"Scandal" season 3 finale explodes with murder, betrayal

"Scandal" served up an explosive third-season finale on Thursday night -- and we're not just talking about the bomb.

There was also a murder, some major revelations, a presidential election and one very important phone call that went unanswered.

[Warning: Spoilers below.]

The bomb does indeed go off at the church. Fitz isn't there, but Vice President Sally Langston is, and her campaign manager, Leo Bergen, declares this her "Pearl Harbor or 9/11 moment" and sends Sally to tend to give support and tend to the wounded as cameras roll. Footage of her dominates the news coverage, even as Fitz goes to address the nation. To Olivia and Cyrus, it looks like he's lost the election.

Olivia then goes to visit her dad in the hospital, where he's recovering from her mom's stabbing attack. She confesses her feelings about the election and how she was scared when she saw him blooded in the OPA office. He tells her he wishes he could help her (and he does, in his own twisted way, but more on that later).

Quinn and Huck get caught having sex in the office, and word of their going at it gets back to Charlie, who says he's moving out but leaves a parting gift -- a manila envelope that contains the location of Huck's family. She brings him to see them, but he gets angry and tells Quinn to never speak to him again.

Fitz, meanwhile, is preparing his concession speech and eager to start his post-presidential life in Vermont making jam and babies with Olivia. But that all comes to a halt when Olivia tells him Mellie's big secret - that his father raped her. Fitz, stunned, goes to talk to his wife and she immediately knows that he knows. They also learn, definitively, that Jerry IV is Fitz's son.

"You can't leave her now," Olivia tells Fitz on the phone, aware their dream of Vermont is out of the question. "I love you," the president tells her. "I love you, too," she says back.

Olivia returns to see her dad in the hospital and finds her mother is there, too. Meanwhile, during Fitz's speech, Jerry sneezes up blood and collapses onstage. He dies soon after from bacterial meningitis - a specific strain that went missing from a lab a week ago.

So, the president's son was murdered. This means he'll win the election...but who did it? Fitz thinks Mama Pope is to blame. But, it turns out, he's fingered the wrong Pope -- it's her father who was behind it.

"My daughter wanted him to be president," Papa Pope, now back as the head of B613, tells Harrison. "And he is. Daddy took care of it ... He took my child so I took his."

Olivia, meanwhile, wanted to get away from it all. She asked her dad if his offer from the beginning of the season -- to put her on a plane and just escape - was still available. When Jake sees her packing to leave, she tells him, "This is not a pity party. This is me doing what I do best. I'm handling this. I'm fixing this. I'm the scandal."

We end the season with Adnan Salif dead, Fitz winning the election, Huck reuniting with his former wife, Maya Pope presumed dead but actually in a hole in B613 and Olivia sitting on a plane...with Jake (who left a trove of B613 documents behind for David Rosen, so he could "get the bad guys") sitting next to her. Her phone rings, she sees it's the White House, and she ignores the call.

What did you think of the finale, "Scandal" fans?