Finale Forecast: Should ‘Scandal’ season 5 go out with a bang?

“Scandal” is the sort of show on ABC that likes to do almost everything big. With pretty much every promo, they tend to hype up one crazy shocker after another; to be fair, they did pay off some of these by having Olivia murder Andrew at the end of this past episode. This is definitely something that we did not see coming; heck, we weren’t even sure that we were ever going to see Andrew again on the show!

We know that the temptation will be to try and top this come the season 5 finale airing next month, but should the show go in that direction? In the latest edition of our ongoing CarterMatt Finale Forecast series, we’re going to do our part to try and figure that out.

What could happen – At the moment, the most-likely scenario for the end of the season is that we’re going to see some movement in the Presidential election. We’d be surprised if the whole election is over, but the field of primary candidates (Mellie Grant, Susan Ross, Hollis Doyle, etc.) should be narrowed down a little bit. We also anticipate some big updates from Olivia and Fitz as we see their aftermath of their many blow-up fights, and we also anticipate her broken friendship with Abby getting some attention. Also, Cyrus will probably figure out where he stands after having his career in flux for most of the season.

What should happen – We won’t be particularly upset if any of these things mentioned above occur, but the show needs to go above and beyond in a few ways. We don’t want something shocking to happen just for the sake of it, but this could be the time to deliver a real jaw-dropper when it comes to Jake Ballard / Rowan / the whole espionage side of the story. It’s never been a great fit in this world, and as much as we like Scott Foley and Joe Morton, we’d prefer this show to simplify a little bit so that we can focus more on the fixing and the politics. Plus, they’d be scooped up by another show in a second, so we don’t mind saying it.

Also, we know that Shonda Rhimes does love her carousels, but can we put an end to the one known as Olivia’s love life? We’d like to see a full season where she either decides to be single and explore that, or explore a long-term relationship. We’ve seen plenty of everything else in between already.