Scandal Postmortem: Quinn Perkins, Revealed! What's Next?

[Warning: This story contains major spoilers from the Season 2 premiere of Scandal. Read at your own risk!]

We finally have the answer to the Scandal question that has plagued us all summer: Who is Quinn Perkins?

Apparently, Quinn Perkins Lindsay Dwyer (Katie Lowes), aka the Molotov Mistress, went on the lam after being accused of sending a bomb to her boyfriend's work, killing him and a handful of his co-workers. Well, she didn't go on the lam so much as get herself kidnapped, only to wake up with a brand-new identity in Washington, D.C. (but more on that later). And if you think about it, Quinn could've kept this assumed identity a secret had former fling Gideon not met his maker in the Season 1 finale.

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"She really doesn't have the best luck with men, does she?" Lowes says with a laugh during TVGuide.com's recent visit to the Scandal set, where most of the cast is excited to finally talk about the big reveal considering they spent most of the summer deflecting a never-ending list of theories. "Yeah, it would be so cool for Quinn to come out and be like a warrior princess, but it wouldn't really make any sense. It lines up perfectly and ends up being even more interesting because now there are so many more questions to answer and so many more things to unravel for the rest of the season. The last [script] we just got, it's constantly like, 'What the hell is going on?!'"

Still, just because Quinn was released and the charges were dropped, does that mean she's truly innocent? "That is how I'm playing it, and we shall see if things come down the pipe later that are different," Lowes says.

With the question of who Quinn Perkins is out of the way, now it's a question of why Olivia (Kerry Washington) and Huck (Guillermo Diaz) were complicit in her kidnapping, the creation of her new identity, and, based on the closed-door phone call Olivia made, also her release — something even the cast is unsure of still. "Quinn is, at the moment, a pawn and I have no idea why or how," Lowes says. "She's been completely used and put in the worst situation and from what I've gathered so far, it's even deeper than what we see in the first couple episodes. It goes even further -- like, she could bring down the whole government, she could bring down the world. I still have millions of questions!"

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Lowes is not exaggerating the extent of the conspiracy. Trust us. "It goes pretty far up," Rhimes adds. "I think it's going to be very interesting when you discover where and how this is all played out."

Moving past the trial, Quinn will have to fight to win back the trust of OPA considering not everyone believes that she's really innocent. "She really goes off for a second on her own journey to find out who she can be now that she's been through something that's so traumatic that's changed her life so much," Lowes says, noting that we will get a chance to learn more about who Quinn was before the bombing. "As the season progresses, we see her trying to get back into the office, trying to prove herself that people can trust her, and that she's worthy of working at Olivia Pope & Associates. She fights tooth and nail for that."

Do you think Quinn is really innocent? Were you surprised by who Quinn is? Hit the comments!

Scandal airs Thursdays at 10/9c on ABC.