‘Revenge': Who Is Victoria’s Father? — Series Finale Interview | TVLine 

Madeline Stowe knows she was a bit misleading when she told reporters, including TVLine, that Victoria died in the explosion at Grayson Manor.

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“I knew that I wasn’t coming back to the show [after Season 4],” the

star says. “So I was telling you the truth, it just wasn’t in that moment. Sorry!”

Below, the oh-so-apologetic Stowe discusses last night’s series finale twists, including the identity of Victoria’s father, whether or not Amanda really got her heart and, of course, that incredible construction worker disguise.

TVLINE | This episode wasn’t initially planned as the series finale, but did it feel like the end when you were filming it?

I don’t think anyone knew. As I said, I knew I was leaving the show since the fall, so that’s what it was for me. Victoria’s state of mind had really deteriorated; she was ready to go. I tried to find some grace for her, which was acceptance. Victoria’s mother’s crimes really took such a toll on her, as we saw in that last reveal, and that’s why she burned down the house. She was so devalued as a child that she wanted to use her mother in the same way.

TVLINE | The last time we spoke, you told me you pitched Victoria’s death once per season. Is this, ultimately, how you think Victoria wanted to go out?

Look, Victoria would have loved to have been happy, and I kept rooting for that. I love her so much, but that’s just something that was going to be denied over and over again. In that sense, she’s always been a doomed person. She responded to the world from a self-protective instinct because she’d been so violated. Bad choices were made all along, but I’m also not sure she had many choices; when your husband tells you he’s in league with terrorists and they’re going to take your son from you, how do you respond to that? Certainly what she did to Emily was not good.

TVLINE | That seems to be a running theme on this show: What defines good behavior?

There was a scenario being heavily discussed where David Clarke was, perhaps, a mastermind — that he’d actually brought these people in and was not a good guy. This was potentially going to be a revelation to Emily that would completely rock her. Victoria was not quite the monster you thought she was, but you so believed in this girl’s credibility and how much she loved her father. They were going back and forth about that, but I believe ABC felt it would have been a betrayal of their audience to go down that road. It would have been interesting. It’s a show you can see from many different angles, and I don’t know which one’s right and wrong.

getting Victoria’s heart. Your thoughts on that twist?

I’d like to think Victoria always had a mighty heart, but nobody knew it. So now she’s got her enemy’s heart — which might not be so bad. When we did the table read, it absolutely happened. But they wanted to go for a little more poetry and have it be in her psyche so that you saw she was troubled by this. They’d never tell a transplant recipient who gave the heart unless both sides agreed to it. In the original draft, it absolutely happened.

TVLINE | The revelation from Victoria’s mother also threw me for a loop. Did Victoria really sleep with her father?

She didn’t sleep with her father; she was abused by him. People so believe in Victoria’s wickedness that they would actually think she’d be a willing participant when a guy comes into her bedroom and abuses her, which happens to women all over the world. She didn’t know [he was her father] and that’s the level of psychological damage that Marion inflicted on her. She twisted everything to blame Victoria.

TVLINE | So… Do we know who Victoria’s father is, or was?

Victoria never knew, so the revelation is that once Victoria got out of serving the time her mother should have been serving, the mother started a new life, which was touched on in Season 2. Her mother had already started a new life with a new boyfriend; what Victoria didn’t know was that this was her father re-entering her life. In Season 2, the mother says, “I should have done what your father said and just aborted you.” This is dark, but it does happen in life.

TVLINE | Let’s end this on a positive note: I loved Victoria’s two disguises last night, especially the construction worker.

Oh my God, I loved that. All I could fixate on last night, with my daughter and my husband, was my lipstick. I forgot to take it off! So there she was in full eye makeup and full lipstick; I thought, “This is hilarious.” Why not? It was one of those moments where you cringe as an actor.

fans, your thoughts on how Victoria’s story drew to a close? Drop ’em in a comment below.

I thought it was amazing that Vic had full make up on while wearing the costruction clothes, just seems what she would do, still be fabulous even under a disguise… I also really liked her in the blonde wig, she could pull that of!!

Wait! The one who tried to kill Jack was Victoria?? I didn’t know that. She looked like Courtney Love so I was trying to remember if Courtney had ever guest-starred on Revenge. lol

Haha, no. Victoria was dressed as a construction worker when she entered Margeaux’s building. She wore a blond wig when she attended her own funeral. The woman who tried to kill Jack was indeed played by Courtney Love. She had been in two prior episodes.

when he speaks of the wig… when she was in her own funeral …

Is she lying in the interview again? Nah. I’m just playing.

I’ve always felt sympathy for Victoria. A lot of the things she’s done are unforgivable, but thanks to Madeleine’s portrayal, I’ve always loved her character, in spite of the awful things she’s done. I’m going to miss her (and the show) so much, but like Madeleine said, she’s always been doomed from the start. A happy ending was never in the cards for her, unlike Amanda/Emily.

I agree totally with you… Victoria was my queen and I will miss … Only some people understand why Victoria that is how it is … I think the villains should not be seen as they are… and should look the reason why they are the way they are …

Can we get a post-mortem with Emily Van Camp?! Shes the one who’s thoughts I would love to hear! Love Stowe, but nothing in this interview was that different from the last one she gave a couple of weeks ago.

Deadline has one. They probably will have one here as well.

THIS has got to be the most perfect bittersweet ending. No loose ends. And good DID trump evil. I love that Amanda and her friends got to destroy the Graysons like they had destroyed so many others whose lives they had touched. Some wrongs just NEED to be made right asap. And I loved that Louise finally saw the light after the brick house fell on her. I can see Louise and Charlotte becoming BFF’s. It seems as though heaping helpings of just desserts were had by all. Thank you for the four years of entertainment you have provided.

Ok, this is for anyone who is still confused about who Victoria’s father is:

The man Marion made Victoria kill when she was a teenager was a man named Tom, who was her mother’s boyfriend at the time.

After the shooting, she was sent to a mental institution of some kind for 6 months, where she underwent a pysch eval.

When she returned home, she discovered her mother was in a relationship with a man named Maxwell, who was only Marion’s boyfriend at the time. This man WAS her father, the one that snuck into her room at night and raped her repeatedly. She told her mother, but Marion believed she seduced him and threw her out of the house in the middle of the night (when Victoria was 15).

Some time later, Marion married Maxwell, whom Victoria believed was her stepfather when he was actually her father, the unidentified man who got Marion pregnant (and urged her to have an abortion).

P.S. The writers actually retconned the insinuation that Maxwell got Victoria pregnant (presumably with Patrick) before she was kicked out of the house. This was done in Season 3, when it was revealed that—some time after being kicked out by her mother—Victoria was raped by a man in the basement of the run-down apartment building she was living in, if I remember correctly, who was later revealed to be Jimmy Brennan, Patrick’s biological father.

Thanks for the explanation – and therein lies what went wrong with the season starting in S2. So convoluted with retrocons, etc. It became far more messy than it should have.

The finale was good, but what was the point to bring back the question about Victoria’s father? I have the feeling it confuses people (myself included) more than it answers a mystery that only existed for a very brief moment in season 2 or 3. I thought it was totally out of place and irrelevant to the current conclusion.

They wanted to provide a solid reason for Victoria to have such hatred for her mother (whose death served a purpose as you know), and the father thing was it.

Everyone wanted to see how Victoria was related to Amanda/Emily because of the heart transplant ( matched ) I still don’t know… but they were related somehow

It added to the state of mind she was in before she decided to blow up the manor. The flashback with her mother occurred some time before that.

At that point, she was probably the most hated woman in America. Then, she gets a call from her ailing mother and is told the man that raped her as a child, the man she knew later as her stepfather (since he and Marion married a short time after Victoria was thrown out of the house) was actually her biological father the whole time?

I’d probably want to blow something up too if I found out that my biological father had raped me as a child! It just aided her in her death wish. So, in a way, it was relevant.

I hope that the dream was real … (they let us a hope that Amanda Victoria continue to plague even killed)

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