‘Scandal’ Flashes Back to Quinn’s ‘Death,’ Reveals What Really Happened

Scandal explored the days before Quinn’s supposed death.

Throughout the episode, viewers followed Quinn (Katie Lowes) as she was kidnapped by Eli Pope (Joe Morton) and kept in the basement of his house until he supposedly shoots her to death.

In the beginning of the episode, Eli explains to Quinn that he was not sent by Olivia (Kerry Washington) to kill her, but that she is currency in a game he is playing with his daughter for his beloved bones and that she will be back home at the end of the day.

He then leaves her in the basement.

Viewers revisit Olivia and Eli’s dinner where he declares he has kidnapped Quinn. Eli happens to also be the only person who knows Olivia restarted B-613 and, in turn, has started ordering assassinations for her own interests and those of the White House, resulting in her reckoning.

“Check mate,” Eli says to Olivia before he demands his bones — which Olivia took from Eli after he disobeyed her.

“Or what? You’ll kill her?” Olivia says, thinking her father is bluffing.

Viewers then see Eli approaching his basement with a gun, but can’t bring himself to kill Quinn, as she is almost nine months pregnant with her baby with fellow gladiator Charlie (George Newbern).

“Three days! If I don’t have my bones by then I will kill that girl!” Eli says to a dinosaur figurine in his living room.

Later in the episode we see Eli buying a crib, which he claims is for his “daughter’s” new baby.

Then we’re back in the basement, where a hungry Quinn begins to rant to Eli about how she was supposed to be out of there the night before, she’s starving and still wearing her wedding dress — Eli kidnapped Quinn right before she and Charlie were supposed to tie the knot.

Eli tells her he bought a crib to make time for Olivia to come around, which Quinn takes as an offense. She tells him Olivia is playing him, handling him and that she will never bend to his will. She tells him he’ll die as Olivia’s prisoner just like Quinn will die his.

“You planned this all wrong. You just killed my baby,” Quinn says to Eli. Eli just responds by giving her a bag with cereal and a change of clothes.

Trapped in the basement, Quinn starts to hallucinate her friends telling her to try to escape. A Huck (Guillermo Diaz) mirage asks her why she didn’t tell anyone when she found out Olivia was responsible for a murder earlier in the season. Quinn revealed that if she told someone then it would be real that she had lost her role model to the dark side of power.

The Huck mirage then told her she had to come up with a plan because Eli bought a crib to keep the baby safe, but once the baby was safe, Eli would not hesitate to kill her.

Eli then returns to the store and buys a gun.

The episode returns to the moment when Olivia and Eli decide on Quinn’s life.

While they fight on the ground floor, Quinn is trying to break herself from her restraints in the basement. We then recap the moment where Eli goes into the other room and presumably shoots Quinn. We see him going down into the basement, goes down the stairs but he doesn’t find Quinn.

She fights with Eli and the first shot goes to the ceiling. Eli overpowers Quinn.

“Please no,” Quinn begs for her and her baby’s life. Rowan responds with an “I’m sorry. I can’t let her win.”

Eli then fires a shot and the screen goes dark.

When Eli comes back upstairs, Olivia – who is faking to be composed so as to not lose the game against her father – tells him to wait a few days before he lets the body surface because the team needs to be able to bury her.

After she leaves, Eli goes back into the basement and we see Quinn alive. Eli shot a bullet, but purposely missed Quinn to confuse Olivia.

“You got what you wanted. Now let me out,” Quinn says to Eli. The two of them then go upstairs for some water.

In the kitchen, Quinn starts getting contractions and her water breaks. Eli then knocks her out with a sedative. When she comes to she’s back in the basement and giving birth, with the help of an old friend of Eli’s and hallucinations of Quinn’s friends. After a few pushes Quinn has her baby girl and then she passes out again.

When she wakes, Eli tells Quinn the baby is perfect. Both Quinn and her baby are fine!

At the end of the episode, Quinn realizes that Eli bought enough baby clothes to keep both of them there for years. Olivia, and the outside world, think Quinn is dead and that’s how it’ll have to be for the time being.

Scandal airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.