‘HTGAWM’: Season 5 Premiere Twist Hints at Bloody New Murder

How to Get Away With Murder returned for its fifth season with a flash forward teasing a bloody, cold and possibly child-related death.

The premiere kickstarts during Connor and Oliver’s wedding celebration with the party raging on, however the only main character we see is Annalise Keating dancing the night away.

As she is enjoying herself she stops dancing and starts to look worried when she sees Frank. He refuses to talk despite her insistence, and the camera steps away from them, but not before we see Annalise slap him.

Then the camera turns to the perspective of a person who is bleeding a short distance away from the party, we see as the person falls to the snowy ground before the show flashes back three months, to the first day of Annalise’s new law class at Middleton University.

The episode also reintroduces Gabriel Maddox (Rome Flynn), a mysterious new student at the university that Frank is scared of and referred to as “her son” at the phone with someone in the season finale.

Fresh from her Supreme Court win, Annaliese is seen fielding offers from every big law firm in town, including Tegan’s law firm from last season now led by Emmett Crawford (Timothy Hutton). Given her many options, she quickly rejects their offer.

Things change as she is holding tryouts for admitting students into her new class, when she finds out that the Governor of Pennsylvania blacklisted her and she loses most of her offers.

In typical Annalise fashion, she refuses to give up on herself and returns to Kaplan & Gold, knowing that their reputation has also been shattered after Laurel’s dad’s arrest in season four. After some hardcore negotiating, she gets a new job and office at the law firm, as well as full funding for her class; meaning that her best student of the semester will win a year’s worth of tuition money.

Laurel — who decided to baptize her son Christopher after her estranged mom sent her her old baptism gown — finds herself staying with Frank and letting him co-parent her son. But when she, Oliver, Connor and Michaela agree to all move in together, she decides to leave Frank. He tries to stop her from leaving by proposing, but she shuts him down immediately.

Annaliese shocks the Keating 4 when, after tryouts for her class are done, she chooses to give the final spot in the class to Gabriel, leaving Asher behind. When he asks why, she tells him he needs to get over his breakup with Michaela and find himself, and that’s the only way he’ll be able to be a good lawyer.

Near the end of the episode, Nate finds out after getting a sample of Bonnie’s DNA that the son she had at a young age could be alive, and the show insinuates that Gabriel might be that child; as Frank is seen getting close to him to keep an eye on the new student.

At the end of the episode the show returns to the bloody reception, and through the perspective of the victim, fans see as whoever is dying left baby Christopher sitting in the snow next to them. The person looks up and sees Bonnie standing over them and she uses her hands to cover their eyes and ears and finish the job.

Who died at the wedding? We’ll find out as How to Get Away With Murder season 5 airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.