Why Did David Clarke Abduct Her?

So much for her revenge plan, huh? The Revenge Season 4 premiere aired last Sunday and it was confusing as hell. Not just because of the series' unannounced and undetermined time-jump but because David Clarke abducted Victoria Grayson right after she escaped the insane asylum. We all spent the first 45 minutes of the Season 4 premiere trying to figure out how the series got where it was and why everyone was actually totally nuts and then it packed all of the action in at the last second. To boot, the show then left us with a huge question: Why does David Clarke want Victoria as a prisoner? And how did he time it so perfectly that he was waiting for her when she turned up on Emily's doorstep?

I've been confused by the David Clarke shocker from the Season 3 finale as much as the next person. But I guess when Emily started to run out of people to exact revenge upon, Revenge had to do something crazy about it. Enter: David Clarke, the "dead man" who is ready to turn himself loose on the Hamptons. During the Season 4 premiere we saw him lurking around in his and Emily's former beach house and planning for his big return to the lives of the people who loved and missed him all of this time. But what struck me the most about David's appearances in the Season 4 premiere was just how perfectly he managed to time his arrival so that he was waiting for Victoria to show up at Emily's at the exact moment she miraculously escaped from the asylum.

I mean, it's also possible that he's been staking out his daughter's new home to make sure that she's safe. But, somehow, it makes more sense to me that David, who's obviously a mastermind, planned for Victoria to escape from prison that night and for her to turn up at Emily's door. But why? Even if he set Victoria up with her loyal minion in the insane asylum so that she could escape right into his clutches, why would he go through all of this trouble?

Because there's no easy way for him to come back into his daughter's life after all of this time of staying hidden. If I were Emily and my father, who I ruined my life for because I thought he was dead all of these years, came back and was all like, "Hey, daughter, I'm back," I'd be so pissed and I wouldn't believe a word he said. David Clarke, being the brilliant and terrifying evil genius that he is, definitely knows that that's how Emily would react to this surprise and that's where Victoria comes in.

In the promo for Sunday's episode of Revenge , "Disclosure," David doesn't exactly look happy to see Victoria — especially considering he chokes her. But he's not going to kill her like he tried to do to Conrad, he's going to make sure she helps him get his daughters together and to function as a witness that he is who he says he is. Again, Emily and Charlotte have been battered by their respective circumstances so badly that they'd never believe him if he approached them outright. But Victoria would provide the perfect distraction from the fact that it's totally insane that David Clarke pretended to be dead all of this time by confirming his existence to these two women whose lives she's destroyed.

I mean, it's also entirely possible that David Clarke wants to hold Victoria captive just to torture and torment her until he feels she's suffered as much as he has. But that wouldn't make for great TV nor does it fit with Revenge Season 4's new focus on Victoria's revengenda. So, the only logical explanation is that Victoria will either serve as a lure to get the girls where David can meet them safely or as confirmation that yes, he's a real person.

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