Tonight's episode of Scandal may have had a slightly slower pace than previous episodes, but it certainly didn't lack for a jaw-dropping ending:

Who shot Fitzgerald Grant?

"Defiance" had everybody following their intuition, and if Fitz had listened to Mellie's, maybe he wouldn't have be in this position.

I keep playing that scene over and over in my head and I can't decide if Mellie KNEW something was going to happen because of the round table and cloak-and-dagger's secret meetings she's been privy to in Fitz's absence... or if she just knew on a gut level that they shouldn't get out of the car. I want to say that she's not so heartless and/or ambitious that she'd have her own husband assassinated, and this was all a big, huge serving of women's intuition. But with her, I feel like we can never be too sure.

Mellie's not capable of assassination, is she?

Is this solely the work of Hollis Doyle, who might be a more dangerous animal than Cyrus Beene? Or is there someone else out there who wants Sally Langston sworn in before sunrise? The suspense! It kills!

Intuition was also crucial for James tonight as he tracked down the information given to him by David Rosen. This is a dangerous yet awesome alliance these two are forming. I knew James wouldn't stop investigating Hollis Doyle just because Cyrus asked him to. The desire for scoop is too strong with some journalists and James has proven that he has quite the urge to uncover the truth. Watching James follow the leads to uncover the voter fraud that got Fitz elected was thrilling.

Now the question is: if Fitz survives the shooting, what's he going to do and think when he finds out?

He'll eventually learn that his election was fraudulent. He was never supposed to be President. Which means he would've been free to leave Mellie and be with Olivia.

It's certainly killing him to see Olivia and Edison together, though he's bringing a great deal of that pain on himself by having her watched in the first place. Here's a newsflash: Having a surveillance detail follow your ex-girlfriend around, even if she's your One True Love, is kind of obsessive and not at all romantic. I know he told Tom the Secret Service agent that they were supposed to back off of the detail, so here's hoping they actually do it.

I'm not sure how I feel about Olivia essentially using Edison as a pawn to find out if the President is still carrying a flame for her. Yes, he finagled his way to a nomination for Senate Majority Leader by stomping on her client, but her conversation with Cyrus about who should be the next leader and then her surprise that Fitz made the right choice (by making the wrong choice) was a little sad.

The President choosing to support the other candidate so that Edison would be chosen made sense in terms of blocking Hollis Doyle's connections and had very little to do with Olivia, unless it was some grand and secret gesture to say "Go. Live. Be free." His choice might have also been the reason for the shooting, so maybe it was the wrong choice after all.

Quinn also followed her intuition to determine that Huck, or someone like Huck, ferried her out of California on a private jet registered to Verna Thornton. She's learning the ways of the team members at Pope & Associates well to be able to hypothetical her way into so much information.

Also worth noting from tonight's episode was Harrison's ability to handle the case. Olivia trusted him to get the job done and he did, even if he doubted himself. And I think the Abby-David break-up is eating at him just a little bit, which is going to be interesting moving forward. If he starts to question Olivia, the whole thing unravels, but so far, he's the most in the dark about everything going on.

Huck, Abby, and Quinn all have pieces to this puzzle. Harrison doesn't.

What did you think of "Defiance"? Who do you think pulled the trigger? Check out our Scandal quotes page for more tidbits from the episode and then let's talk about this week in the comments!

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