Splash! Punch! That was the infamous sound of vengeful rivals Cookie and Anika heard ‘round the country on last season’s dynamic finale of Empire. It was a GIF-worthy, LOL-worthy, ZOMG-worthy smackdown, the pugilistic outcome we’d all expected for months.
GAHHHHHH! Punch! This was the sound of Season 2’s finale “Past Is Prologue,” in which Anika confirmed her place as Empire’s literal, proverbial punching bag. A fuming Rhonda, now convinced that Anika is the one who caused her miscarriage, goes straight for her throat early in the episode and socks her in the face. “I know you pushed me, bitch!” she yells as the Lyon family pries her away. Later, Rhonda attacks her again and the two struggle on the edge of a stately balcony, this time with no one to stop them from going all in on each other. Only one will survive to next season, apparently.
GAHHHHHH! Punch!, while mildly entertaining, is not nearly as shocking or LOL-worthy, or even GIF-worthy, as Splash! Punch! It lacks the emotional payoff, the gusto, the sheer element of delight of its sharper, more piercing cousin. It is the sound of a once-hot, once-frenetic TV show burning out fast.
A lot happened in “Past Is Prologue,” and almost all of it was predictable. Jamal is not dead (just wheelchair bound for the time being) and Lucious is still alive and well (and married!). Hakeem and Laura don’t get married. Grandma didn’t spill the beans about being Lucious’ mother because Thirsty stopped her before she could speak to the press. Andre is suddenly an ordained minister. The 999th dirty deed performed by Lucious has come back from the past to haunt him (this time in the form of rapper Xzibit). Freda’s in jail. Cookie and Lucious fawn over each other: “I should’ve never let you go,” he coos.
“Aren’t you all tired of the same damn cycle all the time?” proclaims a weary, wounded Jamal. “Death and incarceration?”
Indeed, Jamal! Per usual, Empire hits the nail on the head, rips it out, and then bangs it back in again, and in the exact same spot. It knows we’ve been here before, that the cycle of storytelling is rotating without enough creative detours to make the ride feel as worthwhile as it once did. Lucious and Jamal bond—again—over music, though this time, instead of a sexy Spanish guitar duet, it’s through the impassioned rap he convinced Freda to record for Jamal to help inspire him to make music again. Cookie has her heart ripped out by Lucious—again—when he quickly decides that he and Anika must get married in order to keep her from testifying in front of a grand jury, just like when she learned, in last year’s two-part finale, that he had killed Bunkie.
(Note: Even with this repetition, some performers on the show remain standouts: It’s nice to see that Andre Royo has stuck around as the unfailiingly loyal Thirsty, and Bre-Z’s Freda remains the best rapper. Taraji P. Henson as Cookie is still giving an amazing performance, if not as flashy as she was when the show first started. Her breakdown over Lucious and Anika’s quickie wedding is raw and emotional, a reminder of how incredibly valuable she will always be for Empire, the primary reason to keep watching even as her character gets dragged down by Lucious’ inherent blah-ness.)
To its credit, the episode did have one legitimately surprising reveal—Tariq, the fed who is trying to take down Lucious, is also, unbeknownst to him, his half-brother. (In the tradition of funnily awkward Empire dialogue, Grandma announces this news by asking, “Dwight, what’s your half-brother doing here?”) Unfortunately, this also likely means that Season 3 is going to pile onto Lucious’ Season 2 mommy issues by making daddy and half-brother issues the next frontier. And then the cycle will begin. Again. “The cycle ends when it’s ready to end,” Andre murmurs at one point in the episode. We’ve been warned.
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