradise to become embroiled in this season-long brouhaha that has nothing to do with him, wants to take over America for himself, and thinks Neville is the man to help him conquer it. Connor’s brilliant plan: assassinate the President, wait for the Patriots’ Texas/California war plan to work, and then totally step in and take over for them. As long as Neville gets to avenge his dead family by slaughtering Patriots, he shows no outward signs of sweating any other details. Also, puppy-dog Scanlon is along for the ride because everyone else is really mean to him.

Slight problem: when they accost Bass and try to lure him over from the Dark Side to the Even Darker Side, he says he can’t because he promised Miles he’d keep Davis alive for now. A gunfight ensues. Bass takes out cannon-fodder Scanlon with a single shot to the head. Bass triumphs over the supposedly crafty Connor and the definitely dangerous Neville by luring them inside a large shed and then locking them in really tightly. That’s just about the last we see of them.

And they all lived happily ever after.

How they solve the treachery of the evil President of the United States of America: Our Heroic Kidnappers drag Davis partway to Austin, but get waylaid by some leftover Patriots that overrun their hideaway. Back in the catbird seat, Davis mouths off to everyone about all the evil plans he’s masterminded to date. His rap sheet runs clear back to before the blackout, when he was President by dint of Electoral College vote and not by insidious treachery. He and Rachel recognize each other — her former boss Randall Flynn reported directly to him on behalf of the nanobot project that ruined life on Earth. So this is all his fault.

Surprise! Davis has been had. The “Patriots” are just clever disguises for some guys on the right side. Along for the ride are grieving father Joe Matthews from last week, several Texas Rangers, and retired General Frank Blanchard, whom we saw in a compromising position in one previous episode, who’s still recovering from his unpleasant stabbing, and who still has enough pull with the Rangers to have President Davis arrested and all the other Patriots in Texas hunted down and shot. Except Truman, as noted above, of course, slippery weasel that he is. Someday I hope I can retire with that kind of clout.

And they all lived happily ever after.

How they solve the problem of Bass’ psychopathic tendencies: When Miles trusts Bass with Davis’ life, that display touches Bass deep down inside. Though he looks forward to gutting Davis someday if/when Miles gives him permission at the right time, he doesn’t wound him once because that’s not what Miles would want. Miles’ technical kindness makes him so mushy that he sides with Miles over his own son when forced to choose. At this point it seems that all he wants out of life is to make Miles happy. Why, he wouldn’t even hurt a fly. Unless it tried to bite Miles, and then he would make that fly pay. So former tyrant Monroe is basically neutralized.

And they all lived happily ever after.

How they solve the Miles/Rachel will-they/won’t-they tension: Um, actually, they decided several episodes that they were a Thing, then pretended to break up in front of Bass because they needed him to help them steal mustard gas. I was 99% certain they were in full-on they-will mode, but have been too busy for another date lately. Regardless, Charlie gives Miles her official blessing to ask her mom out. He refuses to argue. This discussion is the most continuous screen time that former main character Charlie Matheson receives in this finale.

And they all lived happily ever after.

How they end the series: After Priscilla awakens from her recuperative coma, she warns Aaron of several images that she saw as her consciousness retook her body and shooed the nanobots away. She could tell from her visions that the nanobots were just resting their eyes, and that their next plan involves a “grinning man”. No idea why several quadrillion tiny monsters needed to regroup and rethink, but it was their choice to make, I suppose.

Instead of exacting revenge on Aaron, Priscilla, and Rachel, the nanobots have established a new base in the (fictional) town of Bradbury, Idaho, located in the post-blackout region known only as the Wasteland. Similar to their previous Lubbock plan, they’ve decided to lure other humans to Bradbury to serve them, humans who won’t protest their amoral experiments. We see hundreds of unnamed subjects already zombie-walking into town at night, welcomed by a large neon clown sign sporting a creepy grin (hence Priscilla’s fuzzy vision) and bearing the name “3 RING ICE CREAM”.

Beyond these obedient nobodies, the nanobot fireflies also flicker and flutter their way toward three familiar faces. They appear before President Davis in his jail cell, taking on the image of his dead father. They appear before that loser Truman on the run, in the form of his almost-fiancée Marion, whom he stabbed to death last week.

And they appear before Tom Neville in his solidly locked shack, entering through a skylight that doesn’t look too hard to reach and either he or Connor maybe should’ve noticed hours ago. They speak to him through the angelic visage of the late Jason Neville.

Using real cities as guideposts, a trip from Austin, TX, to Twin Falls, ID, would be a good 1500-mile walk. That may sound challenging to you or me, but anyone who watched season one knows that kind of distance is a snap for the heroes of the Revolution.

To them, long walks are easy. Nielsen ratings are hard.

The End.

Thanks for reading.

* * * * *

If you missed every episode and want to relive Revolution from start to finish without actually watching it, enclosed below is a complete Revolution episode guide with links to Midlife Crisis Crossover recaps for all forty episodes, provided as handy reference for future generations. These may become especially useful if one of the show’s stars ever develops a larger following by going on to something bigger and better. Knock on wood.

Revolution season 1 episode recaps:

9/17/2012: “Pilot”
9/24/2012: “Chained Heat”
10/1/2012: “No Quarter”
10/8/2012: “The Plague Dogs”
10/15/2012: “Soul Train”
10/29/2012: “Sex and Drugs”
11/5/2012: “The Children’s Crusade”
11/12/2012: “Ties That Bind”
11/19/2012: “Kashmir”
11/26/2012: “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”
3/25/2013: “The Stand”
4/1/2013: “Ghosts”
4/8/2013: “The Song Remains the Same”
4/22/2013: “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia”
4/29/2013: “Home”
5/6/2013: “The Love Boat”
5/13/2013: “The Longest Day”
5/20/2013: “Clue”
5/27/2013: “Children of Men”
6/3/2013: “The Dark Tower”

Revolution season 2 episode recaps:

9/25/2013: “Born in the U.S.A.”
10/2/2013: “There Will Be Blood”
10/9/2013: “Love Story”
10/16/2013: “Patriot Games”
10/23/2013: “One Riot, One Ranger”
10/30/2013: “Dead Man Walking”
11/6/2013: “The Patriot Act”
11/13/2013: “Come Blow Your Horn”
11/20/2013: “Everyone Says I Love You”
1/8/2014: “The Three Amigos”
1/15/2014: “Mis Dos Padres”
1/22/2014: “Captain Trips”
1/29/2014: “Happy Endings”
2/26/2014: “Fear and Loathing”
3/5/2014: “Dreamcatcher”
3/12/2014: “Exposition Boulevard”
3/19/2014: “Why We Fight”
4/2/2014: “Austin City Limits”
4/30/2014: “$#!& Happens”
5/7/2014: “Tomorrowland”
5/14/2014: “Memorial Day”
5/21/2014: “Declaration of Independence”

Miscellaneous MCC entries related to Revolution:

10/22/2012: “‘Revolution’ 10/22/2012 Imaginary Episode 5½: Charlie vs. the Presidential Debate”
3/12/2013: “‘Revolution’ Relaunch Refresher: Main Character Guide and Episode Recaps”
4/15/2013: “‘Revolution’ 4/15/2013: Pre-Empted on Account of Evil”
3/22/2014: “MCC Q&A #7: ‘Revolution’: Who Dies Next?”
4/9/2014: “‘Revolution’ Takes Three-Week Bereavement Hiatus, Uses Up All Its Remaining Vacation Time”
4/16/2014: “Top 13 Ways ‘Revolution’ Hopes to Improve Its Ratings”

Enjoy! See you next TV series!