ABC Scandal Season 3 Episode 18 Review

Last week, Maya Pope's bomb was discovered to be in the church where a senator's funeral was set up.  This same senator was another murder victim of Maya's, which Jake only discovered a couple hours before the funeral.  Jake informed Cyrus of the bomb's location and asked him to inform the president.  However, after learning that Sally Langston was already at the funeral with her adviser Billy Chambers.

Knowing Cyrus can't be entirely trusted, Jake gets to the White House to inform Fitz of the bomb at the church.  Fitz then sends everyone he can to get the church evacuated, just in the nick of time.  Maya has the bomb blow the church up out of frustration after she sees most of the funeral attendees evacuated and learns that Fitz wasn't even there.

Billy then has a genius idea.  He thinks that this time is an opportunity for perfect publicity.  Knowing that the Fitz is still at the White House, he says to Sally, "You be Jesus."  He smudges dirt on her face and rips her suit sleeve and sends her in front of all of the news crews.  Sally, who worked for the American Red Cross in college, takes to the field and attends to the wounds of the public.

The news screens go from a spilt between the President's speech about the bombing and Sally's work with the wounded, while her suit is torn and dirtied.  Slowly but surely, all of the news stations tune out Fitz's speech and focus on Sally's efforts on the field.  Fitz's poll number's deplete and an essence of doom comes across the Fitz election camp.

Olivia and Cyrus tell Fitz that they lost the election. A drunk Mellie says to Olivia, "I want a refund.  Why did we hire you?"  Olivia does not have an answer and she realizes that everything they did is now all for nothing: All of the drama, the deaths, the murders, the manipulation, the scandals.

Olivia then goes to her father, hoping he might have something to say, some kind of advice.  She says, "I can't fix it or make it okay...  We're going to lose."

Eli says to her, "Olivia, I don't like him...  I want you to have everything... but no."  He leaves her with no game plan and no advice.  All of her work, her life, flashes before her eyes.

Meanwhile, Anand holds Harrison at gun point.  He tells her he'll save his life and he'll save hers if she lets him go.  He has a past with her, one that is not touched on too much in the show, but whatever had been between them gives Harrison the hope that it can blossom again and all will be well some day.

Back at Olivia Pope and Associates, Quinn and Huck are getting intimate but are caught in the act by Harrison and Abby.  What is more disturbing to Abby is that they are in the same spot that Eli was just stabbed by Maya, which nearly killed him.  The pool of blood has been left untouched and Quinn and Huck just look more animistic than before.

On the other side of town, David demands Jake help him uncover the corruption, but Jake just wants to be a normal guy while he collects his unemployment checks.  Jake has seen things, done things, and now it's time for him to try to be as normal as he can.  Maybe if he can return to a kind of normalcy, Olivia will too...  A man can dream, can't he?

After Huck and Quinn are discovered, Charlie and Quinn decide to part ways but he leaves Quinn with something in an envelope that he believes will destroy Quinn and Huck's "happiness."  He does this because he can't physically harm Quinn (at least not yet), but he does want to do something to get back at her.

Back at the White House, Fitz meets with Olivia and says with his presidency ending, he's divorcing Mellie, wants to marry Olivia, and have children with her.  He says, "Two babies, I think."

Knowing they can't have a fresh start with any more skeletons in the closet, Olivia comes clean to Fitz about what she knows about Mellie.  She says, "Mellie asked me not to tell you this.  I think...  that Jerry raped her."  Fitz denies that his father could have done that to Mellie, but Olivia says, "Think about it, think about how Big Jerry was."

Fitz then goes to Mellie, who has a drink in-hand, and she immediately knows he knows.  Fitz holds her and she says, "I fought him.  I fought..."

Fitz, prepared to announce his stepping down from his reelection campaign, calls Olivia.  She's at the hospital with her father.  She says, "You can't leave her now."  This is another delay from their dream house in Vermont and Olivia knows that Fitz can't leave Mellie.

Fitz corrects her and says, "Not yet."

Olivia confesses to Fitz, "I wouldnt want you if you left her now."  Regardless of her love for Fitz, she knows that he must do the right thing and help Mellie get to some kind of place of sanity.  She's become an alcoholic, she's been mentally and emotionally exhausted.

When Olivia gets off the phone and returns to Eli's besdie, Maya is right by Eli's side.  Maya tells Olivia. "You probably won't understand until you have kids... I did this for you."  Olivia has no clue what Maya's talking about, but Maya goes onto saying,  "He uses you, he's going to throw you away...  I want you to be happy."  Maya also notes that she didn't do anything to Eli, that if she wanted to kill him she already would have.

Before Fitz can begin his speech, his son begins sneezing and coughing up blood on the stage and then collapses.  Fitz carries him to the car, all while news cameras are filming every second of the panic.  Fitz's son, Jerry, dies shortly after reaching the hospital from a strain of Bacterial Meningitis.

Olivia, already at the hospital, meets with Cyrus in the waiting room.  She confesses to him that the first thing she thought of when she heard Jerry died was that Fitz was going to win the election.  "When did we stop being people?" she says.  She then goes onto saying, "Did you see his face when he was carrying his son?"

A Secret Service agent informs Fitz as Mellie and Karen are sedated that the Center of Disease Control carries a special strain of the virus that killed Jerry.  Eli, who has been in the same hospital, finds his way to Fitz.  "It was Maya Pope," Fitz says as soon as he sees Eli.  Maya missed Fitz at the church so she went after Jerry.  This realization wrecks Fitz and it can only be expected that the worst days for him are all that lays ahead for him.

While Fitz consoles Mellie back at the White House, Mellie says, "I kept my distance from him because I was terrified of what he might be.  It turns out he was yours the entire time."  Mellie, who was already in a bad way to begin with, is left in a state that words cannot describe.

In the middle of all the shocking events, Quinn follows Olivia's earlier 'confessions for a fresh start' move and shows Huck what's in Charlie's envelope.  Turns out, Charlie found Hucks family, the family B6-13 made him forget about.  She tells him all of this in front of the family's house.  Huck loses it and demands Quinn never talk to him again.  He then goes to Olivia in tears and tells her, "Quinn found my family."  She urges him to try to talk to them.  He then says, "It's good for me to be dead... Me leaving them behind was the best thing that's ever happened to them."  Eventually, Huck makes a bold move and rings the doorbell of his family's house.  His former wife looks shocked to open the door to the husband she believed to have died.

Following Huck's bold move making, Olivia finds her father and says, "That plane you got for me, that new life, does that offer still stand?"  Olivia knows that she finished her job of getting Fitz reelected into the White House and she has to know that Fitz and Mellie will have to remain together for the next four years.  She has Quinn back at Olivia Pope and Associates (kind-of), Huck has been reunited with his family, Abby and David seem to be headed to the alter in the future, Harrison (the last time she checked) is safe and doing well.  All of her people are taken care of and now she has the chance to take care of herself.

Jake comes to Olivia and demands to know why she's starting over and skipping town.  "I'm the scandal and the best way to handle a scandal is to shut it down."  It was her mother that killed Jerry.  Her father was the head of B6-13.  She believes that everything bad that has happened to anyone around her was her fault.

As Olivia packs up her apartment, Jake says, "Take me with you.  Run away with me.  Save me."  He loves Olivia and he sees this as a chance for the both of them to start over.

"You want to stand in the sun with me?" she asks him.

"I want us to stand in the sun together.  Can you do that?" he asks her.  Sure enough, the two of them board a private jet together and are flying in the sun together towards their new, private, scandal-free life together.

On a different note, Eli shows photo evidence of Anand's dead body to Harrison in order to get him to cooperate in locating Maya.  Harrison, having nothing else to lose, helps Eli and together they find Maya Pope.  Eli then informs Fitz, "Maya Pope is dead."

After learning Olivia has skipped town, Harrison confronts Eli and says, "We need to stop her."  He expects Eli to help get Olivia to come back, but Eli refuses.  Eli knows that Olivia will be better off far away from the capital and then slowly Harrison connects the dots after Eli admits to being reinstated as the head of B6-13.

It was Eli who had ordered Jerry to be infected with the secret strain of Bacterial Meningitis.  Everything that has happened in the past few months ended perfectly for Eli.  Olivia is safely tucked away in an undisclosed location.  Maya is out of the picture.  Eli is now back in the position he always wanted to be in as the head of B6-13.  Fitz is indebted to Eli now after eliminating Maya, who Fitz believed to be the killer of his son.  Harrison makes the mistake of connecting these dots all in front of Eli.  Eli says, "He took my child, so I took his."

Harrison says, "You killed Anand just to get me to talk," to which Eli replies, "No one can take command, right Tom?"  Tom, the Secret Service Agent who was declared the connection to the White House, comes from the shadows with a silencer on a handgun presumably for Harrison.

Back at the White House, the Fitz camp celebrates his successful reelection.  "We won!" Cyrus says.  A broken Fitz leaves the celebration and pours himself a glass of scotch, presumably, and collapses in a ball of depression and despair.  The cost of his election win was a price he never expected to pay, let alone celebrate.  

Mellie finds fits on the ground and she tries to console him.  An inconsolable Fitz is at a loss of what to do next mutters as a reelected president, "Where's Olivia?"

Meanwhile, David is at his office when he receives a number of boxes filled with private documents from B6-13 with a note saying "Go get the bad guys."  The note is signed by Jake.

The ultimate kicker of this season finale: It turns out Maya isn't really dead, she's in the hold at B6-13.