Say you’re the hottest show of the television, and you need to figure out how to recapture the feverish presence for your sophomore season. What do you do? If you’re involved with the megahit, incredibly tweet-worthy How to Get Away with Murder, you dive right back into the scandal and the craziness that made your show such a phenomenon in the first place. Let’s not forget: we were left with a dead body at the very end of Season One, and this premiere promised us to reveal the killer.
One of the first things we see in the premiere is Rebecca getting a plastic bag tied around her face. That disturbing and graphic image pulls us immediately back into How to Get Away’s complicated web, but that’s not the only thing that has us tweeting/texting/screaming WTF and OMG. Normally, a thriller like this would have a quiet or demure period in the first few moments, or it might take the episode an entire half hour before it tries to shock us. Not the case with this ABC drama.
Sure, the students pretty much hate each other as they attempt to pick up the pieces from events that took place in the first season. Everyone assumes that Rebecca has successfully disappeared, but Wes’ behavior is making everyone a bit suspicious. In a tense early scene, he arrives late to Annalise’s class and yells at her when she asks him to answer a question. Connor stands by Oliver after he is diagnosed with HIV, and it’s pretty brave for ABC to introduce such a bold storyline. Is there another show promoting such conversations about safe sex and healthy relationships—you know, amid murder investigations and backstabbing?
So, does How to Get Away with Murder deliver in its second season premiere? You bet your trophy-grabbing ass it does! There is a lot of mystery going on here already. Yes, we find out who Rebecca’s killer is (Bonnie sure doesn’t care about winning Employee of the Month anymore), but it almost feels like a bait and switch in the best way. Famke Janssen makes a strong debut as Eve, a Harvard Law colleague of Annalise’s that is defending Nate in his trial. We soon learn, though, that Annalise and Eve were more than classmates, and that’s just the first of two late twists that have Twitter buzzing. When will we find out who Eggs 911 is?! Why does he have such an awful name? Are we going to get more details about Anna/Eve?! The suspense is killing me already!!!
Last season, I recapped this show, and it’s hard to review it from a distance this time around. Last season, it was THE show that people wanted to talk about. People would start conversations about it, and recommend the show to other people immediately to get them in on the scandal and gossip. That’s how we know it’s sensational, and this promises to be no different. It’s the kind of TV that makes you gush and want to just be shocked together, and this cliffhanger guarantees to nab viewers. I’m hooked all over again.