‘Empire’ season 2, episode 14 reaction: More on Anika’s motives

To say that Wednesday night’s new episode of “Empire” was shocking to many people was an understatement. After all, how else do you describe an episode that featured at the center of it Lucious’ mother metaphorically rising from the grave, and then also Anika deciding to keep Hakeem’s child and turn away a bribe? She instead makes it clear that she wants the Lyon family in her life; maybe this is a power play or maybe it’s genuine, but she is making a clear stance. Whether or not the others agree with it remains to be seen.

What we can at least tell you is Grace Gealey’s response to the subject in a postmortem for the episode to Entertainment Weekly:

“I honestly feel like this is a moment where she focuses on the heart of the matter. Sure, she can use this as a power play, but truly, at this point, she needs nothing from the Lyons other than a family for her child. Somewhere deep down inside, I feel like she sees this as a debt to be paid to her, since she was put in such a difficult position by the Lyon family to begin with. What’s interesting is, Anika receives much judgment and blame for her twist in desperation, which has caused her to not exactly do the best things. But people forget that she was forced to this point by the betrayal of Lucious when he slept with Cookie. Under all of her terrible decisions is a woman full of humanity that has little guidance and support. This is where her unwise decisions stem from.”

Granted, anika’s still far from out of the woods given that she’s also gotta contend with the idea of being targeted by Lucious … and also whether or not she is responsible for what happened to Rhonda. This is still be floating around out there.

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