Does Huck Die In Scandal?

No! Huck, played by Guillermo Diaz, does not die in "Scandal" — but it's a sort of close call during the show's penultimate season. Allow me to explain.

Shonda Rhimes' steamy, soapy political drama "Scandal," which ran for seven seasons from 2012 to 2018, stars Kerry Washington as powerful D.C. "fixer" Olivia Pope (based on real-life figure Judy Smith), but Olivia is surrounded by a whole bunch of supporting players who all have their own rich backstories. One of those players is Huck, whose real name is Diego Muñoz (put a pin in that), a tech expert who helps Olivia solve personal and political problems at the behest of powerful clients at Olivia Pope & Associates. Throughout "Scandal," Huck goes through some pretty harrowing stuff, but none of it comes close to his near-death experience in the show's sixth season.

In that season, Huck's secretly evil girlfriend Meg Mitchell (Phoebe Neidhardt) — who's working for his OPA colleague and friend Abby Whelan (Darby Stanchfield), unbeknownst to Huck and everybody else — shoots Huck, shoves him into a car, and drives that car into a lake, forcing him to work his way out. Huck survives by the skin of his teeth, but it's a close call, and his best friend at OPA, Quinn Perkins (Katie Lowes), ultimately kills Meg in a fit of rage over what happened to Huck.

By the very end of "Scandal," Huck is alive and simply ready to move on from OPA, as is everybody else. So what else do we need to know about Huck in general?

In the very first episode of "Scandal," we meet most of the core group at Olivia Pope & Associates that carry us through to the end of the show: Quinn, Huck, Abby, and Olivia herself (along with two other characters, Henry Ian Cusick's Stephen Finch and Columbus Short's Harrison Wright, who don't make it very far into the overall series). Huck is, by far, the quietest and least revealing about himself; it takes forever to learn anything concrete about him, which makes sense once you do learn his backstory. (Put a pin in that.)

Though Huck's job at OPA seems to just be "computers" at first, it turns out that he's a skilled spy, a highly trained operative, and, worst of all, an avid torturer. Despite constantly trying to tamp down the part of him that loves torturing people for information, Huck gleefully and even giddily takes out his horrifying torture kit and gets to work to get information out of anyone and everyone on Olivia's behalf. (He even does it to Quinn at one point. It's ... not great.) Huck is, unfortunately, also betrayed by almost every woman he seduces, including the aforementioned Meg and an early-series girlfriend named Becky Flynn (Susan Pourfar), who frames Huck for an assassination attempt against the sitting President of the United States, Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn). 

Okay, I think I've danced around it enough. "Scandal" is a messed-up show (and I generally mean that in a good way), but truthfully, Huck's devastating backstory is the most gutting thing on the entire series.

In the season 2 episode "Seven Fifty-Two," we flash back to five years before that season's timeline and see Olivia giving money to an unhoused man on the subway platform. This, combined with a present-day storyline where Huck (who suffers from serious PTSD) is in a near-catatonic state and can only say the number "752," opens the door to his origin story. Long before meeting Olivia, Huck's name was Diego Muñoz, and he was a decorated Marine veteran happily married to a woman named Kim (Jasika Nicole). Kim and Huck have a son named Javi, but all the while, Huck is hiding a secret; during his time serving the country, Huck was recruited by a secret cell known only as B6-13, controlled by a man whose name isn't revealed at that point, played by Broadway legend and "Justice League" alum Joe Morton. In his work with B6-13, Huck discovers his love for torture, but he's also personally tortured by the knowledge that he has to hide his family — because anyone involved with B6-13 is supposed to remain completely solitary.

After Huck gets home one day to find his B6-13 colleague — and fellow torturer and assassin — Charlie (George Newbern) in the kitchen with Kim and Javi, he realizes he's placed his family in mortal danger. Huck is put in a chamber at B6-13 known as "the hole" and separated from his family, but Charlie lets him go free instead of killing him, leaving Huck to live on the streets of D.C. and panhandle in the subways. One day, when he sees Javi and Kim on the platform, the time happens to be 7:52 at night ... which is why he obsesses over this number forever.