‘Empire’ Season 3 Spoilers: Dark Secret Could Jeopardize Angelo And Cookies’ Relationship; Midseason Finale Recap

Lucious just doesn’t want to see Cookie happy with another man. In the Season 3 fall finale of Fox’s “Empire,” Lucious revealed a dark secret about Angelo that could drive a wedge between the mayoral candidate and his ex-wife.

The episode kicks off with Angelo (Taye Diggs) giving a speech but the audience is booing him. Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) takes over and addresses the crowd. They start cheering for her, and Cookie tells everyone that the governor’s ball is now going to happen outside so they can all attend. She also says her son Jamal (Jussie Smollett) is going to perform, and Angelo adds that they’re changing the title of the governor’s ball to the people’s ball. Angelo’s mom Diane (Phylicia Rashad) isn’t onboard with them doing the governor’s ball outside.

Meanwhile, Tariq (Morocco Omari ) is still investigating Lucious (Terrence Howard) and convinces his boss to sign off on freezing Empire Records assets for 30 days after he gives his boss evidence that Lucious may be behind Frank Gather’s (Chris Rock) death.

Diane is so desperate to keep a journalist from publishing a story revealing something from Angelo’s past that she goes to Lucious to ask him if he can convince the journalist from running the article. In exchange, Diane says she will ruin Cookie and Angelo’s relationship. Lucious agrees and invites the journalist to his nightclub where he has a rapper perform a song with threatening lyrics. Lucious later goes back and tells Diane that the journalist isn’t going to release the story. Diane tells Lucious that she did want to ruin things with Cookie and Angelo, but because Cookie is helping Angelo’s campaign, she doesn’t want to. Lucious reminds her that they have a deal.

The day of the people’s ball, Cookie shows up to Jamal’s house to make sure he’s still going to perform. He’s laying on the couch throwing up and tells his mom that he’s going through withdrawals because he’s not taking his pills. Earlier in the episode, Cookie threw all of Jamal’s pills down the drain but he asks for her to give him one. Cookie doesn’t want to but unscrews the sink pipe and fetches out a pill and gives it to him.

While Lucious is trying to figure out how to deal with Empire’s assets being frozen Shine (Xzibit) tells him that he’s willing to help. In exchange, Shine wants to be given stake in the company. Lucious doesn’t want to but he may have no choice.

After Jamal takes a pill, he’s able to get himself together and go to the people’s ball to perform. Although he arrived late, Jamal put on a great show. Everyone is happy he’s finally able to take the stage again but they all tell Jamal that he’s going straight to rehab. Jamal thinks he’s been ambushed, but the family tells him that he needs to do it in order to get better.

As all of this is going on with the family, Andre (Trai Byers) is going through his own issues. He has an episode and when Nessa (Sierra McClain) checks on him and asks him what’s going on, he explains that he’s bipolar and says that his wife used to take care of him. Nessa says she’s not going to take care of Andre like his wife because he needs to learn to do it on his own. While Nessa is caressing Andre’s face, he sees ghost Rhonda (Kaitlin Doubleday) who tells him that Nessa is trying to take him away from her.

Later, Andre is seen at the beach with ghost Rhonda and she tells him that he’s the most ruthless of the Lyon brothers and if he makes Nessa a star he’ll be in control. Ghost Rhonda also tells him to destroy Anika (Grace Gealey) for killing her and their unborn baby. Probably the biggest shocker of the night, was when Andre revealed his plans to kill his father.

New episodes of “Empire” will return in March.