Emily Thorne
Amanda Clarke, formerly known by the pseudonym Emily Thorne, is a fictional character and the protagonist of the ABC television series Revenge, portrayed by Emily VanCamp, based on Edmond Dantès, the titular protagonist of Alexandre Dumas' 1844 novel The Count of Monte Cristo.
Description
Emily Thorne has been described as a flawed and multifaceted heroine figure. She is emotionally scarred by her father's unjust imprisonment and a childhood spent in the foster care system, and she commits many morally questionable acts motivated by her obsessive desire for retribution against the woman who destroyed her family. Emily VanCamp, who portrays Thorne, described the character as having become "corrupted" to the point where she was concerned that it would be difficult to make Thorne appealing to audiences. Thorne usually appears calm and calculating, but as the series progresses, she begins to reveal vulnerabilities that impedes her efforts to get vengeance. According to VanCamp, Thorne has tried to bury her emotions but has an unstable emotional side, which means her feelings come out in extremes.File:Edmond Dantès cropped.JPG|thumb|left|Emily Thorne is a modern female interpretation of the character Edmond Dantès from The Count of Monte Cristo.
In Revenge, Thorne serves as a modern female version of Edmond Dantès, the main character of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, the novel that inspired the series. According to Anthony Letizia of alterna-Tv.com, similar to Dantès being falsely imprisoned for 14 years on a false charge of treason, Thorne was imprisoned in juvenile detention and her father was framed for financing a terrorist attack on the United States. Thorne has been left shares in Nolcorp, which she liquidates to the value of $40 billion and is a fund for her revenge against the Grayson family, making her the second richest character in the series after Nolan. Letizia notes several more similarities between the characters such as both of them training in combat after leaving incarceration in preparation for their plans of revenge and both pursuing revenge against a group of powerful and wealthy conspirators.
Her pursuit of revenge has been noted as a sympathetic aspect of the character. Commentators cited the Great Recession as making viewers more receptive to Thorne's efforts to get revenge against a group of privileged elites for the harm they caused her family. VanCamp described the character as "quite justified in what she's doing" adding that "everybody can connect with the theme of revenge, whether they act on it or not." The character's "girl next door" appearance is attributed as contributing to this appeal, with show producer Mike Kelly suggesting that it means viewers are "rooting for her even though she's doing something that's kind of diabolical."
Madeleine Stowe, who portrays the antagonist Victoria Grayson on Revenge, has likened her own character to Thorne. Stowe notes the two characters as being complicated and said that Thorne is on a similarly amoral path as Victoria. She suggests that because of these similarities her character is able to recognize "something really amiss" about Thorne. Lyle Masaki of AfterElton also noted similarities between the characters stating that they are "equally cool customers, equally matched and neither are completely sympathetic."
Like her father, she is incredibly intelligent and is capable of resolving complicated situations with great cleverness. She is also proficient in shooting and martial arts and speaks fluent French and Japanese. Emily does not kill her targets, although some of her actions have led to people dying at the hands of others.
"Illusion" reveals Emily's birthdate as June 11, 1984, making her 27–28 years old during the events of season 2, which takes place in 2012. She has a net worth of $1 billion, as stated on the show.
Character arc
Background
Her mother, Kara Wallace, was said to have died of illness when Amanda was five, although Amanda later discovered her mother isolated herself due to her psychological issues. David, who worked as a hedge fund manager at Grayson Global, was having an affair with his boss Conrad Grayson's wife, Victoria, and they were prepared to divorce their respective spouses to marry each other. During this time, Conrad Grayson, Victoria's husband, laundered money to a terrorist group, Americon Initiative, which they used to bring down Flight 197. Desiring to save themselves, Conrad and Victoria manipulated the evidence to point to David Clarke. The FBI arrested David for treason, while Amanda was taken into foster care for at least eight years, and she never saw her father again. She spent two years at Allenwood Juvenile Detention Center, until she was released to Nolan Ross, a friend of her father's, who informed her of the truth and gave her a wooden box of mementos from her father, along with 49% shares of stock in Nolan's computer software company, NolCorp, in which her father had invested. She has a tattoo on her wrist of a double infinity symbol, representing her father's love for "infinity times infinity", as he told her as a child. David had pleaded with her in his journals not to confront the true culprits behind Flight 197, but she refused to follow his advice. She spends several years researching the members of the conspiracy and creating an elaborate fake back-story by changing her name to the one of her former cellmate, to seek revenge.Season 1
The "Pilot" begins by showing the future "Fire and Ice" engagement party for Emily and Daniel Grayson, the son of Conrad and Victoria Grayson, taking place on Labor Day Weekend. All seems to be going well until a body assumed to be Daniel's is discovered on the beach by his sister Charlotte.Five months before, Emily rents her childhood beach home and begins her revenge plan by destroying the careers and lives of the minor players in the conspiracy against her father, beginning with Lydia Davis, her father's secretary and Conrad's mistress. She saves Conrad and Victoria for last, and schemes to marry their son Daniel in order to have access to the Grayson family records.
Nolan Ross, a billionaire software developer and friend of David Clarke, recognizes Emily as Amanda and deduces her plans for revenge. He offers to assist her; she initially rejects him, but later counts on him as a trusted ally.
Daniel's college friend, Tyler Barrol, shows up in the Hamptons to stay with the Graysons. Emily is distrustful of him from the start, while Emily's friend and Victoria's event planner, Ashley Davenport, is smitten with him. When Lydia returns, determined to get her house and reputation back after her affair with Conrad was revealed, she blackmails the Graysons and Emily. Emily, however, sets her up to take the fall for her other takedowns, causing the Grayson head of security Frank Stevens to throw her off her balcony, although she survives.
Emily sends Conrad a video recording of the Frank and Lydia incident, which causes Conrad to fire Frank. As a result, Frank attempts to regain favor with the Graysons by digging into Emily's past. He discovers Emily's former cellmate, the real Emily Thorne who is posing as Amanda Clarke, but she murders him before he can warn Victoria. After "Amanda" alerts Emily to the killing, Emily sets up the Graysons for Frank's murder. Her attempts to send Amanda away fail, and her former cellmate stays in the Hamptons and becomes involved with Emily's old friend Jack Porter.
Tyler, meanwhile, becomes a larger problem, and Emily enlists Nolan to get rid of him, only for him to begin a romantic relationship with Tyler. Emily exposes Tyler's misdeeds, but Tyler ends up blackmailing Conrad when he tries to fire him. Emily steals the leverage Tyler has on Conrad, and Daniel evicts him from Grayson Manor. Daniel's birthday party later goes awry when Tyler appears and holds the party at gunpoint. Daniel and Jack get the upper hand and have Tyler arrested by the police.
Emily burns down the house of her third-from-last target Mason Treadwell, an author who wrote a faux tell-all about David Clarke, destroying his work. Before the fire, she steals several of his interview tapes, which reveal that Charlotte, the Graysons' daughter, is her biological half-sister. Emily uses this against Victoria, and Conrad threatens to expose this information in the midst of their divorce proceedings.
Emily returns home one day to find her Infinity Box missing. Tyler, who has escaped custody, reveals himself as the thief and that he has kidnapped Amanda. When Amanda turns on Emily, she enlists her mentor Satoshi Takeda for assistance at her engagement party. Takeda retrieves her Infinity Box and murders Tyler on the beach before fleeing with Amanda. Returning to the starting point of the pilot, the partygoers find that the body is not that of Daniel, but Tyler, and Daniel becomes the prime suspect. Emily discovers that Victoria hired a contractor named Lee Moran to attack Daniel in order to have him released on bail. Emily implicates Moran in Tyler's murder, and he is later found dead in prison, seemingly having committed suicide, although Emily discovers that Conrad contracted to have him killed by the same man as her father's killer.
Investigating her father's murder, Emily learns that Conrad often spoke with a "white-haired man", whom she discovers is her father's killer. She becomes determined to kill him. Victoria acquires immunity as she exposes Conrad to the SEC. She later hands evidence of David Clarke's innocence over to Daniel, only for Emily to steal it from Daniel's briefcase.
The white-haired man abducts Nolan. Emily rescues him and attacks the white-haired man, but she spares his life. Nolan hands Victoria's evidence over to the SEC, but as Victoria and Lydia come forward as witnesses, the plane carrying them to the hearing crashes, supposedly killing them and destroying the evidence. However, Nolan reveals that he copied a hard drive in Conrad's evidence, which contains a video that reveals Emily's supposedly deceased mother to be alive.