Last night, Empire Season 1 Episode 11 and 12 both ended the Fox hit's freshman campaign with an epic finale and deftly laid the groundwork for Season 2.
Murder, pregnancy, betrayal, prison and much more were promised, and the hottest series on TV delivered with a vengeance in this two-hour installment.
Let's pick up the pieces and recap...
It was clear at the beginning of Empire Season 1 Episode 11 that a successor would be named soon, but not who it would be. Then Jamal emerged.
By the end of Empire Season 1 Episode 12, the second half of the finale, he rose to claim his place is Lucious's successor, and was reaping the benefits.
He got there in part by returning to the ramshackle childhood home where Lucious put him in the trash for wearing Cookie's heels in a bid to shake writer's block.
That image remains one of the most vivid of the entire first season, and they later collaborated on a new song, finding more common ground than you'd think.
Jamal then channeled his cutthroat father by holding someone over a balcony to get Hakeem out of his new contract, and Lucious gave him everything.
When one artist threatened to leave Empire because a "man" isn't in charge anymore, Jamal engaged in a rap/song battle with him to prove he belongs.
Hakeem and Andre got the short end of the stick. The former took the lead in trying to oust Jamal and their father (more on that in a bit) and failed.
He also slept with his would-be stepmom, which further riled up Lucious, while Andre bonded with Michelle, only to have Lucious meddle in that as well.
Making matters worse? Wife Rhonda decided to leave Dre over his emotional affair with Michelle, at which point Vernon showed up to fight Dre.
Walking in on their fight, Rhonda, in self-defense, hit Vernon with a blunt object and killed him by accident. They obviously took care of this and didn't report it.
Oh, and she's pregnant. WHAT!?
As for their mom, Cookie and Malcolm finally got busy. Having never been with anybody but Lucious, this was a pretty intense moment for the matriarch.
The emotional high didn't last long, as a jealous Lucious banned Cookie and Malcolm took a job in D.C. And that's not even the craziest part at all ...
Cookie "accidentally" almost smothered Lucious in his sleep, then overheard him unconsciously admit that he killed Bunkie and didn't really have ALS.
More on that in a second. Cookie then teamed up with Lena, Hakeem and Andre to plan a hostile takeover ... which didn't happen as Lucious got arrested.
Man, it was quite a run for Lucious. Everything you've seen if you watch Empire online culminated in this episode, and it was nothing short of wild.
Impressively even for him, Lucious managed to screw over everyone in his family and beyond, then apologize, the screw them over again in a two-hour span.
As we just said, he was misdiagnosed with ALS, it turns out, but does have MG (myasthenia gravis), which has similar symptoms but is not a fatal illness.
Not that he would come clean about this. Instead, he gave his sons each a special gift; a jet for Hakeem, a foundation for Dre, and the Empire to Jamal.
This served as much to pit them against each other as much as win them over, but soon enough, his machinations took a back seat to his arrest.
Will the charges stick? Witness Vernon is totally MIA (he is buried who knows where), so when Lucious says "It's game time, bitches," from jail, we believe him.
Lucious got his IPO and Empire went public, yet seems to be crumbling rapidly from within. It doesn't get more poetic and dramatic than that, does it?
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