Despite how tough and manipulative Lucious can sometimes be, there's one person he's always had a hard time fooling and that's the incredible Cookie Lyon. Most of the time she can see right through his lies and piece together the truth of any given situation — and Wednesday night's Empire episode proved to be no different. After Lucious shared his tragic backstory about his mother with Cookie, he mentioned how Frank Gathers had been the one who turned him to hustling drugs when he started living on the streets. That by itself wasn't enough to raise any internal alarms for Cookie, but when she discovered that Frank was also Freda's dad, then the puzzle pieces started falling into place. So does Cookie now know that Lucious killed Frank Gathers on Empire ? Judging by the horrified look on her face at the end of the episode, I'd say she's managed to connect the dots. (What can I say, she's one smart Cookie.)
So the next question, of course, is: what does she plan on doing with this information? Cookie has always had a soft spot where Lucious is concerned, so I very much doubt that she'd rat him out to anyone. However, that doesn't mean she won't confront him about it eventually. And the more something is talked about, the more likely someone will eventually overhear the conversation, which could lead to some pretty disastrous consequences.
I mean, can you imagine if Freda finds out what Lucious did? As she told Cookie, the police never found the killer, so if she were to learn that it was her current father-like figure all along, it would understandably be devastating. But it could also mean war against the Lyon family. If word got out about what happened, Freda could make the public come to hate Empire and all that it stands for, which would be a fate worse than death in Lucious' mind. This company is everything to him and now that someone's managed to piece together the truth, it's only a matter of time before others will follow.
Image: Chuck Hodes/FOX
