The women of Empire are mad as hell, and they’re not taking it anymore. At least, that’s the impression they’re giving off in Wednesday's episode of Empire, “What Remains is Bestial.” Anika, Nessa, Cookie, and Tiana on are moving on and asserting themselves in their own lives — mostly to the chagrin of the men that surround them. The biggest loser in all this (and rightfully so)? Lucious Lyon. The women of Empire are so over him, and I love it.
Anika married Lucious to keep him safe from the ever-circling federal agents that are all up in his business, but, lately, Anika has been treated like a servant in her own home. After another of Lucious’ speeches about being his wife and doing her duty, Anika finally wised up; Lucious needs her more than she needs Lucious. If they both go down, she told him, they go down together, and she will do whatever she wants, whenever she wants — or they both go to federal prison. If I were Lucious, I would take that deal.
Cookie is officially dumping the Lyon patriarch, too. She’s been pushing him away since Season 3 started, but it looks like Cookie is about to jump in bed (literally and figuratively) with Taye Diggs’ Councilman Angelo Dubois. Lucious could possibly handle Cookie sleeping with another man, but he couldn’t handle Cookie taking a record contract away from one of Dubois’ brightest pupils and telling said pupil to go to college. Does that stop her from doing it anyway? Nope. “The world has enough rappers,” she tells the kid, promising that the deal will wait for him. Bye, Lucious.
On the non-Lucious front, Tiana recorded a song with another rapper (played by Lil’ Romeo — or now just Romeo — which brought back all kinds of 2004 for me), and Hakeem was jealous. So what does he do? He tries to record a diss track calling Tiana all sorts of names. Nessa, who has little airtime, but is becoming one of my favorites, tells both Hakeem and Shyne that she’s not singing the hook on a slut-shamey song. Especially when Tiana has done nothing actually wrong.
Shyne attacks her (an incident that Lucious says is none of Hakeem's business unless he's sleeping with her, so apple and tree there), but she proves her point anyway. She’s not about to push down another woman because Hakeem thinks he owns anything with breasts in a 20 mile radius.
Frankly, it’s a long time coming that the women of Empire rise up and push aside the men that are dragging them down, namely Lucious. He never takes it well when people try to resist him, so we’ll see what kind of impact this has on Empire. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I think the rest of the season will play this out as a positive thing instead of a negative one.
Images: Chuck Hodes/FOX; Giphy (2)
