When details from an old case don’t add up, Olivia’s team must backtrack to figure out if they made a mistake. Worse still, this mistake has potentially put them all in serious danger. Meanwhile, Olivia and Jake’s relationship starts to heat up, while at the White House Fitz and Mellie’s relationship hits a new low.
The team find themselves working for the devil when Hollis Doyle's daughter is kidnapped and held for ransom. Meanwhile, David is still in danger and is forced to seek shelter at Pope & Associates; Olivia and Jake take their flirtatious relationship to the next level even as the President continues to rely on Jake for intel; in the White House, Cyrus will stop at nothing to get back into the President's good graces; and Mellie's claws come out when she tells Fitz he needs to make some changes.
Olivia finds herself in the middle of a media storm, but this time she's on the opposing side of the oval office when Fitz's pick for Supreme Court Justice is caught in a torrid affair with Liv's new client, high-powered CEO Sarah Stanner. Meanwhile, Olivia and Jake continue their flirtatious relationship, while Huck takes Quinn under his wing and Harrison and Abby try to figure out where they stand with their friendship. Back in the White House, Cyrus and Mellie continue to fight for Fitz's attention, but someone else may already have it.
Olivia and the team are hired by an up and coming politician, Peter Caldwell, but this time instead of fixing a scandal, they're playing high-powered matchmaker. Meanwhile, David is trying to leave the past behind him, but when he feels like he's being followed, he finally turns to the team at OPA for help. Back at the White House, Fitz is still struggling with whom to trust and how to handle a delicate hostage situation, and Jake just won't take no for an answer when it comes to dating Olivia.
After discovering the truth behind defiance, Fitz is still struggling to figure out whom he can actually trust. Meanwhile Olivia is trying to move on with her life, and she meets a handsome stranger, Jake Weston, who sparks her interest. But when she and Fitz are forced to be in the same room again, real sparks fly and things get heated. Back at Pope & Associates, the team handles a new case, and for the first time they're working with David Rosen instead of against him.
Olivia receives an anonymous letter containing a coded warning which could expose Huck's dark past. Meanwhile another Pope & Associates secret has already been exposed and Olivia asks Harrison to step up and handle it. And in the White House, Cyrus and Fitz are dealing with the ramifications of Cyrus' husband's first front page news story.
When the wife of a governor is raped, the governor takes the law into his own hands and then asks Olivia and her team to come in and clean up his mess. Meanwhile, both Cyrus and the President are caught off-guard when Cyrus' husband, James, decides to return to his career as a journalist covering the White House.
A DC college student goes missing and her grieving parents come to Pope & Associates for help. Meanwhile David is still investigating the Cytron case and gets help from a very surprising source; and in the White House, Fitz feels the pressure as Mellie proves once again that she's a political powerhouse.
A paranoid government official drops a bombshell on Pope & Associates and even Olivia is caught off-guard with how high up this Scandal goes. Back at the office, unresolved questions about Quinn's background create tension amongst the associates. Meanwhile, despite Cyrus' best efforts to keep a lovesick President under control, things still manage to heat up between Fitz and Olivia when Olivia's old flame returns.
When a public figure is caught in a compromising position, Olivia and her team must do some heavy lifting, literally, in order to clean up the mess. But Olivia is still dealing with the ramifications of the judge's jaw-dropping verdict, and Abby continues to push for answers. In the White House, Cyrus and Fitz are forced to deal with a serious foreign policy emergency.
Quinn's identity is finally revealed, and the more the Pope & Associates team learn about her past, the more they realize she could be their biggest scandal yet. Meanwhile, a senator seeks Olivia's help when his personal life is about to become a public disgrace, and President Fitz is stuck between a rock and hard place when Mellie and Cyrus put him in a very compromising position during a live television interview.