Jeff Perry teases Scandal Season 3 midseason finale and more spoilers

The ABC hit drama Scandal returns Thursday night with an episode entitled "YOLO." When we last checked in on Shonda Rhimes' crazy political world, Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) had come face-to-face with her mother, whom she thought was dead. Olivia and Fitz (Tony Goldwyn) had seemingly made peace (and sweet love) and Cyrus' (Jeff Perry) plan to blackmail the vice president backfired when his husband James (Dan Bucatinsky) fell right into the VP's husband's arms. So what could possibly happen next?

Perry conducted an interview with TVLine and teased the midseason finale, which airs next Thursday (Dec. 12). Here's what he had to say about the episode:

"Turning to the fall finale (airing Dec. 12), I'm going to walk you through the official press release and you're going to tease it best you can. It starts, 'Now that the truth is out there, things will never be the same.' What sorts of truth? Big truths? Juicy truths?
Well, what are the possibilities? For James and Cyrus, who are right on the edge at the end of the last episode we've seen, there's the possibility, just like in the naked scene, of the truth of the situation being uttered between them - and where do you go from there? The truth of what happened in Remington is on a precipice, so there's possibility of the full reveal of that....

And the second part reads, 'Everyone will have to face the consequences of their actions.' Does that include Cyrus?
It does include Cyrus. And I can tease it to the extent that Shonda and the writers have Cyrus in some exquisite hell, unlike anything we've seen him go through."

Given Scandal's history, anything that qualifies as "exquisite hell" would have to be pretty extreme.