As I said, physical pain, emotional trauma and all of the revelations that come to a head in this finale about who his family is and whether or not that’s who they’re destined to be. but the next season is, for Jamal, largely about recovery. I’m not going to tell you how because that’s frankly our story for season three and I’m not going to give it away. It changes him and impact him in huge and small ways. How will that recovery process change him going into season three? He’s out of the hospital, he’s going to live, he’s going to survive, but this is the beginning of a recovery story for Jamal of his psyche as well as a physical recovery. I will say that in this final episode, Jamal returns, he’s in a wheelchair, he’s clearly still in pain, he’s still traumatized, his recovery hasn’t even begun. We always knew that Jamal wasn’t going to die, and we wanted to move past his hospital recovery and into the beginning of his real recovery. This episode reveals his fate and that’s been a big discussion for the last week. A father who is competing with him viciously for an award that means more to Lucious than it means to Jamal, who’s put their relationship at stake because of that and then we very intentionally teed up that terrible scene between them in the previous episode in which Lucious says all the most vile things to Jamal so that when that moment came, Jamal jumping in front of a bullet for his father made it clear that Jamal was… really about to commit selfless act.
![empire season 2 episode 1 full empire season 2 episode 1 full](https://cartermatt.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Andre.jpg)
We wanted to drive Jamal to a moment when this would be clearly a selfless act. We wanted it to be the son who had the most conflict with his father. There was a moment when it was going to be Hakeem and a moment when it was going to Andre, but it was really always Jamal first and foremost. We knew in the very beginning of the year when we were first breaking the overall season arcs, we knew that in an episode that would probably be the penultimate episode, someone was going to jump in front of a bullet for Lucious, one of the three boys. Why him?įrom a story point of view, we talked a lot over the course of the season. In the penultimate episode, it was Jamal who was shot. Henson) at least semi clear, watching him marry Anika was too much for the fierce family matriarch, who said she was done with Lucious for good.įollowing that jaw-dropping finale, The Hollywood Reporter spoke with showrunner Ilene Chaiken about a “devastated” Cookie, whether anyone really died in the finale and the “ Godfather-style opus” being set up for season three. Although Lucious finally made his feelings for Cookie ( Taraji P. In his stead, Lucious (Terrence Howard) took his place and married his ex-fiance – not to mention his son’s baby mama – Anika so that she wouldn’t have to testify against him. Gray) and Laura ( Jamila Velazquez), the young songstress left the youngest Lyon son at the alter. After teasing the wedding of Hakeem ( Bryshere Y. In true Empire fashion, that was far from the only shocker in the season two finale. Andre tried to intervene, but the final moments of the episode showed his jaw drop as he yelled, “No!,” and a woman’s scream was heard in the background. However, the fates of other characters were left in question when Andre ( Trai Byers) walked out on Rhonda (Kaitlin Doubleday) and Anika (Grace Gealey) fighting each other on the edge of a balcony after Rhonda realized it was Anika who had pushed her down the stairs earlier in the season and essentially killed her unborn baby.
![empire season 2 episode 1 full empire season 2 episode 1 full](https://www.powerofnaija.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/download-watch-empire-season-4-episode-1-2-3-4.jpg)
The sophomore hip-hop drama revealed in the opening moments of the season finale that Jamal ( Jussie Smollett), indeed, survived the shooting in the penultimate episode.