We Know Who Shot Emily Thorne

"'Til death do us part... or at least until I get shot in less than 12 hours," should've been somewhere in Emily Thorne's wedding vows Sunday night. On the midseason finale of ABC's Revenge, Emily finally wed her longtime target Daniel Grayson, and it was beautiful. As expected. The nuptials themselves managed to go off without a hitch, surprisingly, but Emily's brilliant concept of a "family-honeymoon" did not. Again, as expected. So now we finally know who shot Emily Thorne and it was one the last people we expected. (Well, not really — he was one of our top five suspects after watching the season premiere.) We can't help but applaud Mike Kelley's choice of who pulled the trigger, because it was exactly what the show needed.

*If you haven't tuned into the show's latest episode, be forewarned that spoilers lay ahead.*

Daniel Grayson — sweet and fragile Daniel Grayson — finally cracked under the pressure, and, yes, it was none other than Emily's brand-new husband who shot his new wife and sent her to a watery grave. Because it's Revenge and there obviously had to be a twist, but it's safe to say that no one really saw that one coming.

So how, on his own wedding day, did the groom get to the place where he wanted to kill the bride less than 12 hours after the ceremony? Sarah showed up before the ceremony at Voulez's offices and tried to kill herself, which prompted her roommate to call Daniel. (Which was kind of weird?) Add in that he heard Emily's confession that she's not actually pregnant and she took a play out of Victoria's book and lied to Daniel to trap him into marrying her and boom (pun intended)! It really is as simple as that.

But Daniel needed to be the one to pull the trigger — his character had been toyed with enough and he had the most guilt to gain. (The only other character that could have possibly pulled this off, to such a degree, would have been Charlotte — but we can't deny that we're pleased that Daniel was given the opportunity to step up.) He "loved" Emily, but really, he couldn't shake all of those gut feelings that she was everything he hated.

In the upcoming second half of the season, which will premiere in early January 2014, Daniel will grapple with one very real problem: "How do I tell my wife that I shot her twice and watched her fall into the ocean — on purpose?" Which will be really fun to watch, considering he's so incredibly bad at dealing with any sort of conflict, especially internal. (Remember Sarah?)

Of course, Emily needed to be shot. Not just because the show needed one of Emily's forsaken lovers be the one to come between her dream life with Aiden, but because if her plan had gone perfectly, there would be no more Revenge. Emily Thorne, or actually Amanda Clarke, because she'd be able to take on her real name at that point, would run off into the sunset with Aiden and look back maybe once in five years — and that wouldn't make for such a great show. So why not just trap her in this plotline? And have her survive?

The preview for the show's big return episode on Jan. 5 showed a waterlogged Emily in a hospital bed asking, "Who am I?" while a scared Daniel tries to keep his secret. (Lots of memory loss on ABC these days.) By having Daniel shoot Emily, he's finally become a major player in the scheming and manipulating that goes on around him, making the future Revenge a much more interesting Revenge.

Image: ABC