How Empire's Season 3 Premiere Handled That Big Cliffhanger

Spoiler warning for anyone who has not yet watched the Season 3 premiere of Empire.

Much like every single opinion Cookie Lyons ever had, Empire was quick and to the point when it came to addressing the aftermath of that wild as all hell Season 2 cliffhanger, in which a fight between Rhonda and Anika ended in one (or both) of them falling to almost certain death. Quite soon after the Season 3 premiere began, it was made quite clear that only one of them fell, that the death was more than almost certain, and that it was Rhonda who took the plunge. R.I.P. Andre's last remaining threads of sanity.

Yes, Empire fans will still have to deal with the triply duplicitous Anika - that's like six kinds of terrible, for those keeping count. Not long at all after we saw Rhonda's bleeding and open-eyed face on top of the car she landed on, Anika's heinous presence got kicked up a notch, as her water broke right when Andre was in the middle of a meltdown that could have potentially ended in Anika's own demise. But no one is that lucky when any of the Lyons are involved, and now there's a new member of this twisted ensemble. It isn't the grandson that Lucious was led to believe it was, though. As Mama Lyon puts it, Anika is "as trustworthy as a snake in a hamster cage."

I have to say, killing off Rhonda does make sense from a dramatic point of view, since Anika offers up more avenues for psycho story arcs. The mystery behind Rhonda's fall down the stairs was interesting enough, and gave actress Kaitlin Doubleday some interesting things to do last season; however, taking her out of the picture not only gives Andre a constant source of mental breakdowns coupled with dangerously impulsive decisions, but also continues to give Lucious and Hakeem beef with each other, and reintroduces the suspicion (hope) that Lucious will end up killing Anika at some point.

Not that anyone is going to make it easy for Lucious to do anything anymore. Particularly when Tariq is involved. He's in the picture in a big way. Or should I say he's just outside the picture, watching it from his car on a stakeout. Tariq is going to be a big problems that won't get talked down like many others that Lucious has pushed over in the past. Anika and her baby surviving the cliffhanger might be decent news for fans of the soapy drama, but there are dark clouds forming over Lucious' head once more.

Is anyone ever going to pay for Rhonda's death, or even the fall that caused her miscarriage? Can this woman get a break even in death? Find out when the audience-amassing Empire airs Monday nights on Fox at 9:00 p.m. ET. To see when everything else will hit the airwaves, check out our fall TV schedule.