Late this summer, just before “Empire” returned to the small screen, the Web g with reports that Terrence Howard — and his alter ego Lucious Lyon — would be downsized from the show owing to𒁃 Howard’s✤ ongoing marital and personal woes.
♓What a difference a few weeks makes. While the show’s first season might have been all about Cooki🐈e Lyon, Season 2 is shaping up to be the season of Lucious.
Indeed, from the premiere’s opening scene at a #freelucious rally to last night’s Howard-packed episode, “Empire” is turning into an all-Lucious-all-the-time lovefest. And Lyon is quickly emerging as far💫 more than just a hip-hop mogul — his role as alpha-patriarch is turning him into television’s unlikeliest father of the year.
While folks may debate his parenting style, Lucious’ evolution certainly makes for riveting TV. On Wednesday night, we saw Lucious get out of jail, spar with the DA, tussle w🥂ith gang-bangers in the ghetto, buy a satellite radio channel, throw a “welcome home to me” party in the club, steal his son’s artist and try to sign a roughꦦ-neck rapper — all in less than 60 minutes.
But alo🗹ng the way, he met, fought, laughed and loved with every member of his fami🌃ly — fully solidifying his status as the only man on the show who truly matters.
The judge may have barred Lucious from entering Empire’s offices, but he made it clear: “Empirꦡe is not a building — I am Empire.” And he wasn’t kidding.
But what makes Lucious the most powerful — and meaningful to the show’s audience — is his relationship with his k♊in. Lucious is a true family man — for good and bad — in the most old-fashioned kind of sense. At a time when , Lucious’ almost total presence within his family is truly revolutionary for black America and black TV.
Why? Well, with LGBTs (of every color) all over pಌop culture, “Daddy Lucious” is far more groundbreaking than having an out-and-proud gay black son, Jamal, helping to run his multimedia empire — for “Empire’s” slight ratings slip.
Like “Empire” itself, Lucious’ aggressive — at times, abusive — parenting simultaneously buys into and belies the most common stereotypes about black families. The perniciousness of absentee fathers has been loudly debated since the time of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s ’60s-era pathologization of the black family. Cookie may seem to run the Lyon show, but this season, at least, it’s Lucious who rules his family with a gold-plated fist — even if he seemingly is unable to rule himself. Lucious may be a killer, cheater and dirty scoundrel, but he’s first and foremost a father.
“Empire” has an overwhelmingly black audience — — and it would be easy to say viewers aspire to the bling-bling lifestyle that the series (and rap culture in general) so prominently offers. But with so many of its fans living without fathers, the rꦐeal allure of “Empire” is Lucious Lyon — the unofficial daddy of a fatherless black America.