Kerry Washington promised in our interview that the Scandal season finale would bring it. And "Grant For the People" certainly did. Consider my jaw sufficiently dropped and my mind officially blown.

I can't tell you how glad I am that this show was picked up for a second season. Seven episodes is simply not enough of such an awesome series.

This was a night of masterful storytelling. Things came together and characters fell apart beautifully.

Quinn as a client was a perfect intersection of the show's usual format of two stories. Quinn needed her secret identity to stay hidden, so she called Olivia instead of 911 after Gideon bled out all over his rug. Olivia, despite her team's protests, demanded that Quinn was a client and she would be treated like one. The team's reluctance to clean the crime scene, followed by its meticulous scrubbing, indicates that maybe this isn't their first time doing something like this. They knew exactly what they were doing: protecting a client at the cost of being able to prosecute the real criminal.

But still, they did it. Because those are the lengths to which Olivia will go when someone needs her help.

Olivia's professional and personal lives collided as she had to save an employee and her lover from Billy Chambers. He killed Gideon and then torpedoed the Fitz' presidency by telling the media about the President's affair with Amanda Tanner and leaking the tape, leaving Cyrus and Olivia to do the impossible one more time. The choices left to Fitz after it looked that they would be unsuccessful were so grim I felt bad for him.

He could lie, but he won't do that. Olivia could tell the media that she's the woman on the tape, but that just makes him look worse. Or he could resign and they could have a normal life. Together. He could have the life he wants with the woman he loves. (For the full line, check out the Scandal quotes page.)

In that moment, I hoped he would resign and the two of them would ride off into the sunset. They deserve a normal life together. We're conditioned not to root for infidelity, but there I was, excited that these two could have a happily ever after. But Cyrus and Stephen had to meddle and tell Olivia 1) Fitz was born to be a leader and 2) this is basically her fault. And while both of those may be true, sort of, when she choked out "Normal is overrated" to Stephen I felt so bad for her, almost broken.

And then she was even gracious enough to save Billy Chambers from Huck. Sort of.

Huck, after promising not to kill Billy, used a technicality to try and get rid of the snake. And that technicality--Charlie, the CIA operative Huck tortured for information about Amanda Tanner--was in Cyrus' pocket the whole time.

Did you catch that? Cyrus Beene was behind Amanda Tanner's murder.

Or he was working with Billy Chambers. Or they were both out to have the girl murdered. And how does the First Lady figure in?

It's clear that she knew the President had an affair with Amanda Tanner. She had the audacity to blame Olivia for it. And then she swept in and saved the day by saying that she was the woman on the tape and that she and the President are expecting a new baby. The First Lady has no scruples! None at all! Fitz and Olivia essentially breaking up after hope had been so high earlier in the day was heartbreaking. Knowing that the entire story was likely Olivia's idea made it worse.

She's willing to give up everything for Fitz. She'll even give him up.

With that, season one is done, and the biggest question remaining of the season is "Who is Quinn Perkins really?" And it's not a question to which we got an answer. I suppose they had to save something for season two. I know that between that question and the Cyrus reveal, I'm eager for September.

Were you shocked to find out that Cyrus was behind Amanda Tanner's death? Do you think we've seen the last of Billy Chambers? What did you think of tonight's finale?

Miranda Wicker was a Staff Writer for TV Fanatic. She retired in 2017. Follow her on Twitter.