What's Ahead for 'Empire'?
by EG
Empire wrapped up its fifth season this week, and it will definitely be back next season, albeit without star Jussie Smollett. But the series faces other serious issues when it returns, including a ratings slide that has pulled it from the top of the TV mountain. Read on for details about where the series will go next.
Via Deadline.
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details of tonight’s Empire Season 5 finale.
“The idea of moving forward without him is a true challenge, and no decisions have been made as of yet of how we move forward,” Empire showrunner Brett Mahoney admits of the contentious Jussie Smollett’s exit from the Fox series at the end of the just-concluded fifth season.
“We’ll work that out when reconvene the room and we come up with the creative,” the executive producer adds of the upcoming Season 6 of Fox’s hip hop drama.
Although Smollett was written out of the final two episodes of the Lee Daniels- and Danny Strong-created series following his legal troubles in Chicago, tonight’s Mahoney co-written “The Roughest Day” didn’t miss a beat in turning out to be the whirlwind ending we’ve come to expect from an Empire finale.
From the near-death of Andre Lyon (Trai Byers) due to his failing heart and the revelation to the Lyon clan’s presumed oldest son that his lady love Teri (Meta Golding) is pregnant with a boy, the 18-episode season was as full-tilt boogie at the end as it was in the beginning.
Clearly still one of the leaner and meaner of Fox’s most valued crowd jewels, tonight’s Empire also unveiled who it is in that casket. With the Grim Reaper hovering close by in more ways than one, the death by suicide of Lucious’ true oldest son, the illegitimate and ambitious Kingsley (A.Z. Kelsey), saw Andre get a new heart, a new offspring, a new wife and a new lease on life as the feds closed in on the Terrence Howard’s Lyon patriarch.
This latest battle with authorities had the blast radius of pulling back the curtain on Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) and Lucious’ tempestuous relationship and what looks like a fatal severance between the once ride-or-die duo.
Get the rest of the story at Deadline.
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