Light In Darkness Recap: Empire Season 3 Premiere

Season 3 of Empire premiered on Wed 9/21/2016 with “Light in Darkness,” picking up right where it left off last May– right after Lucious Lyon remarried Anika who was in a life and death struggle with Rhonda up on a balcony. Outside, Hakeem angrily took off after the outrage of his father turning what was supposed to be his wedding (until fiancée, Laura booked) into this fake wedding. The bride is carrying Hakeem’s child. Twisted! Lucious told Jamal to take his grandmother home and right then, Rhonda came crashing down on the roof of a car right in front of them and died. Aarghhh!

Andre witnessed the tail end of the scuffle and began choking Anika. Her water broke and she went into labor. He picked Anika up and they were hurried off to the hospital. A death and a birth right in the opener.

Cookie was at home taking care of photo business, cutting Lucious out of them, while Hakeem went to Tiana’s house. He staggered around trying to take his pants off, claiming he always loved her. Tiana was like “no, no, no” but he passed out. Only Cookie got Jamal’s call to go to the hospital. There, Andre rejected Cookie’s attempts to comfort him while his grandmother insisted they were being punished. Cookie told her to shut up with that.

Lucious went to the delivery room where Anika was giving birth and pretended he was supporting his wife while he was actually telling her what she better say when questioned by the police: “Rhonda was not pushed– she jumped. Anika tried to stop her but Rhonda attacked her.” The baby was born 6 weeks premature and was a girl, despite Anika’s prior claim that a boy was on the way. “You lied to me,” Lucious hissed in her ear. Are you kidding, Lucious? You know this woman is responsible for the death of Rhonda’s baby (and now Rhonda, too.) You expected her to tell the truth? The little girl was named Bella and Lucious put his name on her birth certificate with full knowledge that Hakeem is her father!

Lucious left the hospital and went to play cards with Birdman and French Montana. He offered them a deal to get in on his new thing, Empire XStream. After seeing him marry his ex,, they’re not impressed with Lucious’ claims of being a king. Lucious claims they will regret it when he takes over Times Square. In Empire’s boardroom, Lucious planned his next move and wanted Jamal to sing. Hakeem felt disrespected (as usual). Cookie put him in his place and he stormed off “like a girl.” Lucious thanked Cookie for having his back but she informed him that wasn’t her motivation, and what they had is dead because Lucious ruined it.

At the studio, Hakeem was laying down a new track when along came Shyne, a thug who thinks Lucious owes him. He said Hakeem sounds like a white girl and started messing with the engineer’s equipment. Hakeem got nowhere trying to get him to leave. Lucious showed up and didn’t get anywhere either. After harsh words were exchanged, Shyne roughed up the engineer. Lucious eventually agreed to let Nessa, Shyne’s protegee, sing backup and a bridge at the XStream launch with Jamal. Afterwards, he gloated that her mic wouldn’t even be on. Shyne helped Hakeem with his rap track after that, while Hakeem flirted with Nessa. Shyne warned him not to even look at her, but Nessa said she knew all about Hakeem Lyon, and wasn’t one of his pushovers.

At a gab and wine session with her sisters, Cookie became suspicious when Carole and Candace kept bringing up Lucious’ half-brother and now FBI agent Tariq. She opened the door to kick them both out and there was Tariq in the federal flesh. The sisters pointed out that Tariq doesn’t want Cookie, only Lucious, and they don’t see why she is being loyal to her ex when he just went and married Anika. Tariq wants proof that the marriage only took place so Anika could not testify against Lucious. You know what? We forgot what Tariq is trying to get Lucious for, if we ever knew.

Cookie wouldn’t cooperate and ran off to tell Lucious that they have to move Anika into his home immeidately to prevent the Feds from getting to her. Once there, she had a hostile encounter with Leah Walker, Lucious’ mentally unstable mother. Makes you wonder where Mama Walker gets her info. Maybe a combo of Andre and TV reports, but does she even know that the baby is Hakeem’s?

Anyway, Lucious so enjoys taunting people that he never missed an opportunity to call himself Daddy whenever Hakeem was around the baby, and when he found Tariq spying on him outside, he sent his men out with scrapple and eggs. Tariq declined. Lucious invited him to dinner. He accepted.

Tariq did his best to bait everyone, pointing out how badly Lucious had treated each of them. When he went after Cookie, it was the last straw for her sons, but Cookie just laughed at Tariq and asked him if he wanted a “to go” plate. Ha ha! That turned the tide for now. Tariq has the nursery under surveillance with a bugged teddy bear. All he saw was Cookie telling Lucious she needs to work completely separate from him or she wants out and Lucious telling little Bella how he was going to put his adversaries through some dark hell.

The XStream event went wrong for the Lyon family too. Jamal had a panic attack when the flashing lights put him back to the moment when Freda Gatz shot him. Despite his mother’s cautions, he was going ahead with a protest song that was actually meant to help Freda.

Nessa saw her chance to step out of the background and she took over the mic. Lucious was furious that Nessa was now the face of XStream and Shyne had leverage over him.

Back at Jamal’s place, Andre was struggling to cope with guilt over Rhonda’s death. “Andre messed up,” he repeatedly moaned and the ghost of Rhonda showed up and told him that was certainly true. He’s nothing now without her, Rhonda said. He’s just a Philly thug with mental problems. Rhonda’s ghost wasn’t at the dinner or she would have said an Ivy league educated Philly thug, right? Then Rhonda disappeared and Andre started begging “Please, Rhonda, please.” Enter Jamal who was appalled but Andre claimed he was all right.

We’ve got a lot of loose cannons running around the Empire this season for real.