What happens to Jason in The Oval? The First Son's body count keeps rising — and half the fandom cheers him on
Tyler Perry's The Oval premiered on BET in 2019 with a premise about a corrupt First Family. Within one season, the President's son had become the most dangerous person in the building, and the writers have never walked it back. Seven seasons later, Jason Franklin is still out there.
Jason Franklin, played by Daniel Croix Henderson, is a serial killer. He has three confirmed on-screen victims — White House maid Jean, his father's mistress Denise Truesdale, and his own grandmother Maude — plus multiple failed attempts on his mother, First Lady Victoria.
His parents covered up the first killing, which set the pattern for everything after.
The confirmed victims
- Jean — the maid he spent all of season 1 harassing. He assaults and kills her in the finale and leaves her body under his bed, where it 's found by another staffer.
- Denise Truesdale — Hunter's mistress. Jason decapitates her with a sword, which Hunter and Victoria later find in a chest in his bedroom.
- Maude — Victoria's mother, strangled. Her death is initially written off as a heart attack.
- Victoria — survived a chokehold in season 3 and a stabbing in the bunker in season 6. Still standing.
When Jason kills Jean, he tells her he didn't want it to happen again — the show's suggestion that the on-screen count isn't the full count.
Why nobody stops him
Because stopping him would require someone to admit what he's done. Victoria and Hunter disposed of Jean's body themselves rather than face a scandal, and Chief of Staff Donald Winthrop's solution was to relocate Jason to a monitored part of the residence.
He has since survived two suicide attempts, a coma, an assassination attempt ordered by his own mother, a stint hiding at a cult compound, and a period living under the name "Mike." Every institution around him has more to lose from exposure than from another body.
Why viewers root for him
They openly do, and the actor knows it. Daniel Croix told TVLine in 2021 that fans tweet at him hoping Jason will target characters they dislike:
"People actually root for him," Croix said.
He noted that some of them were specifically hoping Jason would get to Victoria — which, given the First Lady's own track record on the show, is less of a leap than it sounds.
Where he stands in season 7
Season 7 premiered on May 20, 2026, on BET and Paramount+, framed as the end of the Franklins' time in office. Jason enters it fresh out of surgery after the season 6 finale. Episode descriptions from BET have him triggering a White House manhunt after Trent's body is found, confronting residence supervisor Priscilla Owen, and prompting Victoria and Agent Isaac to handle the problem themselves.