'Scandal' Stabbing Shocker: Is This Fan Favorite Really Dead?!

Wearing a white hat might be the right thing to do, but on Scandal, it’s also the deadly thing to do.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!

That’s something Jake already knew; he just wasn’t quite prepared for it to happen to him just yet. Papa Pope is back this week, and with a vengeance. When Olivia doesn’t buckle to his demand to shut down the B-613 investigation, Rowan goes full-on nuclear and sends an agent to kill Jake.

And Jake — strong, capable, crafty Jake — falls. He’s gone to stand in the sun, all the time, somewhere else.

This is merely Rowan’s first salvo in his battle against his now-”worthy” opponent, Liv. He took out her white knight; what will her next move be?

A rundown of this week’s episode …

Clean-up time

We pick up right where we left off: with Papa Pope in Olivia’s apartment. That dude Russell is knocked out on the floor. He orders his daughter to shut down the B-613 investigation… or else. That includes murder, mayhem, and the toppling of Fitz’s presidency. Rowan gives her 48 hours to decide.

After he leaves, Liv wakes up a disoriented Russell and pretends like they got drunk off three bottles of wine (puh-lease) and were singing and dancing. She puts him to bed, then triple locks her door. Girl, you know that still wouldn’t stop your father.

She strategizes with David, Jake, Quinn, and Huck, and all agree that they might need to sacrifice Fitz to pursue the case.

At the White House, Cyrus is doing a happy dance when it looks like they’ve wrangled the votes for the Brandon Bill, a police reform act born out of the shooting a few episodes back.

Meanwhile, Liv gets another kind of case, an OPA case, from Marcus. Remember him? He was that activist guy that Liv encountered during the Brandon Parker shooting. Well, he’s running for mayor now. But he doesn’t need Liv for that — he needs her because they find him in bed with the murdered wife of Mayor Verrano. Uh-oh!

Marcus insists he didn’t kill her, but that he watched the whole thing from the closet. A few masked intruders came in, stabbed her to death, stole some jewelry, and took off.

The team decides not to call the cops (who don’t like Marcus from the Brandon Parker shooting), but instead, get rid of the dead body, suitcase-style. Huck and Quinn clean up the crime scene like pros. “You were never there,” they tell Marcus.

How a bill becomes law

Fitz and Cy learn that a senator went into labor, which means that the vote for the bill is actually tied. No problem! They can get VP Susan Ross to break it in their favor.

Except this is Susan Freaking Ross. She doesn’t do anything by halves, and if she’s going to support a bill, dammit, she’s going to read all 1,200 pages of it! Nothing Cy can do to hurry her up works.

Susan has questions, lots of them, so Cy taps David Rosen to answer them. Her in-depth interrogation stuns David, who can’t believe she didn’t go to law school. It doesn’t look like Fitz is going to get his bill signing ceremony in the Rose Garden anytime soon, though, as Susan is caught up in the details of the funding mechanisms and enforcement.

Meanwhile, Olivia marches to the police station, where Marcus is being questioned. But Liv extracts him from that ASAP, then torches the captain for bringing in Marcus when he wasn’t officially arrested. Nobody wants Marcus to have ever been at the station, because that would mean one more thing for the DOJ to look into.

At OPA, Huck discovers that Marcus’s email was hacked. Threatening notes were sent from his account, but from Verrano’s office. It’s looking like the mayor killed his own wife, then staged it to look like Marcus did it. But they need more proof, so Marcus tries to remember more details of the attack. He recollects the name “Mickey,” and the gladiators jump on it.

At DOJ, David is interviewing Jake about his involvement in B-613, with Liv watching on. They get to Operation Remington, which Jake confesses was a mission to shoot down a commercial airliner. And the pilot was… well, all hail the chief.

Upset, Liv returns home and calls Russell. He’s hesitant to come into her apartment; he doesn’t want any drama. She admits that her life is complicated, but that it feels nicely uncomplicated whenever she’s with him, pretending to be “Alex.” They start making out and yada yada yada.

The gladiators figure out who this “Mickey” character is and use that to blackmail Mayor Verrano into stepping down. In return, Marcus has to keep quiet about what really happened to the wife. Except he can’t — his sense of justice won’t allow him to lie about murder.

This will destroy his political career, a fact which stings Marcus. But Liv supports his decision to do the right thing.

In the White House, Fitz marches in to see Susan Ross and demands that she play ball and vote for the bill. But credit to her, Susan stands up to him. She knows why she was chosen as VP, but that doesn’t mean she has to play dead in the role.

And to his credit, Fitz listens to her. He decides to take the bill off the table and rewrite it, with Susan’s help. To quiet his critics in the press, the Grants throw them another bone — Mellie announces her candidacy for Virginia senator.

So, the 48-hour deadline is up, and Papa Pope makes a return visit. Olivia informs him that she chose the other side — the side of justice. As for possibly ruining Fitz, she says, “I may care about him, but I will never allow a person to get in the way of what I know to be right.”

Oddly, Rowan applauds her. He’s PROUD of her. Now, she’s her own woman. Now, she’s a worthy opponent. Let the battle commence.

Later that night, Jake comes to OPA looking for Liv. Instead, he’s met by a masked attacker. They fight and skirmish and wrestle. Jake gets the upper hand and rips off the mask — it’s Russell! He really is an agent of Rowan!

Russell then stabs Jake, and stabs him again… and again… and again.

RIP Jake.

Your move, Liv.

Scandal airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on ABC.