Scandal season 4, episode 19 found Papa Pope coming back into the fold, and a certain someone coming face to face with death.

Before we ponder Jake’s future, let us look at the rest of Scandal’s latest episode which aired Thursday night.

The Brandon Bill

At the start of the episode we find the President celebrating the apparent passing of the Brandon Bill in response to the recent shooting a few episodes ago. Cyrus is thrilled over the news. “Now we get the Black vote!” he ecstatically tells Abby.

But don’t get too excited about the black vote yet, Cyrus! The vote on the Brandon Bill actually sits at a tie, so Fitz tasks the Vice President to break it in their favor. In theory that’d be easy for her to do, but she insists she read the bill even though the clock is ticking.

Susan is taking her vote very seriously — oh, to be young in D.C.! She has several questions about the bill, but Cyrus doesn’t care. He just needs her to vote yes.

Unfortunately, she refuses to vote until her questions are answered, so Cyrus asks David and later Mellie to take care of the situation. Speaking privately, Susan tells the First Lady she’s aware of her senate run and her Presidential aspirations. Mellie’s surprised she figured this all out and is humbled by how Susan isn’t angry about the plan. Susan is truly someone who has good intentions and takes her job very seriously.

Despite the nice chat with Mellie, Susan is still refusing to vote, so Fitz steps in and demands she take action. After an impassioned speech from Susan about wanting to make the right decision, the Vice President talks Fitz into making the bill better. To Cyrus’ disappointment they get to work, and later we see Mellie proudly announce her campaign for the senate.

A murderous mayor

The case of the week: OP&A get a call to visit the home of Mayor Verrano and find Marcus Walker, the Brandon Parker activist who’s running against Verrano, standing over the Natalie Verrano’s dead body. We later learn that the Mayor had his wife killed for sleeping with Marcus. After exposing that revelation to the media, Marcus thinks his career is over. Quite the contrary, Olivia tells him!

Don’t be surprised if we see more of Marcus in the episodes ahead — we love his chemistry with Olivia and hope he sticks around.

Rowan is back, Jake is… dead?

The episode kicked off right where we left off last week — Papa Pope has poured two wine glasses for he and his daughter. With a gun strapped to his back, he demands Olivia get David to drop the case he’s preparing against B613… or else.

Olivia is not discouraged by Papa Pope’s latest tirade — instead, she’s more motivated than ever to finally take him down. She later meets with David, Jake, and her OP&A associates over a round of drinks and agree that this is their moment.

48 hours pass without David dropping the case, so Papa Pope checks in with Olivia. Ms. Pope says she’s decided to bring him down because it’s the right decision (Yes! Yes it is! Let’s do this already!). Papa Pope is proud of her drive, but warns there will be consequences.

And that consequence is Jake’s life.

After posing as Olivia and summoning Jake to OP&A, Olivia’s lover Russell delivers several seemingly fatal stabs to Jake’s body. It was a classic Scandal switcher-oo — We’re led to believe Russell is one of the genuinely good parts of Olivia’s life, and suddenly we find out that he too is a disciple of Rowan.

So, is Jake truly dead? The stabs to his body were certainly plentiful and very painful looking, suggesting that he could conceivably be dead from the attack. A preview for next week shows Jake’s body lying on a table, and Olivia worried that her father will kill all of her loved ones before this is over.

A leaked photo from the episode supposedly depicts Jake lying in a hospital bed which would suggest he’s alive. Unfortunately we’ll have to wait until next week before we find out how bad Jake’s injuries are.