Scandal season 3 came to an end Thursday night with several twists like two character deaths, a retirement plan, and a whole lot more.
During last week’s episode we saw Maya plant a bomb at the funeral of a congressman which put Vice President Sally Lange and Fitz’s VP running mate Andrew Nichols at the risk of being blown to pieces.
The episode began with 14 minutes to go until Maya’s bomb was scheduled to explode. Jake tries calling Cyrus again, but he lets it go to voicemail. Moments later (how’d he get there so fast?) Jake bursts into the Oval Office and informs Fitz of the situation with the bomb. Thanks to this advance notice, they’re able to get almost everyone evacuated from the church including Sally.
Encouraged by her campaign manager, Sally begins helping people who were hurt by the bomb so the cameras are trained on her. The idea works because all of the news channels begin switching over from Fitz’s statement about the bombing in the White House to Sally being a hero at the scene. Olivia is livid because they need the attention on Fitz to win the election.
Olivia and Cyrus agree that this screw up cost Fitz a second term in the White House. In our opinion it’s all Cyrus’ fault, because if everyone was evacuated sooner there would’ve been no one for Sally to assist.
They go to Fitz and Mellie to break the news about what this means for the election. Afterwards, Olivia gets some good news: Rowan survived the stabbing but was very lucky. “I wish I could help,” Rowan says about the bad election outlook. As we see later in the episode, he can.
That evening at the White House, with the election looking grim for Fitz, the President tells Olivia that now that the government is out of their way, they can get married and have two babies.
While that’s a nice thought, the conversation suddenly turns serious: Olivia tells Fitz that his father Big Jerry raped Mellie. Fitz immediately goes to his wife (who’s drinking again) about the revelation, and Mellie tells him that the paternity test we saw her take at the suggestion of Olivia last episode confirms that Jerry is Fitz’s child. It doesn’t matter to Fitz, however, who is deeply upset about the actions of his father.
With 24 hours to go until election day, Leo and Cyrus share a celebratory drink over the polls that suggest Sally will win the election. We then see a beautiful phone call between Fitz and Olivia who are talking about the fact that the speech he is about to give is his last ever if he’s truly losing tomorrow. They hang on the phone in silence at the end of their call, and then Olivia returns to her father’s hospital room where we see Maya has arrived. While mom and daughter talk about mistakes they’re both making, we flash over to Fitz’s speech where we see his son Jerry, who just moments ago said to his father that he is sad he’s not winning the election despite being a Reston supporter, begins to cough up blood and collapse on the ground.
At the hospital we learn Jerry was poisoned by a bacterial strain and it was at the hand of Maya. Speaking to Rowan who’s still in the hospital recovering, Fitz vows to kill the woman (“She’s killed my son and now I’m going to kill her”), and Father Pope says he wants to help by enlisting people in the government.
Now out of the hospital, Rowan is trying to find Maya. He goes to Harrison for help because Maya’s “partner” Adnan has been killed by Mama Pope too.
Olivia tells Abby and Huck that she’s quitting today and plans to take up her father’s getaway offer. That night at her house, Jake pays a visit to question her departure decision. Olivia insists that she’s looked at this from every angle. “It’s time to stand in my truth. It’s me. I’m the thing that needs to be fixed. I’m the scandal and the best way to deal with a scandal is to shut it down.”
Jake wants to go with her but Olivia reminds him that she’s in love with Fitz. Jake disagrees with this notion and the two agree that they should leave together.
The finale’s final moments
Things move quickly over the final minutes of the episode. Maya is captured quickly because Harrison knew where she was going to pick up money. Too quickly. More on that in a moment.
Rowan gets reinstated as head of B613, and Harrison figures out that it was Rowan who killed Jerry and Adnan. “He took my child so I took his,” Rowan says to Harrison of Fitz. Moments later we see that Maya is being held in a cell by Rowan. The two sort of smirk at one another. They’re in this together, aren’t they? In related news, David takes over at B613 for Jake.
Fitz wins the election as planned (Rowan says he made this happen because “my daughter wanted it”). Meanwhile, oddly, everyone in the White House is cheering about winning the election even though Jerry died 24 hours ago.
The two-term President heads into the Oval Office by himself and is upset – but is it because of Jerry? It’s that, and not being able to keep promises to Olivia, and the heartbreak he’s caused Mellie. He hits the bottle and starts to break down.
Mellie and Fitz try calling Olivia, but she hits ignore and flies into the sunset with Jake.
What did you think of the ‘Scandal’ season 3 finale?
How quickly will Olivia return to Washington D.C.? What the heck are Maya and Rowan up to? Will Sally still be in the picture? Will Andrew and Mellie continue to have an affair?
It’s also important to mention that Huck and Quinn were having sex in the offices of Olivia Pope and Associates at the start of the episode. Quinn’s partner, now upset about her hook up with Huck, presented an envelope to her that held the location of Huck’s lost family. Quinn used this information to take Huck to where his wife and child live – the two people he couldn’t find. At the end of the episode we see he decides to greet his wife at her home face to face.
Scandal season 4 will very likely premiere this fall on ABC.