Revenge executive producer talks Season 3 Finale's major twist

The Season 3 finale of Revenge featured two major deaths, an arrest and an insane asylum commitment, but perhaps none of these was the most truly shocking moment of the hour.

[WARNING: SPOILERS FOR REVENGE SEASON 3 FINALE BELOW]

In the final minutes of the episode, fans learned the presumed-dead David Clarke is alive and kicking, and his first act upon returning was to stab Conrad directly in the gut and kill him. Emily Thorne's three-season mission to avenge her father reached a tipping point when she successfully cleared his name and had Victoria committed to an insane asylum, but apparently David has been out there this whole time.

In a post-mortem interview with EW.com, executive producer Sunil Nayar explains the logic behind bringing back David in the flesh:

"[I]t felt like it was one of those game-changing things we needed going into season 4. And I know people have always been like, 'Is he [alive]?' 'Is he not?' And I'm very curious to see what the audience's reaction is going to be because my gut says it's going to be a little bit polarizing. But I definitely think it's going to be one of those things where's there's going to be nobody who won't come back to see A) How he's still alive and B) What on earth is going to happen when he shows up. We have the chance, again, [to explore] Emily. She had that conversation with Nolan where he said, 'Who are you going to be when this is over?' And she said, 'I don't know who Amanda Clark is anymore.' The only way to up the ante of that is to make somebody who loves that girl so dearly return. But now he'll be a man that she won't really know. One of the reasons we really wanted to bring him back was because it gives us so many places to psychologically go with this story, for everybody. And the other thing we wanted to do was, when we reintroduced him, he's no longer a man about forgiveness. So our audience knows something that our people don't, which is, even though David Clark is back, this isn't the guy that young Amanda knew, this isn't the guy Victoria knew. It's someone completely different. We think that's going to be a great presence on the show and give us a lot of great stories."

Were you shocked by David's return? Let us know in the comments below.