Tegan’s on holidays right as How To Get Away With Murder hits its penultimate episode. Mark Halyday steps in and tries not to get too much blood on his hands.

How To Get Away With Murder delivered an entertaining episode once again, moving each chess piece of a character to their final places before the nailbiting mid-season finale that answers the most interesting storyline of this season: Who Shot Annaliese?

Viola Davis won an Emmy and a spot on the Suicide Squad cast for her performance as Prof Annaliese Keating. If you were wondering, the Prof stands for Professional Badass. Each week she juggles a million different obstacles, always insisting that they can win any case. And 99% of the time she is right. In the show she’s moments from death, barely responsive on the floor of the mansion’s living room and later in the hospital. But the audience knows she’s not going anywhere – and that where things get interesting.

The fallout of that night will punctuate the entire second half of the season and will likely continue to hang over the series altogether, though likely less than the cover-up of Sam and Rebecca’s murders. Each of those are still powder kegs ready to be ignited, but at this stage we’re still a while off.

The point of this episode is getting everybody where they need to be for next week’s big show. Immediately that meant sidelining some of the more developed players – Bonnie takes a sabbatical to deal with Annaliese’s betrayal and Wes is thrown off the big case for being an emotional fool.

That leaves Laurel to overtly fill Bonnie’s shoes, stepping up to the plate with class and showing her worth to the team. She’s unassuming most of the time but a few tricks – including stealing Michaela’s engagement ring the night of Sam’s murder – proves her value to the team. Frank is hesitant, especially after Annaliese makes a show of his recent underperformance. Still he comes through right at the last moment – debting himself $50,000.

That’s a dangling plot thread for later on.

Connor is a nervous wreck once again. He’s the only one of the team feeling anything for the team’s previous wrongdoings. He blames Annaliese for the situation he’s in and does his best to protect his boyfriend Oliver from the same fate. And rightly so, as last week’s cliffhanger left us with a presumed murderer at the couple’s front door.

Ultimately that fizzled out, but the introduction of creeper Phillip shouldn’t be discounted. He held all the cards in his chat in Annaleise’s living room and now knows all the key players on the board, sans Bonnie. This episode incontrovertibly confirmed his presence at the mansion the night of Catherine and Caleb’s parents’ murder, and a surprising romantic connection with Catherine.

The plot thickens.

Elsewhere Asher kicks a few goals by discovering a bug in the office. After being on the outside for the whole of season one this side-arc has strengthened his character tremendously. Michaela sleeps with Caleb and humanises him to the point he shows her the newly-discovered murder weapon. Nate sleeps with Annaliese after doing some sleuthing on her behalf but the jury’s out whether he still resents her for everything else prior. Laurel sleeps with Frank. Oliver sleeps with Connor.

It’s a big sex montage and Wes, Bonnie, Asher and Eve aren’t invited. Which doesn’t bother Eve, as she was sadly absent for the entire episode. The addition of Famke Jessen did this show marvels.

In the flashforwards the gun that may belong to either Catherine or Levi shifts from Wes to Bonnie, who is back on form after her shower siesta. She brushes off her second murder this season crassly and references a greater plan before threatening to kill Connor if he did not get in line. Thankfully, he got back in line.

An episode from the flashforward point and there’s still a lot of questions to answer. My money is on Wes. He took the episode to construct an elaborate scenario. He’s the only one with enough time. He shoots Annaliese not out of rage or pain or whatever but for a purpose that will revealed in the second half of the season.

The only other answer that makes sense is Connor, which just places him as her outright opponent. She would crush him. And with Oliver absent from the flashforwards we’ve still got some wriggle room there.

We find out next week!