Wausau, Wisconsin, is no stranger to the quiet and strange—but nothing could prepare the town for what happens next. Revival kicks off with a bone-chilling (and oddly beautiful) opener: all across town, the recently deceased suddenly come back to life. Not as flesh-hungry zombies, mind you, but exactly as they were. Welcome to the weirdest resurrection event on record.
We jump straight into the life of Officer Dana Cypress (Melanie Scrofano), a local cop and single mom trying to wrangle her son, Cooper, and hit the road. But her plans to escape town get derailed by a mysterious call. The town needs her—and she’s got a badge to wear and chaos to face.
Cruising in her patrol car, Dana witnesses her first newly revived person wandering along the road—among them, a very alive-looking young girl. Something isn’t right. Cue a slickly edited time jump: “35 Days Later.” The initial panic has passed, the lockdown has been lifted, but the city is still under a lingering quarantine. (Let’s just say the COVID vibes are strong with this one.)
Dana stops by a bar and is mid-hookup with a mystery guy in a car when she’s interrupted by a phone call—because, of course, someone just found a dead horse. Priorities. Dana rolls out to investigate and finds not just the horse, but another dead animal nearby… and human teeth lying next to it. Yikes.
Meanwhile, we meet Dana’s younger sister, Em, who’s been ghosted by her professor—someone she was definitely seeing—as he finally agrees to meet her that night. At school, Cooper realizes that one of his classmates is a Reviver. He’s kind to her.
Back at the police station, Dana’s got a full plate. There’s a new guy at the station: Dr. Ibrahim Ramin, a CDC liaison. He also happens to be the guy she was hooking up with the night before.
Dana swipes the Reviver Registry from her dad’s office and finds a name: Myles Miller.
Another curveball: the job Dana applied for out of town falls through. Turns out no one wants to hire someone who might be stuck in an undead hotspot. The cherry on top? The coroner loses the horse to the CDC team.
Em’s night gets creepy when she calls her dad to check in and gets stood up by her professor. But there is definitely someone watching her. Not great. Dana, on the other hand, goes off searching for Myles Miller and finds him in a small camp. He attacks her—and he’s definitely a Reviver. She arrests him, but he seems confused. He doesn’t know about the horse, but he does mention something about a truck covered with a tarp.
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Dana and Dr. Ramin discuss the strange dental evidence left in the horse and the other dead animal she found. The teeth are human. Dr. Ramin also shares that Revivers’ tissue shows signs of healing—even the teeth are regenerating. Translation: there is at least one unregistered Reviver feasting on large animals.
The next day, Dana drops Cooper off and finds Em sleeping on a bench. The sisters reconnect, catch up, and make plans to stick together once all this madness settles and travel to the beach.
Following up on Myles’ tip, Dana finds the mysterious truck under a tarp and begins searching the property. What she finds is something out of a horror movie: a feral old woman—another Reviver—pulling out her own teeth. She attacks Em with a scythe. Em survives, but the real kicker? She’s a Reviver.
Wayne gets a call while watching Cooper and decides to bring the boy along to investigate a report at Mrs. Shaw’s house. Inside, they find her dead husband. He died just one day before the Revival event. She has had him in her house ever since, waiting… and waiting… for his second chance. Cooper is missing when Wayne returns to the car.
Revival airs Thursdays at 10/9c on SYFY, and episodes stream a week later on Peacock.
