Empire season 3, episode 1, “Light in Darkness,” revealed the woman who met her unfortunate fate from last season’s cliffhanger, and much more. Read on for our top five favorite moments from the premiere.
Raise your hand if you thought Rhonda would be the one to fall to her death at Anika’s hands? Unfortunately, I was one of those people as well. While this isn’t an article about how Rhonda’s death was horribly represented and her character was basically thrown away, maybe one of those will come up in the next week or so.
Now that we’ve cast that aside — just as Rhonda’s character was — let’s get down to our top five moments from the season 3 premiere of Empire!
- Anika’s DAUGHTER (not son) is born
- Lucious getting shut down by French Montana and Birdman
- Hakeem’s new track “Factz”
- Jamal’s new track “Need Freedom”
- Cookie and Lucious flashbacks
First off, I was upset to find out Anika survived, and killed Rhonda. But I can honestly say I was so happy to see Lucious’ face when he found out that Anika lied and had a girl instead of the golden heir he originally thought.
I was also grinning when Lucious was threateningly whispering in Anika’s ear (while she was in labor!) because the Feds were outside and wanted to question her. He told her that the family is going to say Rhonda’s death was self defense and that Anika better keep her part of the bargain and not reveal any information about Lucious to the Feds.
When Anika was moved into Lucious’ home, his mother Leah even threatened her. Things are already not going well for Anika. She should have thought things through a little more. But in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy all of this Anika hatred because I’m still pissed about Rhonda.
Since the Swiftstream deal obviously fell through, Lucious is now starting an Empire exclusive streaming deal called Empire Ex-stream (or X-treme?).
Lucious offered French and Birdman a deal to have their music sold exclusively through Ex-stream. They weren’t into it because apparently Empire is “sinking to the bottom.” When Lucious mentioned being the king, Birdman threw him under the bus about throwing his queen to the side and marrying his side chick. Ouch.
While I absolutely love the Lyon family drama on this show, I’m sure most of you can agree that the best part of this show is its music.
Maybe now that Hakeem isn’t attached to anyone — well, besides Tiana — he can get back to doing what he does best. Shine (Xibit) really helps ‘Keem out here and drops an amazing beat. If Hakeem keeps throwing down hits like this, then Jamal may have some serious competition this season.
Okay. So I know we discussed Hakeem’s new song a few seconds ago, but damn does Jamal know how to make a show stopper! Not only does he have that sweet voice, but he sings about real things.
It was devastating to see Jamal suffer from PTSD after being shot; it just may have been too soon for him to start performing in front of a crowd.
Although, when Ness, Shine’s artist, jumps in and sings “Need Freedom” for him while he’s out back catching his breath, she totally kills it! I can say it’s almost better than Jamal’s version. But now that Ness is the one that sang instead of Jamal, she’s going to be more of the face of the new Ex-stream instead of an actual Empire artist.
To no one’s surprise, Lucious is a complete jerk to Jamal about the situation and yells at him for not “manning up.”
I certainly hope we get more of these! Seeing Cookie and Lucious’ first look at each other is kind of adorable. You even hear Cookie’s sisters telling her not to go after him at that age!
Cookie is still upset with Lucious for marrying Anika. And with good reason! She’s trying her hardest to cope and roll with it, especially because Tariq and the Feds are looking for any loophole to get to Lucious, but it’s still obviously hard for her.
She tells Lucious that the only way she can still be with Empire through all of this is if there is a wall between them. She wants to control the music side of things and he can control the business side. He reluctantly agrees, but this hopefully won’t be the end of their saga.
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