“Scandal” sure packed the drama in its season 4 winter finale. With the return of Momma Pope, Elizabeth North’s (Portia de Rossi) sexy hookups with the vice president and Olivia’s (Kerry Washington) showdown with her father – episode 9 was not short on drama.

Fitz (Tony Goldwyn) ordered a sweep of the former B613 headquarters in an attempt to find Rowan (Joe Morton). His men didn’t find Olivia’s father, but they did find her mother, Maya (Khandi Alexander). Unfortunately she wasn’t willing to cooperate and tell them where Rowan might be hiding or going.

Meanwhile, Quinn (Katie Lowes) and Huck (Guillermo Diaz) dropped the bomb on Olivia that Vice President Andrew Nichols (Jon Tenney) was in cahoots with Elizabeth North and Dan Kubiak (Kevin Fry). Huck had to kill Kubiak, but they still didn’t know why the trio had photographs of Olivia.

Olivia didn’t have time to process all this because Elizabeth showed up at her office and basically threatened to expose all the photos she had of Cyrus (Jeff Perry) with his prostitute boy toy, Michael (Matthew Del Negro). And Elizabeth wasn’t playing. By the time Olivia got to Cyrus’ office, Elizabeth had already leaked the photos to the press.

It was up to Olivia to brief Fitz and the others on the Cyrus situation. She told them everything – including Andrew’s affair with Michael. Needless to say, Mellie (Bellamy Young) was pretty surprised to hear about Michael’s fling after their hot hookup the day before.

Abby (Darby Stanchfield) was ordered to stall as Olivia hatched a plan to save Cyrus and the administration. Her solution? “Marriage is the only way to sell this,” she told Cyrus and Michael at a meeting at her office. “America will forgive anything for love.”

To Cyrus’ surprise, Michael was willing to agree to the terms. But Cyrus wasn’t willing to do that to his late husband, James (Dan Bucatinsky). He stormed out of Olivia’s office after deeming the marriage “cruel and unfair” after years of being in the closet. Instead he chose to resign, and Fitz reluctantly accepted.

As Olivia dealt with the whole Cyrus debacle, Jake (Scott Foley) figured out that Rowan was trying to shut down B613 by eliminating all threats. He managed to gun down his killer first, but warned Olivia and the others that they might be next on the hit list.

And he was right. Quinn went to warn Charlie (George Newbern) and ended up hooking up with him … before she figured out that he was ordered to kill her. Charlie had a change of heart though, and after a nasty physical fight he proved himself to her by handing over the B613 files that had been stolen from David Rosen (Joshua Malina).

Olivia wasn’t so lucky. She came home to find her father inside her house. He accused her of being ungrateful and warned her that there would be “no Olivia Pope” if it were not for him. He continued to rip her apart, and even pulled out a gun and placed it on the table. But when he began to yell about “looking in the mirror,” she grabbed the gun and pulled it on him.

Rowan immediately cooled his tone, but Olivia knew what had to be done – she pulled the trigger. As Rowan proved before, he’s not easy to be killed. The whole thing had been a set up to see if Olivia could really pull the trigger.

“Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?” he yelled at her after letting out a scream. “You just shot your own father. You just shot me. Never, never in a million years did I think that you would be willing to pull the trigger.”

Olivia was shaking and Rowan left, but not before giving her one last warning. “You will miss me when I’m gone,” he told her.

Huck and Quinn figured out that Elizabeth and Andrew had been working with Kubiak in order to get Fitz to go to war with West Angola. The car bomb that went off near the VP had been staged in an attempt to influence Fitz. But Fitz didn’t take the bait. Despite the “attempt” on the VP’s life, he still refused to go to war.

Olivia went to her mother to find out where Rowan could have gone, but Maya was no help.

“Girl, you need to move on,” she told her daughter. “You’re just like him.”

While Olivia didn’t appreciate her mother’s words, she did take her advice. She went to Cyrus, who was planning to go to Europe, and gave him a pep talk to stop being a “little b---- baby.”

Cyrus stepped up to the plate and agreed to marry Michael in order to fix the situation. They went on TV and told “their story” to the press … which bought up the love story.

Cyrus was able to return to the office, but not everyone on “Scandal” got a happy ending in the winter finale. Jake showed up at Olivia’s while Andrew met with Fitz. Jake wanted to talk about Rowan, but Olivia wouldn’t have it. She simply wanted to drink, dance and eat with Jake. He finally agreed to join her, and confessed his love for her. Olivia’s response? “I want Vermont with Fitz.”

Fortunately for Jake, Olivia had more to say.

“I also want the sun with you,” she added. “I’m not choosing. I’m not choosing Jake. I’m not choosing Fitz. I’m choosing me. I’m choosing Olivia. And right now Olivia is dancing.”

While it might not have been the words that Jake wanted to hear, he still grabbed her and kissed her. Jake left the room to grab a blanket so that they could hook up on top of the piano, but when he came back Olivia was gone … and her wine was spilt on the coach.

What happened to Olivia? It all connects to the vice president.

“What did you do to her?” Fitz yelled at Andrew when he said that he took something precious from him. “What did you do?”

“How you liking that war now, sir?” Andrew responded, referring to Fitz decision not to go to war with West Angola.

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