It has been a long winter for Shondaland fans, but after tomorrow night, their need for Rimes television will be satisfied.
How to Get Away With Murder returns for the latter half of its second season after a revelation that not only did Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) have a hand in the affairs of a younger Wes (Alfred Enoch) (or “Christophe”), but that present-day Wes was the one who shot her nearly dead.
That is, it is only a shock if Wes hadn’t been the one to bash Annalise’s cheating husband’s skull in season one, but alas, those who believed Wes to be holding on to a shred of innocence had to let that hope go.
For those who do not remember or, for some reason, haven’t yet watched this complicated onslaught of murders and mysteries and are just going to pick it up here, the first half of season two focused on the second murder night in which both Emily Sinclair (Sarah Burns) is displayed dead in a luxurious foyer. Further in the home, Annalise is splayed with blood blooming from a stomach wound.
The weeks preceding this horrific event focused on the media-frenzied murder trial of Caleb and Catherine Hapstall (Kendrick Sampson and Amy Okuda), adopted siblings who were accused of shooting both of their wealthy parents after an apparent torture proceeding. Annalise and her team of law students, who had already together committed murder in the previous season, were called upon to defend these two and instead ended up tangled into the lives of these suspected killers, in typical dramatic Shonda Rimes fashion.
On the night of the frame-story murder, Asher (Matt McGorry), who was absent the night of Annalise’s husband’s killing, backs over Sinclair with his car in a fit of rage after she taunts him about his father’s unveiled corruption (brought upon, in the midst of the dramatic thicket, by the Keating team). From there, the one murder leads to Asher and the rest of the Keating team dragging the dead prosecutor’s body to the Hapstall mansion, where Annalise, wrought by her own guilt with murder, asks one of her team, Connor (Jack Falahee), to shoot her in the leg. Instead, Wes takes the handgun and fires to kill at her stomach.
The way the seventh episode of last season ended was distressing , as both Annalise and Wes are arguably the main characters of the show as well as having in the past had a defined closeness, either sexual or in a maternal manner. Two characters who seemed to be so intertwined in murder and affection–a reminder that Wes killed for Annalise previously and that Annalise somehow a role in handling a young Wes after the death of his mother–are now severed by this one bullet.
“Obviously their fates are intertwined,” said show creator Peter Nowalk, in an interview with TV Guide today. “They can’t just run away without all their secrets coming out. They’re tied together in this way that, I think, they both find fills them with resentment.”
And if a mass of secrets between them doesn’t keep Annalise and Wes together, the eventual fallout that attempted murder usually brings in the HTGAWM world inevitably will.
How to Get Away With Murder returns on ABC at 10pm.