‘Empire’ Season 3, Episode 11 Recap: Cookie Goes After Lucious But Death Isn’t An Option

After a night of destroying office property, on “Empire,” Season 3, episode 11, Cookie reflects on how Lucious affects her life.

In “Play On,” Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) talks to her sister Candace (Vivica A. Fox) about what happened between her and Lucious. Cookie thinks back to the night her father kicked her out of the house as a teenager and how Lucious (Terrence Howard) has always been the love of her life.

Candace then persuades Cookie not to tell Angelo (Taye Diggs) that she kissed Lucious during their altercation because he is a good man.

READ: Catch up on all the drama that happened on “Empire,” Season 3, episode 10

Elsewhere, Hakeem (Bryshere Gray), Tiana (Serayah) and Becky (Gabourey Sidibe) cast dancers for a new video, but when Hakeem suggests he and Tiana go to his father’s house to hang out with his daughter, Tiana refuses saying that Bella already has a mother.

Angelo arrives at Cookie’s place where it is revealed that he was exonerated of his charges. Cookie tries to tell Angelo about what happened with Lucious, but he distracts her in order to celebrate his clean record.

Cookie later arrives at Lucious’ office where she sees him and Anika coming out of the bathroom together. Lucious tells Cookie she loves him and can’t deal with it, but Cookie simply warns Lucious to keep their kiss to himself.

At the studio, Jamal (Jussie Smollett) and Tory (Rumer Willis) are working on music when Cookie walks in to help them find the perfect melody. Cookie warns Jamal that she doesn’t want Lucious hearing any of the new music and instructs him to erase the drives every night.

Leah (Leslie Uggams) goes to Tariq (Morocco Omari) because she wants to get rid of Anika (Grace Byers), and she informs him that Anika knows a lot about Lucious, hinting that she could help his investigation. Tariq later approaches Anika forcing her to go into witness protection after subpoenaing her to testify against Cookie.

After recording a song with Tory, Jamal tells the engineer not to wipe the drive because he may come back. Later on, Lucious enters the studio where he finds Jamal’s new song seeing as the drives were never erased. The following day, Lucious steals Jamal’s studio time and replaces him with Nessa (Sierra McClain) and V (Veronika).

Elsewhere, Shyne (Xzibit) and Andre (Trai Byers) scheme to expand Empire to Las Vegas, but he tells Shyne he won’t be killing Lucious anytime soon until he secures Empire’s future.

Meanwhile, the government is trying to take Cookie into custody for violating her parole by associating with a felon.

Jamal tells D-Major (Tobias Truvillion) that they can no longer fool around because part of his recovery is being honest and D-Major is still in the closet.

Before going to witness protection, Anika leaves Bella with Hakeem. Hakeem then takes Bella with him to work where Tiana finally meets her and bonds with the baby she has been avoiding.

Angelo then goes to Lucious’ house accusing him of the being behind Cookie’s parole violation. Although Lucious denies causing trouble for Cookie, Angelo threatens him. Lucious later reveals to Jamal that he will be using Tory for a song on his “Inferno” album.

Andre and Shyne go to meet someone who will help them with the move to Las Vegas, but the man begins to beat on his wife Giuliana (Nia Long), accusing her of setting him up because Andre is Lucious’ son.

Although Andre and Giuliana deny knowing each other the man continues to assault her, she then turns around and kills him. Shyne then kills his associate and the three agree to go into business together.