![empire 1.jpg]()
(photo via Michael Lavine/FOX)A new trailer for season two of
Empire is here, and it is spectacular. Get hyped for September 23, when the season premieres.
Among the many beautiful details:
- Andre wants to get rid of Lucious, who pits Jamal against Andre while also in a separate feud with Hakeem (because this is Empire and everyone is fighting everyone at the same time).
- Lucious, who is in prison, raps in his jumpsuit from a cell or something.
- Chris Rock looks warily at someone or something... in his own jumpsuit, because he is also in prison.
- ...Marisa Tomei is here!
- Most important: Hakeem glides around the Empire offices on an IO HAWK, because of course he has one of those now.
As great as the new season looks, there is some reason to be nervous -- at the Television Critics Association press tour, creator Lee Daniels said he wants
a spinoff about Cookie, which is maybe the worst idea anyone has had since Hakeem's fake relationship with Tiana. Taraji P. Henson's balls-to-the-wall, full-on soap performance is a minor work of art in its own right, delightfully angry and powerful and pretty much the only thing that grounds the show in even a semblance of expressionist emotional reality. All of the men of the Lyon family are basically satellites in her orbit -- does Daniels really think that, like, Yazz can hold down the fort? (Not that
"Drip Drop" isn't great.) Besides, without Cookie dialogue... what would we tweet every week?
(photo via Michael Lavine/FOX)