Empire Is Back, but Do We Still Care?

It’s been three months since the midseason finale of Empire, which returns Wednesday. The show’s sophomore season hasn’t lived up to the juicy, sudsy, must-watch fun of the first season. The storytelling was rushed, the music wasn’t as good, there was too much weak stunt casting and a focus on dull, new characters. (Sorry, Laura.) The ratings for the season premiere were 6.7 and slid to 4.5 by the midseason finale. That’s not meager and still trounces the competition, but let’s hope the show steps it up for these last eight episodes.

Here’s a refresher course on the Lyons’ highs and lows during the season’s first 10 episodes.

Lucious: Papa Lyon spent a few months in prison multitasking after getting convicted of murdering Bunkie. He kept tabs on things and saw that Cookie was spearheading a hostile takeover of Empire, which he’d left in the hands of Jamal. Lucious used his time to take care of season 1 bogeyman Frank Gathers—who was out to get Cookie for giving the feds information about him in exchange for an early release. When Gathers showed up in the same prison as Lucious, he was terrifying. Haha! It was just Chris Rock as a wimpy cannibal. Lucious arranged a hit and that was the end of that.

Andre: He sided with his mom in the takeover of Empire, then waffled and tried to come in from the cold but was rejected—again—by Lucious. Things turned around. The case against Lucious depended on testimony from Vernon, who had been killed by Andre’s wife, Rhonda. To get Lucious off the hook, Andre and Rhonda dug up the corpse to produce a body and end the case. Lucious found them digging up the body and was so proud that he welcomed Andre back into the fold.

Andre found God, which put him at odds with running the raunchy Gutter Life label.

His rocky relationship with Lucious got better because Rhonda was pregnant and Lucious was so happy about being a grandpa, he bought a mansion on Long Island for the two of them. Rhonda has never watched a soap opera and didn’t know that pregnant women shouldn’t be anywhere near a staircase. Someone pushed her down the stairs, which almost certainly ended the pregnancy. She should be dead but this is Empire, so who knows.

Hakeem: Hakeem assumed executive duties at Cookie’s new label and came up with the groundbreaking idea of a girl group called Mirage a Trois. It’s not clear if anyone ever explained the proper spelling or pronunciation to Hakeem. Hakeem’s protégé was Laura, a girl he discovered crooning a Linda Ronstadt song at an amateur night.

Lucious kept publicly trash-talking his son and even subjected him to a rap battle with Freda, who was now his favorite. The whole thing resulted in Hakeem dropping the name Lyon.

Hakeem struggled to produce another hit despite his father’s interference. As punishment for going against him, Lucious bought a radio station so that no Lyon Dynasty artist—including Hakeem—would get played on the radio. Hakeem was shoved into a van and kidnapped for a horrific 11 minutes until his parents saved him. His PTSD lasted longer than the kidnapping; the whole ordeal was emasculating. It turned out his mom’s new boyfriend was involved with the kidnappers. With Cookie’s consent, Lucious took care of Laz with a gun.

After the ordeal, Hakeem turned to Boo Boo Kitty for a while, but it wasn’t serious and he dumped her for Laura before Boo Boo Kitty could tell him she was pregnant.

Boo Boo Kitty: She tried to use her professional background to help Cookie with Lyon Dynasty, but Cookie used her as a punching bag. Her low points included unfortunate twerking for Mimi and sleeping with the investor, only to be insulted with a poor review. She got back with Hakeem, who dumped her for sweet, virginal Laura before Boo Boo Kitty announced she was pregnant. After listening to Rhonda go on about how much Lucious loved grandchildren, she got jealous and is most likely the one who pushed Rhonda down the stairs.