Clay gets his mojo back with some help from Quinn and which might mean that Nathan can stay in the US and play in the NBA with the his old team the Charlotte Bobcats instead of going to Spain. Skills gets offered and takes the job in Los Angeles and brings Mouth along for the ride. Dan goes against Rachel on his television show and tells his audience that this is his last show and also serves with divorce papers. Julian rescues Alex from her near suicide bid and tells her the film deal is back on. Brooke fires Millicent from her model contract and tells her to get immediate help for her drug problem but her stay in rehab is brief. Victoria hires a new designer, Alexander Coin, for the menswear collection without telling Brooke.

Nathan and Jamie join Haley on tour as it comes to a close. Quinn gets her divorce from David. Millicent appears in court for her DUI where Victoria offers her a job as her assistant at Clothes over Bros. Brooke finds it hard to trust Julian particularly when Alex is always by his side and ends up turning to new menswear designer Alexander Coin. Elsewhere, Haley and Quinn's sister Taylor turns up in Tree Hill with Quinn's ex-husband David who is now her boyfriend. Meanwhile, Mouth returns from L.A.

Nathan tries to calm Haley down after Taylor and David's shock announcement that they are a couple and then through the ensuing dinner that Taylor plans out until all three James sisters find themselves in the pool fighting it out. David and Quinn talk and he agrees with her that their marriage is at an end. Julian takes offense to the director hired for his new film and fires him after he punches him for insulting Alex. Finally after talking to Brooke rationally and asking her to be the movie's costume designer she makes him see that he should direct the movie himself which he brings up with his father who agrees. Mouth and Lauren fix up the disheveled apartment after Millicent's recent partying and then tells Millicent he is staying in Tree Hill. Millicent and Brooke agree to try and be friends again.

Flashback to the '80s.

Haley, Quinn and Taylor receive a surprise visit from their mom Lydia who tells them that she has incurable pancreatic cancer and that she is not seeking any further treatment. Quinn takes the news very hard but Clay is there to support her. Meanwhile, Alex sets her sights on Alexander as Brooke and Julian try to get their old relationship back on track, and Millicent finds herself struggling with temptation.

Haley and Quinn refuse to accept that their mom Lydia will not fight her pancreatic cancer and after some convincing manages to persuade her mother to get a second opinion with Nathan's doctor but the results don't bring any change. Because she told Jamie that she won't be alive for Christmas he organizes for her to have Christmas now with the family. Meanwhile, Brooke and Julian's relationship moves up a notch but comes crashing down spectacularly when Brooke finds Alex in his bed but is it what it seems? Elsewhere, Grubbs puts Miranda through hoops before he allows her to produce his album with her and Owen Morello comes back into Millie's life much to Mouth's displeasure.

In getting back at Julian for sleeping with Alex, Brooke messes with the costumes for the shoot and generally does her best to wound Julian but it takes comments from Alex to get her thrown off the set after she punches Alex in the face. Only later does she discover that it was Alexander that Alex slept with as she switched rooms with Julian. She tells Victoria who is furious and it later transpires that her mystery lover is Alexander. Meanwhile, Lydia takes ill from her cancer and is hospitalized and reaches out to the daughter Taylor but it is Quinn who manages to get her to come before she dies. Elsewhere, Clay tells Katie he won't be representing her but it doesn't put off Katie and she finds out that he was married to Sara so she transforms herself to look like her. Lauren and Mouth nearly get it together only for Skills to come back to Tree Hill.

Quinn's gallery opens with Clay very supportive unaware that he is being stalked by Sara lookalike Katie until she makes her presence known and Clay shows Quinn how alike Katie is to Sara. Josh's sex tape with Alex is emailed to Julian's father with a demand for $1,000,000 putting the film in jeopardy. Miranda finds out she is being deported thus putting a spanner in the works with Grubbs's recording but Grubbs finds a way around it by proposing to her. Lauren tells Skills that she has fallen for someone else but he is unaware it is his best friend Mouth until he sees a photo of them at the gallery where he promptly punches Mouth. Meanwhile, Victoria's affair with Alexander is exposed in more than one way. Elsewhere, Nathan and Jamie spend a guys evening together & later he asks Haley if she'd be ready to try for another baby. She tells him she took a pregnancy test and it was negative but is she telling him the whole story?

Nathan and Haley struggle with the aftermath of her mother's death, while Brooke deals with the fallout of Alexander's tryst with Victoria. Alex discovers a secret about her leading man, Josh, that could derail Julian's film, and Quinn is confronted by an unhinged Katie.

Quinn takes Jamie on a treasure hunt as an increasingly despondent Haley further withdraws from both Nathan and Jamie. Katie invades Clay's personal space convinced that she is his dead wife Sara. Clay plays along until he manages to have her committed. Mia breaks up with Chase by text and then comes back to Tree Hill to manage a heart-broken Grubbs after Miranda leaves. Julian shows his film to a delighted Brooke as he anxiously awaits confirmation on whether his indie film will be bought by a film festival.