Holy water cannot help you now. See, I had to burn your kingdom down, and no rivers and no lakes can put the fire out. I’m gonna raise the stakes. I’m gonna smoke you out. Seven devils all around you. Seven devils in my house. See, they were there when I woke this morning, and I’ll be dead before the day is done.

The relationship between Amanda and Nolan is my favourite thing about Revenge. This show does a lot of interesting things with gender roles, beginning with the fact that the protagonist is a woman who, for all intents and purposes, is Batman. One thing I particularly love about Amanda is that unlike most female spy/deceiver characters, she doesn’t rely on sex appeal and seducing information out of people. Although she uses her relationship with with Daniel as an integral part of her revenge plans, it’s an actual relationship, not a collection of scenes where the camera pans over her wearing a sexy outfit before cutting to some man’s comically gobsmacked facial expression. To me it feels quite telling that although the female characters in Revenge are mostly trophy wives (or, in the case of Fauxmanda, a former stripper), they are judged far more on their own terms than most female characters on TV.

With Nolan and Amanda, you have this brilliant relationship where Nolan is basically her henchman, but also is the one person who knows her secrets. On paper, it seems like he should have been more of a mentor figure to her — he’s older, he was friends with her father, he’s her key to the Hamptons — but instead he’s very clearly in the sidekick role. Also, Nolan is the only character in the show who isn’t desperate for control, either of his life or the world around him. There’s this almost submissive side to his personality that means he’s perfectly happy to look to Amanda for direction and take genuine pleasure in her success.