Empire season 4 premiere: About that Lucious – leg moment…

There were many big events that took place over the Empire season 4 premiere, but the biggest shock involved Lucious and his leg. What happened? It’s not so much what happened in the premiere as it is learning more about what transpired a while back in the past. The explosion that took place during the season 3 finale caused Lucious to lose his memories, but it also led to him losing a valuable part of his body: His leg. He’s an amputee now, and both a big part of his physical and mental self is gone. This means even more work is in the hands of Claudia (Demi Moore), which makes her all the more important to his recovery.

For Terrence Howard, it also makes one thing all the more clear: We’re set to see a pretty incredible performance from him in the weeks to come, one that allows him to explore both Lucious’ physical recovery and the odd, new-found innocent that he feels given that he doesn’t understand now the person that he was or some of the things that he did in the past. He has to find himself and understand what transpired to get from point A to point B.

Speaking to TVLine, executive producer Sanaa Hamri expressed why the writers made this decision:

“[That] was a pretty big car explosion. If you rewatch the finale of Season 3, you can see that he really goes flying through the air and, basically, his leg gets blown off. Lucious has to not only regain his memory with nurse Claudia, but he also has to rehabilitate his leg and be able to learn how to walk with a special leg.”

There’s no denying that this will be a tough hurdle for Lucious to overcome, and even when he starts to recover, there are some other issues that the series will be taking on with that. With a character like Lucious, one of the biggest issues with him — at least when he gets a sense of his memory back — is his masculinity. He’s a man who values that highly and thinks he has to be this chest-puffing force of nature. Without his leg, he is going to think that he is losing a tremendous sense of self. This is something that he will have to tackle and come to terms with. This is going to be a tough revelation for him, but one of the other interesting questions here is simple: What if nobody else wants to see the old Lucious come back? What if they actively recruit against that? After all, we don’t think Old Lucious was all that popular at all.

What did you think about the Empire season 4 premiere, and the big Lucious – leg reveal?

Be sure to share some more of your thoughts in the comments! Also, head over to the link here to preview what lies ahead now on Empire season 4 episode 2. (Photo: Fox.)