At this point, you know you’re going to be screaming at the TV screen throughout the entirety of Empire, right? The midseason finale—which, sadly, is the last episode we’re getting until practically APRIL (March 30, to be exact)—delivered plenty in that respect, plus about a million guest stars. Alicia Keys, Jason Derulo, Questlove, Charlamagne tha God, Da Brat, Nicole Richie, Joel Madden and even a fun Rachel Dolezal reference found their way into the mix, all while some incredible craziness went down.
And it’s all Lucious’ own damn fault.
The Empire founder (Terrence Howard) had a fateful business discussion with Marisa Tomei’s Mimi, wherein she Home Alone 2‘d him and later played her secret recording for the board, where he essentially said he DGAF about what the board had to say.
This enacted an emergency election to potentially kick him off the board, with the deciding vote going to his youngest son, Hakeem. You know, the one who publicly renounced his last name. Oh, and whose ex-girlfriend Camilla (Naomi Campbell) is now married to Mimi, the one attempting to overthrow Lucious. Guess how he voted?
CLICK: You will actually never believe who kissed on Empire
That’s right, against his father. Now Mimi controls the company (although she’s relinquishing control to Camilla) and Lucious is NOT HAPPY.
Meanwhile, on the Jamal kissing a woman front, although his dad tried to out him as straight (their “are you hitting that” exchange was particularly glorious), Jamal and Skye (Alicia Keys) totally had the talk (you know, the “sorry, I still love dudes” one) and she was totally chill about it.
So things are alright for him on the relationship side of things, although on the messed up family side of things he’s got a real problem now that he’s going up against his dad at the fictional American Sound Awards. Seriously, Jamal, sleep with one eye open. Your dad is terrifying, and now that he doesn’t have his company he’s probably got plenty of time to plot to bring down the career of his own son.
As for the baby drama, Anika (Grace Gealey) has clearly fully lost her mind. While she bonded with Rhonda (Kaitlin Doubleday) throughout the course of the episode, a yet-to-be revealed assailant pushed Andre’s pregnant wife down the stairs of her ginormous mansion and things aren’t looking too good. Wonder who that assailant could be?
CLICK: Da Brat heads to Empire in a blast from Cookie’s past
While all this was going down, Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) was back at the prison where she spent almost two decades holding a concert for her inmate friends. It was nice! Da Brat was there.
Finally, there was a straight-up entire Pepsi commercial included in this episode. Way to spend those integrated ad dollars, Pepsi!
Now, if the wait for March weren’t agonizing enough, the teaser for the second half of the season included car bombs, emotional break downs, death threats and yet another new CEO of Empire. Better stock up on Pepsi in the meantime, because it’s going to be a long wait.
15 epic facts about Empire
