Empire Review: Past is Prologue (Season 2 Episode 18)

The bride wore red. 

Holy crap, you guys. I don’t think I was giving Anika the credit she clearly deserves. Was this her plan all along? This week’s episode of Empire, “The Past is Prologue,” really went off the rails. Spoilers ahead.

I honestly don’t know how to approach this episode. We are moving at lightening speed toward the finale and characters and story lines are falling apart. Let’s try to break it down.

Rhonda: I am really, really disappointed by the turn Rhonda’s character takes this week. Empire has always presented Rhonda as so smart. So having her run into a meeting and start screaming and choking Anika feels so… wrong.

Rhonda’s known about Anika pushing her for awhile. Why the sudden outburst now? This is not Rhonda.

Jamal: I’m not shocked at all that Jamal is alive. Without even hardly addressing last week’s cliffhanger, Empire jumps three weeks ahead to Jamal’s (very odd) welcome home party.

But the music has died inside of him, y’all. Well, for, like, a minute until Lucious talks to Frieda and then Jamal brings a symphony over to his hotel room. I mean, what?

The fire reflecting off of his computer while he writes is pretty cool though.

Cookie: Cookie is all over the place. When Shine needs to be dealt with, she’s ride or die. When Anika is on the ledge (literally) she’s caring and compassionate. But when Lucious is finally going to deal with a problem in a non-violent manner, she’s out. I’ll say it again: I mean, what?

Laura – Poor, poor Laura. Why is her wedding suddenly two days away? (Oh, that’s right, finale is coming). Did she honestly think that something dramatic wasn’t going to happen? In the two days before Anika attempted suicide, Jamal got out of the hospital, and Rhonda tried to kill somebody.

Come on, Laura.

Lucious: Lucious is still a mystery man. Suddenly we’re talking about his dad. Who is a cop? A crooked cop? Who died in front of him? And he has a half brother who is a Fed?

Lucious almost does the right thing by going to Frieda, but he really should have told her the truth.

Also, apparently Grandma is just part of the fam now.

And then there’s Anika: I knew she was up to something, but this is much more mastermind-y than I thought she was capable of.

After making everyone fall in love with her by threatening suicide because she just can’t tell on Lucious, suddenly she’s served by a cater waiter at the wedding. I mean, we hire dozens of security but no one checks IDs at the door?

Is it possible that this was Anika’s plan all along? She clearly wanted into the family but marrying Lucious (for real this time) is a major victory for her.

Provided that she and Rhonda didn’t fall off of a second ledge at the end there.

I know shows need to build momentum to get to a dramatic finale, but this was all too much for me. I hope Empire straightens things out to end on a high note.

What did you think of this week’s episode of Empire? Be sure to tell us in the comments below.

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Empire airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on Fox.