Season 3, Episode 6: ‘Chimes at Midnight’

From left, Trai Byers, Serayah McNeill, Taraji P. Henson, Jussie Smollett and Bryshere Gray in “Empire.”

As its initial installments this season have made plain, Fox’s hit show “Empire” has been losing a two-front war. On a meta level, can a show that draws much of its heat from tapping the pop-cultural and political zeitgeist keep pace with the chaos of 2016? And in terms of plot, can it keep the soap suds bubbling by simply pitting the members of the Lyon family against each other — and against Lucious, in particular — again and again?

So far, notwithstanding its persistently strong performances (and ratings), the answer to both questions has been no.

Until this week. Like the cold shower that jolts the troubled son Jamal back to consciousness after he pops one too many pain pills, Episode 6 is a welcome shock to the show’s system. It centers on a cybersecurity story line that’s all too resonant with real-life events. And in the person of the hack’s surprising architect, the story line offers a way out of the endless cycle of alignment and realignment among the sparring Lyons, presenting Lucious with a worthy adversary for what may be the first time in the show’s history.

The development starts out innocuously enough: Without warning, and without asking user permission, the new single by the Empire label’s star attraction, Tiana, starts blaring from the phones of every EmpireXStream subscriber. Shades of Apple’s overreach in inserting an unsolicited U2 album into its users’ iTunes libraries abound — at least until the music gets glitchy and Tiana’s face is disconcertingly zombified, like a Japanese horror movie about a cursed MP3 file.

From there, problems mount. The emails of every employee, up to and including Lucious and Cookie, are dumped onto the internet for all to read. The ensuing revelations range from damaging personal information (like the identities of high-level staffers who used corporate funds to pay for sex) to a potential smoking gun in the case of Frank Gathers, the gang lord whose murder Lucious arranged behind bars. The nude selfie that Cookie sent her politician boyfriend, Angelo Dubois, gets broadcast worldwide on the same day the councilman announces his run for mayor of New York City. Lucious and his minions manage to stop the hack before it can breach EmpireXStream’s subscriber data, but the damage is done.

Beyond the Bono-tweaking that kicks it all off, Cookie’s selfie leak recalls the widespread hack and release of similar photos by numerous female celebrities a few years back. The email dump evokes the embarrassing information divulged about high-ranking Democrats by WikiLeaks. The potential involvement of the FBI, hits close to home following the Bureau’s recent prominence. The tangential involvement of a promising New York politician brings up the selfie- and scandal-prone Anthony Weiner. The concern about EmpireXStream customer info comes just weeks after Yahoo announced a massive breach of its users’ personal data. Finally, both the presentation of the emails on a big screen and the identity of the initial suspect hearken back to the Drake-Meek Mill beef of 2015 — settled onstage as Drake performed in front of a gigantic display on which dozens of Twitter posts mocking his opponent were projected. It’s as though “Empire” hit a single button and triggered an entire array of technological, cultural and political paranoia.

But the identity of the triggerman is just as important. All the signs pointed to Gram, and Lucious and his gangster associate Shyne pay the young rapper back in blood. But he was merely a patsy, set up by the plot’s real mastermind: Andre Lyon, Lucious’s eldest son and right-hand man. Andre engineered the hack with the help of the rival music mogul Vaughn (played by real-life rapper French Montana), sealing his complicity with a million-dollar payoff in an abandoned factory.

The only thing keeping him from his father’s throne, he tells his new girlfriend, Nessa, has been his lack of musical talent. But now that he’s his father’s equal as both a businessman and an arch-criminal, her gifts as a singer are all he needs to get to the top. It’s a dramatic heel turn for a character who’s generally gone off on his own only because of mental illness or religious conviction, not raw ambition. It suits actor Trai Byers, who has the imposing height and square-jawed good looks of a superhero gone rogue.

Most crucially, it gives “Empire” something it has badly needed for ages: a real villain, one who can go toe-to-toe with Lucious and potentially win. Marisa Tomei’s billionaire bad girl, Mimi Whiteman, was the closest the show came in the past, and she was unceremoniously suicided offscreen; Shyne (the recurring guest star Xzibit) is just the latest in a long string of halfhearted attempts to build a mini-Lucious from scratch.

But in Andre, “Empire” has something truly formidable: a wolf in Lyon’s clothing, a bipolar Mordred to Lucious’s twisted King Arthur. Knowing the show, it could well reverse course before next week’s episode hits its first commercial break. But the smart move would be to let this battle rage for as long as it can.

The New York Times