[ken0042]

Some spoilers:

Why the power went out:

Spoiler!

The father had been working on a way to produce completely clean electricity. That failed, and he ended up finding a way to inhibit electricity from working. In the flashback they show him pitching to somebody from the gov't about buying the technology. In the flashback his wife is pregnant with their son. She comes into his office and sees the pitch, and gives him heck about trying to sell to the gov't- that they could turn it into a weapon. He replies that they are out of money, and need to sell it to somebody.

So basically we know that the father invented this thing, so that is also how he knew how to make the pendants that would allow electricity to flow.

Here is how the wife is involved:

Spoiler!

As mentioned above, she is pregnant with their son. She has a medical issue and gets rushed to the hospital. During the untrasound they discover the baby is missing an important blood vessel feeding the heart and lungs. She is 8 months pregnant so they could induce now; but the baby would be too weak to survive the needed surgery. If she waits full term, the baby would likely not survive the stress of labour.

So the gov't guy stops the wife and asks if she has heard of some fetal surgery going on at some hospital. (It wasn't the Mayo clinic- but one like it.) She says they checked, and they are full. He offers to get involved; to get them to the front of the line. She doesn't want him to "buy" his way in- just wants to "make everybody happy." They don't show her agreeing; but the look she has would imply she agreed to it.

The other thing I will add outside of the spoilers; they did a great job in the above flashbacks of making the wife look younger. She does look to be in her late 20s; not early 40s.