How to Get Away with Murder season 4: 3 questions for episode 2

How to Get Away with Murder’s season 4 premiere got us thinking about these three things going into episode 2, including a question about Laurel.

In its fourth season premiere, How to Get Away with Murder answered a pretty obvious question: where are our characters starting out going into this new season? We’ve found that Oliver and Connor are still together.

Ditto Asher and Michaela (and they even looked at some new mattresses, which probably counts as a relationship upgrade).

What’s Annalise’s next move here?

She’s still the main character of this show, and she’s started isolating herself from her closest allies, like Bonnie. Some things are going right for her, in that she still has her law license, she hasn’t been drinking again, and she has a therapist (court-ordered or not, and Pete Nowalk implied to Entertainment Weekly  that she will not be viewing that as a positive). Some things … are not.

How is she dealing with Wes’ death? Is she going to work again? Giving Bonnie the opportunity to go seems to suggest the answer is no, at least to the second question. Is she preparing for a court fight over the insurance money? Where does she go from here? There are a lot of options, and not a lot of clarity right now.

Where is Laurel going with all of this?

In EW, Pete Nowalk confirmed that “[Laurel’s] lying to somebody,” and the flash forward seems to confirm that it’s to her father, as did the shot of her alone, her stomach exposed, as she looked at Annalise’s recommendation letter. In other words, she’s still pregnant as far as we know.

(A rough timeline suggests that Laurel would be about five to six months along in the flash-forward.)

So, why lie to her father? To garner sympathy and pull him closer by asking him to keep a secret for her? That same EW interview has Nowalk saying that Laurel wants to figure out what happened to Wes and why her father was involved in his death, so that makes sense, but she’s still a bit all over the place in her methods right now.

What does Michaela really feel about Annalise?

Michaela has always a complex relationship with Annalise, and it’s obvious that that hasn’t changed in the season premiere. As I noted, she called her “dead inside,” was then in tears and frustrated at the fateful restaurant meeting, and wrapped the episode up angrily working on her resume with Asher next to her. But she also pointedly said things about “the deal” and Annalise’s lack of actual follow-up on said deal. Nowalk, to EW, repeatedly used the word “toxic,” and we think it applies to Michaela’s feelings about Annalise in particular.

Next: Praising the fearless women of Halt and Catch Fire

So, how will that toxicity play out on How to Get Away with Murder this season?