Revival Season 1 Episode 7 Review: Too Many Secrets

Truths come out as Wausau descends into a full-on police state on Revival Season 1 Episode 7, “Too Many Secrets.”

Following the supernatural developments on Revival season 1 Episode 6, “Bloodlines,” the series delivers one of its best episodes. Not to mention one of its most consequential.

The episode offers viewers fantastic character development while answering big questions and exponentially increasing the stakes.

The Monsters Are Always Other Humans

There’s a fairly well-established characteristic of most Zombie shows and movies: the biggest threat to the living is rarely the undead; it’s other humans. 

To be clear, Revival is not a zombie story. Revivers are more akin to mutants in the X-Men than they are the mindless, brain-eating monsters of most stories about the dead coming back to life. 

Still, Revival leans heavily into the idea that humans are the greatest threats to one another. The fact that, except for one elderly woman with lead poisoning, revivers aren’t dangerous only underscores this point more.

Every episode this season has seen the persecution and animosity towards revivers increase dramatically. This is no slow burn. They are going from zero to one hundred and breakneck speed.

We are just past the halfway point of the season, and the town has already become a complete police state. There is no illusion of civil rights or due process. People, revviver and non-reviver alike, can just be taken in the name of protecting the town.

There are lots of supernatural elements on Revival that require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. The town’s reaction and the government fear-mongering we saw on “Too Many Secrets” is not one of those things.

It’s because it rings so true that it’s one of the most compelling aspects of the story. It is also the reason it is by far the scariest part of the series.

Some of the ways the series explores this theme are obvious and hard to miss. On “Too Many Secrets,” for example, there is the scene of the military taking the Mayor and his wife. 

However, they also explore the theme in subtle ways. Quick details that viewers might not notice amid the chaos of growing authoritarian control. For example, one small moment that struck me is the news report about the Em killing the Check brothers. 

The report just says that a reviver is responsible for the death of three brothers. They frame it as a family tragedy for the Check brothers, with Em as nothing more than a killer.

It is a choice to frame it this way and play on people’s fears. The Checks were well-known dangerous criminals, and not just some random trio of brothers. However, you wouldn’t know that from the news story.

Even without knowing the history of the Check brothers, the video clearly shows there is more to the story than the Check brothers’ violent end. The report deliberately frames in the most inflammatory way and makes it easier for the government to treat revivers as dangerous monsters.  

The Start Of A Redemption Arc?

Right before the military takes the Mayor and his reviver wife away, the Mayor lays the blame for everything that has happened at Wayne’s feet. And, well, he’s not wrong. Or, at least, he isn’t entirely wrong. 

This is likely where things were leading with or without Wayne, so it’s hard to place ALL the blame on Wayne. 

Still, he is the one who first called the Governor in, initiated the registry, introduced the idea of camps, and generally contributed to the distrust and hostility towards revivers from a position of authority. 

We may have reached this point without him, but he certainly played a significant role in accelerating things. Plus, he doesn’t get a pass just because this is where things were inevitably going. He made some awful, inhumane decisions, and he is responsible for the fallout. 

On “Too Many Secrets,” we get the beginnings of what looks like a redemption arc. As I think many expected, the catalyst for Wayne’s change or attitude is finding out that Em is a reviver, and more importantly, that his daughters did not trust him enough to tell him that. 

Quick aside on Em being exposed as a reviver. It was fairly obvious that Wayne would eventually find out about Em. However, I must admit that I did not expect it to be with the rest of the town (or at least the town government and the military).

I certainly did not expect it to be in such a dramatic fashion either, basically upending any sense of normalcy or stability the Cypresses had. With a giant target on Em’s back, things just got a whole lot harder and a whole lot more dangerous. 

As for Wayne, while he does seem to think the Governor has gone too far when the military comes for the Mayor, the real start of what could be his redemption arc comes a bit later during his interrogation. 

Whether he realizes it in that moment or just says it out loud for the first time, he acknowledges how bad things are between him and his daughters. It’s the first time we see him entertain the idea that maybe he was wrong and made mistakes. 

That then leads to probably my favorite part of the episode, where Wayne and Dana work Em’s case together.

First, I have to say both Melanie Scrofano and David James Elliott are excellent in these scenes. I will never stop singing the praises of Melanie Scrofano. She elevates the emotional resonance of any scene she’s in, and this scene is no different (nor is the scene earlier on the episode between Dana and Cooper).

I also appreciated that they didn’t just flip a switch and suddenly make Wayne a perfect father. He remains stubborn and dismissive at times, which ultimately leads to an intense argument between the pair. 

But he stays and is able to see his daughter differently, trusting her instincts enough to follow her lead and, for once, not need to be the one in control.

That scene does a great deal to win the viewers back to Wayne’s side. It can’t be the end of his redemption arc. The answer can’t be that everything the government did was fine until it impacted his family.

He’ll have to do more to help the revivers and save the town to redeem himself fully, but at least by the end of that scene, the audience is rooting for him again.

The Opposite Of a Redemption Arc

On the other side of things, there is Blaine, who is very much not having a redemption arc. Blaine keeps getting bolder and more dangerous with each episode.

On this episode, we see that he is holding the little old lady reviver from a few episodes ago prisoner and then uses his light creature to eliminate her permanently. 

We don’t see what happens to the woman, so we don’t know if she dies in the usual sense of the word or disappears like Jordan did on “Bloodlines.” We do, however, hear what happens to her, and even if she disappears like Jordan did, it is not the peaceful welcome moment it is for Jordan.

Whatever happens to the woman Blaine kidnapped is violent and terrifying. Notably, during the scene, she keeps repeating something to the effect of “it’s not mine.”

That’s interesting on its own and without other context. But when we remember that Jordan says something about the creature being there for her when she disappears, those words are even more intriguing.

Despite what happens to the reviver Blaine kidnaps, I don’t believe the creatures are malevolent. I don’t know what Blaine is doing to them, but I feel confident saying that the violence we hear is not part of their normal nature. 

At this point, it’s hard to say which is the bigger threat to revivers, Blaine or the government that should be protecting them.

Finally, Some Answers. And of course, more questions

We also get answers to a few season-long questions on “Too Many Secrets.”

First, we get confirmation that the water from Moore Creek has a connection to Revival Day.

Ibrahim has been toying with this idea a bit in his research for a while. Now, with Em’s life at stake, he takes a leap of faith and they go to Moore Creek to see if it will save her. The water does heal her, proving his theory correct.

The exact cause of Revival Day remains unclear, but the answers run through Moore Creek. And so does the answer to who killed Em, because that’s where her murder took place.

After healing herself in the waters, Em has a vision of her murder. In that vision, she sees a person in a mask, who we can assume is the killer.

We don’t get the identity of the killer on “Too Many Secrets,” but we do learn the identity of another mysterious person on the show. The episode finally reveals the identity of the burned reviver we met in Revival Season 1, Episode 1, “Don’t Tell Dad.”

As some might have suspected from the bits of information dropped about the Blackdeer case, he is Jesse Blackdeer. He is the father of Rose Blackdear, the victim in the infamous Blackdeer case.

He was also the main suspect in that case, although wrongly accused. Not believing him guilty, Dana let him escape, which explains all the tension that case causes between Dana and Wayne.

According to Jesse, Rose’s killer is also the person who killed Em. If Dana can finally solve the Blackdeer case, she will also solve her sister’s murder. But you know, no pressure, right?

Despite all the clues we get on “Too Many Secrets,” we end the episode with just as many questions. Who is the man in the mask? How did the powers of the lake affect the rest of the town on Revival Day? How are the Blackdeer case, Em’s murder, and Revival Day all connected? The list goes on and on. 

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Revival airs Thursdays at 10/9c on Syfy.

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