Abhiroop Das
Created by Aaron B. Koontz and Luke Boyce, ‘Revival’ is an adaptation of the eponymous comic series, which follows the elusive town of Wausau through a rather strange mystery. One night, everyone in town who died in the last 14 days is miraculously brought to life, not only sentient but also superhuman in several ways, including immortality. To make things more complicated, they remember their past perfectly, which makes it harder to categorize them as something other than human. As Officer Dana Cypress eventually realizes, though, the Revivers are no different than ordinary people at heart, and when the time comes, the town must reunite to solve the murder mystery that is linked to it all and bring the culprits to justice. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Aaron Weimer and Lester Goode Killed Em in a Botched-Up Supernatural Ritual
By the end of ‘Revival’ season 1, it’s revealed that Em’s killing at the hands of Aaron Weimer and Lester Goode served as the trigger point for Revival Day. How these two events are connected, and only through Em, is never explicitly revealed, but we have enough material to theorize. To begin with, Aaron and Lester unite their forces under a common goal: increasing their lifespan. For Aaron, it is to heal his wife, Nithiya’s cancer, and for Lester, it’s a desire to beat his own mortality and retain a superstar status. As it turns out, Moore Creek, located right within Wausau, is a sort of liminal space between life and death, where the membrane separating these two states is thin enough for souls to pass through. Knowing this, Lester plans to sacrifice humans, letting their remains go to the other side, while retaining their life energy for selfish pursuits.
Interestingly enough, Em is not the first person to be sacrificed by Aaron and Lester, as they first go after Jesse’s daughter, Rose. However, once she fails to be the catalyst they had hoped for, Em emerges as a new target. In Lester’s own words, there is something unique about her that makes this ritual very powerful. However, that very potency ends up backfiring, as instead of drawing energy for just Lester, Em’s soul somehow ends up reviving everyone still passing through the filter between life and death. One possible explanation for this is the fact that Em was actually pregnant at that time, and the overload of life energy disturbed Moore Creek’s balance, triggering an overreaction. This detail is strongly hinted at in the comics, which suggests that it might be the implicit reason in the show as well.
Revival Day Can Be Seen as a Chance to Fix the Past
While it’s possible that Em’s pregnancy may have triggered the conditions necessary for Revival Day, it is ultimately Aaron and Lester’s fault for bringing this haunting scenario to life in the first place. Their selfish actions end up reshaping the entire town’s consciousness in a sense, as playing with death and revival is something that goes against the very nature of the universe. However, there is also a symbolic explanation for what triggers Revival Day, and it has more to do with how Em and possibly the others were feeling in that moment. For Em, the bridge above Moore Creek holds many traumatic memories, particularly of her mother’s death. It is possible, then, that she was subconsciously yearning for her mother to come back to life in that moment, and it caused a larger reaction to reverberate throughout the ritual.
Em’s circumstances do not exist in isolation, as many, if not all, revived characters we see are struggling with the human condition in one way or another. The first violent Reviver we meet, for instance, Arlene Stankiewicz, died because she was slowly poisoned to death by her own family. It is a defiance against this corruption from the world that likely fuels her revival, and also her rage, literally manifesting due to arsenic poisoning. The revived little girl, Jordan Borchardt, on the other hand, is met with a family that much prefers to isolate her, as well as classmates who bully her for being different. In many ways, Revival Day can be interpreted as Moore Creek’s spiritual response to humanity’s worst aspects, manifested in the form of the very people who were once its victims, but are now its survivors.
Read More: Revival Season 1 Ending Explained: How is Em Still Alive?
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