Five Open Questions About The Second Half Of ‘Empire’ Season 2

Empire returns for the second half of its second season on Wednesday night. The first half ended with… well, everything, kind of. Too many things happened to list them all in one introductory paragraph. So instead of doing that, let’s do this: To help you prepare for the midseason premiere, and to help jog your memory about the avalanche of nutty plot twists that closed out the fall season, here are five open questions we have about the rest of the season two.

1) Is Rhonda dead or nah?

When we last left Empire, a pregnant Rhonda was lying motionless on the floor of her new mansion after someone — very possibly Lucious’ former fiancée Anika, who is now pregnant with the child of Lucious’ son, Hakeem, and who viewed Rhonda’s unborn baby as a potential rival for her unborn baby in the next generation’s struggle for Empire, which is all very normal for this show — pushed her down a staircase that the show had been teasing the audience with shots of for weeks as if to say, “Hey! Hey! A staircase! In the pregnant lady’s house! Get it?!” That was admittedly a terrible run-on sentence, but in my defense, it is hard to talk about Empire in anything other than terrible run-on sentences.

Anyway.

There are really two possibilities here: One, Rhonda died in the fall. Two, Rhonda lost the baby in the fall. I’ve seen the first few episodes of the spring season, but I won’t run out here spoiling major plot twists for you except to say that you get your answer pretty quickly. Which, I mean, yeah. It would be weird to end on a cliffhanger like that and just leave her on the floor for two episodes while Hakeem starts a vodka company or something.

2) What’s going on with the Whiteman-Barnes takeover of Empire?

Things were also happening on the business side of Empire in the midseason finale. Noted hip-hop loving lesbian billionaire Mimi Whiteman was actually secretly married to Camilla, the other older woman Hakeem had been sleeping with, and the two of them used their influence — and Hakeem’s treasonous vote — to oust Lucious from the company, because it had been something like five episodes since he had lost the company to someone and it was time to do that whole thing again.

The move gives Hakeem new power in his dad’s company, which is awkward because he also has that competitor label he created with his mom, and because he’s now teaming up with one former older lover (who just metaphorically threw one of his family members down the stairs), while expecting a baby with a different former lover (who may have literally thrown one of his family members down the stairs), and managing the career of a third lover, who is a virgin he signed to his label after he and another singer he managed broke up. For the love of God, Hakeem.

3) Will anything in the second half of the season be better than the list of fake rapper names from the first half?

Uh, maybe? I don’t know. Through the episodes I’ve seen, I would call this a definitive no, but in fairness, this is an incredibly high hurdle to clear. I mean, the list comes out of the gate engulfed in flames with “Baby Trinidad,” and that’s before you even get to “Wicked Flava” or “Sleezy Weezy.” And yet, somehow, none of those three are the best, because way down there at the bottom, partially cut off of the screen, is “Scrapula.” Scrapula. That’s just a brilliant piece of business there.

4) Is Cookie gonna beat anyone with a broom and/or is Hakeem gonna wear one of the worst jackets in history?

I feel kind of bad for doing the whole “I know the answers, but I can’t tell you” thing, so lemme go ahead and confirm these in the clearest way possible: Yes, Cookie beats someone up with a broom (and her purse!), and yes, in episode two of the season’s back half, Hakeem wears one of the worst and most hilarious jackets in history. You are welcome. Spoilers.

5) Is it good crazy again, or still just crazy crazy?

There’s a tricky dance any soap-y show like this has to pull off, going just crazy enough to be fun and addictive, but not going so crazy that the audience gets overloaded and jaded. The O.C. ran into it a few times in its run, with the introduction of Oliver and your periodic “but also drugs!” story lines. More recently, House of Cards fell prey, during the third season’s whole thing with Doug and Rachel. Any show that deals in melodrama like that will teeter too far every now and then, but the question is whether it can recalibrate and correct before everything goes to hell.

Empire was a ton of fun in its first season, but it started teetering a bit in season two. Please note everything that I mentioned about Hakeem in the answers for the first two questions in this post, then also note that I left out the thing where he got kidnapped by a gang and one of the gang members started sleeping with his mom. A lot is very fun. Too much is very bad.

The second half of season two opens a little more subtle and subdued, which is probably good. Think of it as less “everything is happening!” than it is “most things are happening!” At least, think of it that way until the end of the spring’s second episode, in which everything gets heaved into the fan with a shovel, for better and worse. Empire is still very Empire. Don’t you ever worry about that.

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