Revival Season 1 Episode 3 Review: Reality Check
New clues surface about Em’s death on Revival Season 1 Episode 3, “Reality Check.” Meanwhile, reactionary politics and opportunistic zealots threaten the safety of the town’s revivers.
The Check Brothers
Revival Season 1 Episode 2, “Keeping Up Appearances,” ended with Em’s roommate, Kay, asserting that she knew who killed Em. Kay’s claim that she knew who killed Em, unsurprisingly, isn’t as rock solid as her confidence implied on “Keeping Up Appearances.”
Kay’s information did, however, give Dana a suspect to pursue for most of the episode. More importantly for the investigation, Kay fills in some of the timeline leading up to Em’s death.
Apparently, Kay took Em to the town’s local crime family, the Checks, and in a master stroke of good judgment, Em stole their drugs. We now know where that giant bag of drugs in Em’s apartment came from.
We also know that Em managed to piss of some very dangrous people shortly before she died.
Did the Check brothers kill Em? I think not. The Check brother that Dana arrests seems genuinely surprised to learn that Em is a reviver, meaning he didn’t know she died. It’s pretty hard to be involved in the murder of someone you didn’t know was dead.
He also seems to be telling the truth that he didn’t know who she was before the confrontation in the club.
It’s possible that one of the brothers killed Em without the others’ knowledge. It’s also possible that they played some part without actually being the murderers. My gut tells me, however, that this lead is going to be mostly a dead end. At least as far as Em’s murder goes.
The Check brothers are undoubtedly involved, or will be involved, with the larger mysteries surrounding Revival Day.
The more significant fallout from tangling with the Checks on “Reality Check,” however, might be Dana accidentally revealing to them that Em is a reviver.
That is some pretty sensitive information for such dangerous people to have, no matter what deal they agree to with Dana. It’s only a matter of time before that comes back to bite Em and Dana in the butt.
The Cult of Blaine
After initially meeting Blaine on “Keeping Up Appearances,” it was clear that he was going to be trouble. What was less clear was what kind of trouble he was going to be. Was Blaine a true villain or more of a misguided chaotic neutral?
Well, after “Reality Check,” that question seems answered. Blaine is an antagonist, and a dangerous one at that.
Blaine is a different kind of dangerous than the Check brothers. The Check brothers are self-serving thugs. They use brute force and direct threats to exert power.
Blaine, on the other hand, is a provocateur. He plays on people’s fears and positions himself as the savior. His growing influence on people in the town is a powder keg waiting to ignite.
One thing we don’t know yet is if Blaine himself is a true believer or if he is just manipulating the situation to his advantage. He certainly seems to believe what he’s saying. Still, there is something about him that suggests that he isn’t simply a religious zealot.
In addition to building an army of demagogues, “Reality Check” also puts Blaine at the scene of Em’s murder when she remembers seeing him that night.
Blaine is a dangerous person and someone almost certainly capable of murder. But did he murder Em? It certainly puts him on the growing list of suspects.
Wayne’s Slippery Slope
Blaine isn’t the only one engaging in reactionary politics and setting up a dangerous situation. Wayne has shown a willingness to curb the civil liberties of the revivers from the beginning. His immediate response to Revival Day is to set up a registry of revivers.
They don’t explicitly state whether the list was initially voluntary. By the end of “Reality Check,” it is definitely mandatory, though, and is being used to single out revivers in a much more punitive way.
Worse than that, he is talking about sending them to a camp.
I want to say that he is starting down a slippery slope, but if he is already at internment camps (which they are, regardless of whether the Governor would use that word or not), he has already slid pretty far down that slope.
He has made more than a few comments that he doesn’t see revivers as having the same kind of humanity as non-revivers. If they aren’t full humans, then they aren’t entitled to the same kind of rights and protections as the rest of the town.
That is a mindset that we’ve seen lead to atrocities throughout history, and that certainly seems to be where this is heading.
Advocating for camps is a pretty dramatic escalation. Still, Wayne isn’t so far gone that he can’t step back before anything truly tragic happens. He is at a crossroads right now.
He very well could continue down this path and become a series villain. But we can still hope that he will receive a wake-up call, such as learning that his daughter is a reviver, for instance, and change course.
What path Wayne chooses is one of the most intriguing plotlines of the season. Truth be told, both outcomes have the potential to be some incredible storytelling. But we’ll have to wait to find out which path he takes because right now it’s anyone’s guess.
What did you think of this episode of Revival? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and don’t forget to leave your own rating!
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Revival airs Thursdays at 10/9c on Syfy.
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Sarah Fields
Sarah is an obsessive geek who likes to get into the weeds and over think things. She is passionate about Sci-Fi and comics and is a giant classic film nerd. Sarah cares deeply about media representation and the power of telling diverse stories. When she's not writing or watching her favorite shows she spends her days working in the non-profit world trying to make life a little better for those that need some extra help.