As TV villains go, Lucious Lyon is among the most evil and sinister. His laundry list of despicable deeds knows no bounds, ranging from the vindictive to the flat-out murderous, the narcissistic to the spiteful. More than once, in both the show itself and in Empire’s episode titles, he has been explicitly referred to as “the devil.” Lucious is cold-hearted to the bone and willing to sacrifice only in the name of benefiting himself in the long term, the worst example of a father, (ex-)husband, lover, businessman, and “friend.”
At this point he’s also, as TV villains go, among the most lazily conceived and poorly drawn, a point that Season 2 has continuously made clear and ultimately drove home in its penultimate episode, “Rise by Sin.” In it, Lucious somehow topped himself as #TheWorst by doing what he’s always done—going out of his way to tap into and exploit his own family members’ weaknesses—and reveling in every minute of it. But that moment, in which Lucious tells Jamal, “The day you die from AIDS, I’mma celebrate,” while alarming, isn’t surprising or revealing. Neither, at this point, is Jamal’s response or anyone else’s dealings with the patriarch’s continuous antagonism. Lucious is so predictably terrible as to be utterly boring now—and in order for Empire to regain its compelling nature as a series, he needs to die.
As I’ve noted before, Lucious has always been the show’s weak link and least interesting character, despite the fact that both seasons have anchored their major plot points around his exploits. The show made it clear early on that Lucious wasn’t going to be a character to root for, ending Episode 1 with the murder of Bunkie, his supposed best friend and Cookie’s cousin. From there he only grew more unlikable and unrepentant, with zero redeeming qualities (outside of his genuinely delicious sparring matches with Cookie), which is fine—Empire is not a show that traffics heavily in nuance, and not every TV antagonist needs to be painted in the shades of antihero gray that became the norm post–Walter White and Don Draper.
What’s grown increasingly frustrating, however, is the fact that Cookie, Jamal, and the rest of the Lyon dynasty continue to put up with his crap, as evidenced in how closely all of this season’s ever-shifting alliances have mirrored last season’s. The formula has been established, and the writers aren’t budging from it, at all: In any given episode, at least one family member is completely on the outs with Lucious because of something malicious he did, while Cookie tries to bring them all back together to make music (and money). Just as the family had to “stick together” in order for them to achieve the ridiculous, weirdly contrived goal of going public with Empire, this time around, they’ve had to ostensibly “stick together” in order to reclaim credibility at the ridiculous, weirdly contrived American Sound Awards.
Jamal’s continuous back and forth with Lucious is particularly uninspired—it’s ostensibly supposed to be a “complicated” relationship (father has such disdain for son, who just wants to be loved), but there’s only so many times we can watch him ignore Lucious’ homophobia and hatch schemes to derail his career in an attempt to work with him again. Wednesday night, Jamal seemed to have turned an emotional corner by announcing on the red carpet that he would be performing alongside his family for the last time and hinting to Freda that they should leave to start their own label—until you remember that he already struck out on his own in Season 1, briefly slumming it by moving out of the loft his dad was paying for and recording with a then-ostracized Cookie. And since then, we’ve seen him, time and time again, hurt by Lucious and vowing to never have anything to do with him, until suddenly, they’re back in the studio together.
At least he admits Lucious is a snake. Cookie, on the other hand, who was once the heart and soul of Empire while butting heads with her ex, continues to inexplicably make excuses for his behavior, effectively ignoring everything he’s ever done to her sons and to her because of their unwavering “chemistry,” or something. This latest episode crystallized how badly the show has relied upon Cookie’s “ride or die” status, when, after Jamal has been shot, she tells Lucious: “You were born into a living hell. That you can’t help. But I know, deep down, you wanna do what’s right for your family.”
She was referring, of course, to a recurring theme throughout Season 2—the reveal of Lucious’ painful childhood memories of his unstable mother (played, in flashbacks, by Kelly Rowland, and in the present by the legendary Leslie Uggams). Watching Lucious warble on and on about his dark past has been a cop-out and lame attempt to make him into a complex human being, to somehow explain (and explain away) his rotten self as an adult. But Lucious will never love his family anywhere near as much as he loves himself—if he loves them at all—and Empire needs to stop trying to make “sympathetic, tortured” Lucious happen. It’s only bringing the character arcs of everyone else on the show down.
The cliffhanger and subsequent promos for next week’s finale suggest that the rest of the world will learn he’s been at least somewhat untruthful about his personal life for the sake of making a music video, while Cookie might officially become Mrs. Lyon again. But if Empire wants to keep viewers interested in seasons to come, the writers must either let Lucious finally suffer the consequences of his actions or just get rid of him altogether. Because after this episode, there’s really no place else for his character to go.
