The Empire season 2 finale, “Past is Prologue,” just aired! Twists and turns were around every corner!
Time jump, three weeks. Well, at least we quickly know that Jamal didn’t die. Not that we thought he did. Let’s get right to the madness.
A welcome home party is staged for Jamal’s arrival and Veronika sings a beautiful song for everyone. Then everyone wants Jamal to sing it with her at Hakeem and Laura’s wedding. Jamal passes because he wants to take a break from music and performing until the violence stops. He’s not right and everyone just needs to chill for a second because in the viewer’s eyes, he was just shot, dammit!
When Anika comes to the Lyon household, she informs Cookie and Lucious that the Feds cornered her and asked her a bunch of questions, she remembers the name Shyne Johnson being asked about.
When Rhonda hears Anika’s voice from the other room, she barges in and clocks her a good one. When she proceeds to tell everyone that she knows Anika pushed her because of her shoes, no one believes her. Cookie even adds that she owns those same Louboutins too!
Rhonda and Andre get in a huge argument and she warns him that she remembers that he gets his “killer instinct” from his daddy. She ends up leaving and we’re told she heads to LA to look into their friend’s jewelry company. This better not be the last we see of her this episode. (Edit: it’s not!)
Anika leaves and Lucious fills Cookie in on what went down while she was locked up. He said that they had to get rid of the “three horsemen” because they were a threat to the family. But there was a fourth horseman that was given to him and Shyne as a job. Only a select few know about it, but the Feds are digging up info about it. The others that know will be in attendance at the wedding.
Cookie meets with Shyne (Xzibit) and she tells him that it’s better if he and Lucious are on the same side as opposed to against each other. He says okay as long as Empire signs his nephew, Hakeem records the track, AND he can come to the wedding. She makes the deal, reluctantly. This cannot go well. At all.
Lucious meets with Freda in jail and I can’t pinpoint if he’s truly there for Jamal or if it’s for his own gain as usual. He tells her that he didn’t lay a hand on her father, Frank Gathers, which is technically true because he had his goons do it if my recollections are correct.
He tells her he wrote something and then plays a beat on his phone. Apparently Freda believes Lucious because she all too quickly starts putting down a track.
When Lucious meets with Jamal afterward, he says that Freda was non-compliant and didn’t say much. He then tells Jamal that he “ended the cycle today. She ain’t mad no more.” Whatever that means, because I can’t believe a single word he says. Lucious gives Jamal the track Freda just laid down and it triggers Jamal to start making music on his own.
The next day, Jamal has a cellist and a couple of violinists working on a song for Hakeem’s wedding. This was Lucious’ plan was all along, to get Jamal back to doing music.
At dinner with Hakeem and Laura’s parents, Laura’s father makes a point that he’s not comfortable with someone like Shyne Johnson being invited to the wedding. Hakeem explains that he and Laura plan on “changing the cycle,” as Jamal put it, and everyone too easily seemed okay with that.
At the office Hakeem grabs Cookie and Lucious and brings them to where Anika is pondering jumping from the roof. She says she’d rather kill herself than to snitch on Lucious. She’s told to lay low for the next couple of days so she doesn’t get subpoenaed.
It’s finally wedding time and Veronika Bozeman is seriously killin’ it with this song. I tried finding it to embed here but had no luck. She has such a beautiful and amazing voice. There also seems to be a lot of foreshadowing about Jamal leaving his mother and father’s reins and doing his own thing. Season 3 anyone?
Lucious and Cookie talk to Rosie and Tom (the other guys involved in the job with the horseman) about the past and say that they have to stick together. They just have to entertain Shyne because he wants to be part of the group again. Shyne brings four hookers to the wedding and no one is happy about that, obviously.
Just as Laura is about to walk down the aisle, an undercover process server who was ironically dressed as a server actually served Anika her subpoena and a small brawl ensued involving Shyne. Laura walks out to chaos and says that this isn’t going to be her life. She leaves Hakeem on the alter.
The Lyon family meets in the back room to come up with something to do. The solution they come up with is to have Lucious marry ANIKA! That way Anika can’t testify against him. Cookie is PISSED. She walks away upset. Hakeem tries to intervene because she’s carrying his baby.
Jamal mentions ending the cycle again and Andre says, “The cycle ends when it’s ready to end, until then we do what we have to do.”
Nope, they go through it anyway. It’s super awkward and kind of gross. As they’re walking down the aisle, Lucious whispers to Anika, “I know you pushed her.” Anika immediately walks away and Jamal refuses to sing at the wedding. Good for you, bro.
Tariq walks up and congratulates Lucious on his shotgun wedding. He basically says they’ll just get him a different way. Leah Walker comes up and asks Lucious why his half-brother is there. Umm, what?
Then we get a flashback of Lucious’ father Joe being killed in front of him. It’s also revealed that Tariq is in fact his half-brother. Their father was a cop but a bad man as well, so they both share his traits.
Lucious tells Andre to find his wife (gross!) and when Andre does find her, she’s fighting with Anika on the balcony. That is when Anika admits to killing Rhonda’s baby. (Finally!!) As the camera pans out to Andre, we hear a scream…. yet we’re left not knowing who it belongs to.
Best line of the night
“I don’t know why I thought you were ugly.” — Leah Walker to Hakeem
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