We’re more than halfway through the craziness-dissipating four-month gap between the two halves of Empire’s second season, meaning its just about time for Fox to lob some more madness into the mix, in the form of a new trailer for the show’s March 30 return. Picking up from the show’s mid-season cliffhanger—which saw the Lyon family’s Shakespearean patriarch Lucious ousted by youngest son Hakeem and a smooth-talking Naomi Campbell—the new promo promises Empire won’t be getting sane any time soon.
As always, the theme of the day is “family,” the nuclear force that’s always threatening to bind together, tear apart, or just plain detonate the staff of Empire Entertainment. Under its nebulous guidance, though, it looks like everybody’s still up to their usual tricks: Lucious yells while people point guns at him, alliances are brewed, and Taraji P. Henson calls someone Yoko, in a slightly below-par example of a classic Cookie Burn. In other words, business as usual for the music business (or at least the show’s version of it, in which Pepsi advertisements and the launches of streaming services take on the grandeur of civil wars and sneering duels between rival kings.)