Scandal's third season has been full of surprises, and the ABC series continued to shock as it kicked off the second half of the year with "Ride, Sally, Ride."

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The events of December's "A Door Marked Exit" left the entire cast with a new landscape to navigate - a landscape that continues to shift rapidly.

White House Chief of Staff Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry) dug himself into a hole when he set up D.D. (Jack Coleman) with his husband, James (Dan Bucatinsky), hoping that D.D. would hit on James and his infidelity would keep the Vice President (Kate Burton) from making a bid for the presidency. Instead, the two men slept together, an act which lead Sally to kill her husband in a jealous rage while James came to the conclusion that he wanted to leave Cyrus (unless he is made White House Press Secretary, which Cyrus obliges).

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Now, Sally has decided she will, in fact, make a run at the presidency through a third party. She will not, however, relinquish her current role as VP. James is also up to no good as he continues to spill secrets to the press in an effort to throw Cyrus under the bus.

Meanwhile, Olivia's (Kerry Washington) meddling with her mother's escape had the unintended result of unleashing the killer Pope into the wide world. The duplicitous Maya is on the move, and Eli/Rowan Pope (Joe Morton) now has even less power to stop her. Fitz (Tony Goldwyn) has put Jake (Scott Foley) in charge of B-613, a slight that Daddy Pope will probably not take lightly.

Despite Olivia and Fitz's passionate opening scene in "Ride, Sally, Ride," The Fixer wants to leave her position in the President's campaign and is still quite bothered by the fact that Fitz put Jake in charge of B-613. In the meantime, the man Fitz wants to bring in as his running mate has his own shocking affair going on with the First Lady.

Scandal airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on ABC. Click the video below for a preview of the series' next episode, "We Do Not Touch the First Ladies."

Tags: Scandal 3 ABC television