Four of the Keating Five were involved in the murder of Annalise Keating’s husband and subsequent cover-up. Asher Millstone was left out of the conspiracy and wasn’t beholden to his professor the same way his body-dumping classmates are.
That’s changed.
Asher officially joins the group.
While Annalise has been running around saving her students and keeping them out of jail for their criminal activity, Asher has been on the outskirts, clueless as to what’s really going on. That left him free to conjure up his own theories about what happened to Annalise’s deceased spouse and operate with the benefit of a clean conscience … we thought. However, it turns out that Asher has his own criminal baggage, and Annalise convinces him to unlock it and allow her a peek. Mistake?
Annalise promises to protect Asher from gang-rape charges, just as she has vowed to protect her co-conspiring colleagues. In her normal fashion, she manipulates to get what she wants. This time she gleans info about Asher’s father and has Frank Delfino investigate the judge’s cases. When Annalise’s henchman turns up dirt, she uses that to bargain with the prosecutor to free her client-of-the-week, a transgender woman who killed her abusive husband. That puts a wedge between Asher and his father.
Annalise is a woman of many contradictions. She’s that person who will burn your house down and then offer you her pool house as refuge. She’ll steal all your money but invest 10 percent of it in a successful stock. She’ll shave you bald and then give you the pick of her fierce wig collection. How does that cliché go? With friends like that, who needs enemies?
More Hapstall suspects join the family.
Now that Asher has been properly initiated into the Keating Five (that took long enough!), he’s become more involved with the Hapstall case. With Oliver Hampton’s help, the group discovers that the siblings’ murdered aunt had a child who may have wanted all that Hapstall money and killed to get it. Connor Walsh’s beau, the honorary sixth member of the group, digs deep to identify the estranged relative, who may have found Connor and Oliver first. (This might be a good time to check your digital device to see whether the record light is on. I’ll wait … )
Annalise knows a lot about Wes’ mother.
Now that Asher is “in the circle,” it’s Wes Gibbons who seems a bit more estranged from the group. Michaela Pratt blames him for everything bad that’s happened to them. Nate Lahey cuts him off, and Annalise may be all he has left. She confronts him about his crusade to prove her a murderer and informs him that she understands his inability to trust.
For those who thought that Annalise was Wes’ biological mother, it seems doubtful. She reveals that his mother left him when he was 12. Theoretically, he should remember how she looked. So Annalise likely isn’t that woman. At the same time, what if the woman who raised him for 12 years was an adoptive mother and Wes is the product of Annalise’s childhood molestation?
That’s a mystery for another day. Right now the team is focused on the Hapstalls and whatever leads to Annalise’s getting shot. What’s your theory?