'Revenge': Is Emily flirting with disaster by getting closer to Daniel?

“Revenge” returned Jan. 13 with the all-new episode, “Sabotage.”

This highly suspenseful installment finds Emily (Emily VanCamp) and Aiden (Barry Sloane) going toe-to-toe with their most dangerous enemy, Initiative leader, Helen Crowley. And, Padma is revealed to be on Crowley’s team (we knew it!) and an unsuspecting Nolan (Gabriel Mann) brings her back into his corporate fold (and his arms) and fires Marco.

Uh oh. Trouble abounds for all of the Hamptonite key players, including the Porter brothers, who can’t shake their tie to the unsavory Ryans.

Plus, Emily gets closer to Daniel (Josh Bowman), in the name of her plan to take down the Initiative. But, the closer she gets to Daniel and by exposing her tie to him to Crowley, she is putting herself directly in her greatest enemy's line of fire. Is she going to regret this?

Emily Flirts with Disaster

Emily continues to get closer to Daniel (much to Aiden’s dismay), in her effort to get closer to the Initiative. At this point, Daniel is totally enamored and unsuspecting. During a cozy Chinese dinner to discuss the children’s charity that Emily wants Daniel to sponsor, he takes a call from Helen Crowley.

We learn that Helen is watching Daniel, and now, she can even see Emily. Emily wants to draw her out, anyway, and invites her to the charity wine auction.

It turns out Daniel buys the last bottle of wine at the auction for one million dollars and Helen Crowley shows up late. Crowley, who has already cast the hook at Aiden that his sister is still alive, gets into the elevator with him and they are both knocked out by gas.

They wake up blindfolded and tied to chairs, where an unknown assailant pummels them with questions about Crowley’s reasons for bugging Daniel Grayson and her interest in Stonehaven United Solutions. Aiden “overtakes” the captor, shoots him and he lies “dead” on the floor. He frees Crowley, only to take on another “henchman.”

We find out Emily and Nolan are “the bad guys” and the whole thing was staged to get Crowley to trust Aiden. Did they succeed? Will Crowley trust him?

Even more importantly: Will any digging Helen Crowley does on Aiden reveal his past link to Emily? Or, at the very least, if Emily is perceived to be someone Daniel cares about, will the Initiative use her safety as blackmail to make Daniel do some kind of terrible bidding? Perhaps another terrorist plot worked through NolCorp? Or Stonehaven?

At any rate, the Initiative is a horrible, formidable enemy and Emily is taking a huge risk in trying to take them down. Any number of people could get hurt. At minimum, Emily, Daniel and Nolan are the ones in the most danger …

On another note, is Emily going to lose Aiden by turning up the heat with Daniel? He repeatedly suggests that she back off on her plan with Daniel and she tells him she can’t risk it right now—that Daniel is her best connection to the enemy.

Emily VanCamp has undeniably strong on-screen chemistry with both Bowman and Sloane. All three actors do a brilliant job keeping us guessing about their characters' true intentions.

In the case of the story, its obvious Aiden is really jealous of Emily's growing bond with Daniel. Will his emotions get the best of him and compromise their entire plan?

Nolan Courts the Enemy

We questioned Padma’s loyalty right from the start and now, it’s confirmed that she works for the Initiative and reports to Crowley.

Most likely, it’s Padma, who wrote an email to Daniel, as if via Marco, about Nolan burying the Carrion project in his R & D. Hence, Nolan fires Marco and we cringe after Padma makes her secret call to Crowley.

Talk about sabotage! Nolan’s getting it on a professional and personal level. He genuinely cares for Padma and it looks like he trusts the wrong lover, again. It’s not clear what Marco’s agenda is, if he has one, but it may be that Nolan cut one of his potential allies loose to fall directly into the arms of his most dangerous enemy.

Plus, if Crowley ever gets wind of Emily’s connection to Nolan, things could quickly become a lot more dire for both of them.

Questions What is Carrion? What is this super program that Marco reminded Nolan about? What is its purpose? What other secrets is Nolan hiding? He's awfully nervous and something is just not right with this very confusing picture ...

Porter Brothers’ Plight Seems Hopeless

Jack (Nick Wechsler) is sure dirty cops in cahoots with the Ryans planted the drugs on the Amanda. Uh oh. If you can’t trust the police, who can you trust?

Amanda (Margarita Levieva) tries to take matters into her own hands by threatening one of the brothers and almost shoots him, until Ashley (she’s baaack!) appears to tell her Conrad (Henry Czerny) got Jack out on bail.

Even so, his situation looks utterly hopeless. Jack and Declan are linked to these creeps, and now, people they are close to, like Charlotte (Christa B. Allen), Amanda and Baby Carl are in danger because of them.

What’s going to happen? Will Amanda revert to her violent ways and serve her own justice by killing the Ryans? Will Jack do heavy time for a crime he didn’t commit? Or, will Conrad find a way to “make the problem go away?”

We know someone eventually gets blown up on the Amanda. Is it one of the Porter brothers, after pushing the Ryans too far?

The bottom line in this brilliantly twisting plot: Everyone is in trouble. The Initiative is obviously brewing some kind of new evil plot and any number of people could take a great fall as a result. That is, unless Aiden and Emily can stop them before it’s too late and before they both become unfortunate casualties.

“Revenge” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. EST on ABC.