How to Get Away with Murder opened with Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) on a bender over Christmas break, slinging back hotel bar mini-bottles of booze and binging on pancakes.

How to Get Away with Murder Recap

When she returns to school after the break, she’s met by her husband’s sister Hannah (Marcia Gay Harden), who has all of the confidence in the world in Sam’s (Tom Verica) innocence and finds Annalise’s behavior off-putting. She doesn’t think Sam killed Lyla and believes that Annalise should be more concerned that foul play was involved in his disappearance.

The in-law reunion is cut short when a harried woman named Jackie (Jackie Geary) comes in and implores Annalise to take her on as a client. Juggling the “disappearance” of her husband, the arrival of said husband’s inquiring sister and keeping tabs on the husband-killing Keating 4, Annalise kind of has her hands full. She’s about to turn the woman away when she learns that she was inspired by Annalise to turn her own husband in. Apparently, he’s been keeping a pair of women padlocked in their basement for years. The students think Jackie is an accomplice and don’t want to take on the case. Annalise’s response? “What, have none of you ever done something bad that you need a lawyer for?”

Over Christmas break, the students, wrestling with the fact that they could all go down for Sam’s murder, didn’t go on complete benders like their professor, but couldn’t help but let the reality that their responsible for someone’s death get to them. Wes (Alfred Enoch), who spent an “orphan Christmas” with Rebecca (Katie Findlay), has nightmares every evening. Laurel (Karla Souza) gets smashed at her family Christmas dinner and tells the table that not only is her teacher’s husband implicated in the murder of a fellow student, but that she’s currently seeing two guys at the same time. Connor (Jack Falahee) tries to explain away his awkwardness by falsely confessing that he and Oliver (Conrad Ricamora) are together to his sister. And, Michaela (Aja Naomi King) effectively ruins whatever chance she had of walking down the aisle with Aiden (Elliot Knight) after she accuses him of having an affair with a male colleague.

Back together and working on Jackie’s case, the group tries to put their own issues aside. They have her give a statement to the DA in which she both implicates her husband and works to exonerate herself. Things seem to be going smoothly with both of the hostage girls saying that Jackie was nothing but kind towards them. However, when one reveals that Jackie would give them milk laced with drugs before her husband would visit them, Annalise has a fit. Jackie claims that she did it so that they wouldn’t have memories of the rape, but she’s lost Annalise’s trust. Things get worse when Annalise finds out that Jackie has been raising one of the girls’ children, whom she’d claimed had died. After finding out the location of the girl, Annalise drops Jackie as a client.

Throughout Jackie’s case, Sam’s sister Hannah was everywhere, acting like a bloodhound. She bumps into Annalise at the police station and claims to know that the police have a lead on Sam, a lead that the police failed to share with Annalise. Later on, she catches Annalise paying a visit to Nate (Billy Brown). Hannah even interrupts a conversation between the four of the Keating 5 in which Laurel was trying to get everyone to open up to each other so that they have a better chance of surviving the ordeal.

Helping Wes, Laurel, Connor and Michaela get away with Sam’s murder, Frank (Charlie Weber) steals Connor’s car while he’s on a date with Oliver. Laurel had hinted that there was a ton of forensic evidence in the vehicle, so he took it and had it destroyed. Frank is also palling around with Asher (Matt McGorry), hoping to keep him off the scent of his fellow pupils and professor. Frank even offers to “handle” Hannah – who finds out that Annalise had tried to protect Sam early on, but had hoped that the secret Annalise was keeping from her now was that she was still protecting him and was hiding him somewhere.

Next week on How to Get Away with Murder, Sam’s body is found in a landfill and police start to close in on Annalise and her star students.