ABC’s ‘Scandal’ season 4, episode 20: Scott Foley’s message; Jake Ballard’s mysterious fate

Could tonight’s #TGIT lineup on ABC more or less be one stunning character death after the next? what we know at the moment is that “Grey’s Anatomy” could feature the end of Derek depending on what happens, and the fate of Jake Ballard on “Scandal” is very much up in the air.

Immediately after the events of this past episode, it was pretty darn easy to come up with one conclusion: The character had to be dead. How else was he supposed to survive what happened to Russell? We have since softened our stance somewhat, and mostly due to the sole fact that this is scripted network television, and for some reason characters here manage to somehow survive things that they have no business surviving. Scott Foley brings a ton to the table as the character, and given that Shonda Rhimes has already killed him off one of her shows, can’t the guy live for a little while? At the moment, he really is the biggest tool that Olivia Pope has to take down Rowan.

Our personal hope / prediction is that this is all some part of an elaborate scheme to make Rowan think that he is winning, and Jake for some insane reason got himself stabbed completely on purpose. We’ll just have to see now what happens from here…

We wouldn’t read too much into Foley’s message on Twitter one way or another. He could be saying this to hint at a super-serious episode, or it could also be a good old-fashioned fakeout. We shall see.

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