‘Scandal’ season 6: Will you learn who shot Frankie soon?
Leave it to a show like “Scandal” to kick off a season premiere by answering a question, only to then end it by raising another one. In the opening minutes for the episode, we had a chance to learn that it was Frankie Vargas who won the election! This was unexpected in itself, mostly because we and most of America did seem to think that we were going to see the opposite happen with Mellie Grant. Yet, this wasn’t where the show really dropped the hammer — that came a little bit later, when Vargas was shot while giving his victory speech.
Who did it? This is going to be the focal point moving forward, and Olivia Pope feels like she’s got a big clue in Jennifer Fields’ message, where she says that Cyrus may have been behind everything. He did stand to gain quite a bit — if Vargas died, it means that the Electoral College could go haywire; also, he knew that Fitz wouldn’t want his legacy to be about staged elections and he would likely endorse the natural winner even if it wasn’t Mellie.
Are there other candidates out there? Sure. Jake may have been infuriated over the results, and he was conspicuously absent for most of the second part of the episode. Meanwhile, Rowan has this tendency to always be up to stuff, but he would never carry out something like this himself.
Rest assured that this is not something that the show will make you wait all season in order to find out. As a matter of fact, here is what executive producer Shonda Rhimes had to say on the subject to Entertainment Weekly:
“You find out who did it within the first 5 or 6 episodes. That becomes clear. But as usual for Scandal, the thing you think is the story is not really the story. You think we are going to watching a story about who is president. Yes, that is interesting, but it doesn’t really have much to do with where we are going.”
Ultimately, what we could see here is a story more about why this person shot Vargas more so than who was the one to pull the trigger. This show relishes being super-complicated, and we see zero reason to think that this will change now in season 6 when it has established such an identity.
Who is at the top of your own subject list? Share now in the comments! Meanwhile, head over here to read our full review right now for Thursday night’s premiere. (Photo: ABC.)