‘Revenge’ cliffhanger finale: Is Madeleine Stowe’s character dead?

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Forget who won ‘American Idol.’ The TV show that has set the web abuzz is Wednesday’s wacky season 1 finale for ABC’s trashy soap ‘Revenge.’

In a closer that boggled fans’ brains, the producers built up more cliffhangers than a world-class alpinist might see in a lifetime. Chief among them: Did ABC really just kill off the show’s prime antagonist, Victoria, the treacherous Hamptons heiress played by Madeleine Stowe?

Squelching a major character is a risky move for any TV series, but if the writers actually did decommission Victoria, they did it in grand fashion: The devious billionaire was presumed to be a passenger on a plane that just happened to blow up real good, thanks to a bomb planted by the mysterious White-Haired Man.

Of course, this is television, so the whole plane explosion could be a dream. Or maybe Victoria broke a heel on the tarmac and had to race back to the terminal.

In any case, the producers gave AMC’s ‘The Killing’ a lesson in how to end the first season of a promising-but-not-quite-mainstream series.

As the entertainment site Wetpaint wrote enthusiastically: ‘Cliffhangers? The ‘Revenge’ season finale just redefined the word.’

If you watched the ‘Revenge’ finale, what did you think? And if you haven’t been following the show, would you be more willing to do so now?

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-Scott Collins (twitter.com/scottcollinsLAT)