‘How to Get Away With Murder’ Reveals Who Killed Asher (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 6, Episode 11 of How to Get Away With Murder, “The Reckoning.”]
People no longer have to go around asking, “Did you kill Asher?” on the ABC drama. How to Get Away With Murder reveals the identity of his murderer in Thursday’s episode.
Elsewhere in the hour, a “Reckoning” is coming for everyone — namely, Connor (Jack Falahee) and Michaela (Aja Naomi King), and by extension, Oliver (Conrad Ricamora). Annalise (Viola Davis) may only be facing charges as related to her fake passport, but she knows the government is hiding the real charges and sets out to get answers, which means trouble for her former students.
And Asher (Matt McGorry) may be dead, but he has one last message for his friends.
“I know who killed Asher! … Maybe.”
The flashbacks to that night continue, but this time, we get the whole story. Chloe (Kelen Coleman) stops by Gabriel’s (Rome Flynn) apartment to accuse him of killing her brother since he has the phone Asher used to call her before he was killed. It was his; Asher just borrowed it. She knows — and so does the FBI, she tells him. After that revelation, Gabriel gives Agent Lanford (William R. Moses) his phone and swears that, despite his violent acts against the victim in the past, he didn’t kill him.
In a series of flashbacks, we see Asher calling Chloe to tell her the others know and admit he was worried the FBI would back out of the deal. She sent a car for him, and while he waited, he recorded a video message. Then, someone — whom he called 10 times — showed up at the door. Soon after, Gabriel witnessed the murder in the hall under the gap between his door and the floor.
(ABC/Eric McCandless)
In the present, Gabriel finds Michaela, Connor, and Oliver in Asher’s apartment and learns Laurel used to live there. He saw a brunette leaving the scene of the crime, and he goes to Lanford to tell him he thinks Laurel killed Asher. But that’s not what really happened.
As we see in flashback, it was the fake Airbnb woman, a.k.a. the one who got Xavier Bonnie’s file, at Asher’s door. He asked her to get him out of there, and she had him leave first — and then killed him.
Back in the present, Gabriel goes to Connor, Michaela, and Oliver to tell them he knows who killed Asher. After he told Lanford that Laurel did it, the agent called in the lead on the case; she was also Asher’s point person — and the one who killed him.
“It was the FBI,” Gabriel tells the others. (Oliver might want to amend his earlier statement that “the FBI isn’t going to let anything bad happen to us after what happened to Asher.”)
Choosing sides
Annalise wins her motion for the bill of particulars, a.k.a. a list of the real charges the government has against her. Connor, Michaela, and Oliver know she’ll figure out who made the deal once she sees Sam’s murder on there. And with that in mind, Connor worries the deal was a mistake.
“We finally made a good choice,” Michaela argues. “We’re just doing what we should have done three years ago when we tried to go to the police after Sam. Who stopped us? Her. By promising she wouldn’t let us get caught. Guess what? We got caught. We’re finally being smart. I’m not going to feel bad about that.”
(ABC/Kelsey McNeal)
When Annalise asks them over, she warns them against turning on her; she may turn on them in return and tell the world all she’s ever done is try to save them from their mistakes. But she says she won’t sell them out because she’d look like a fool for protecting them.
After, Annalise tells Frank (Charlie Weber) and Bonnie (Liza Weil) that the others turned. She even suggests they disappear and save themselves. (Frank notes earlier that whatever the FBI has on her, they have on them, too.) And while Frank promises Bonnie he’d choose her (over Laurel), he knows that she may not choose him over Annalise. Still, at the end of the episode, it’s the three of them standing together (for now).
Asher’s goodbye
After Gabriel hands his phone in to the FBI, Lanford sends Michaela a video file: Asher’s message from that night, for her, Connor, and Oliver.
“It’s me. This isn’t what I wanted to happen, but I just have to say this. I’m not sorry for what I did. I chose my family and maybe that makes me a schmuck or soft, but I love them,” Asher says. “And I love you guys, too. I mean that. Which is why I need you to hear me loud and clear here. You’ve all lost who you are. I can say that because it happened to me, too.”
“We all got caught up in something much bigger than us, but you all still have good in you. Connor, I thought gay dudes were weird until I met you and you make the awesome decision to marry Oliver. You two taught me what real love looks like,” he continues. “And Michaela, oh, Michaela, I love you so much. I always will. That’s why I asked you to marry me tonight, not as some stupid way to protect us, but because I love you, so much so that I hoped I could save you from all the bad stuff that’s going to happen.”
(ABC/Ali Goldstein)
“I just want you to move past this and get the future that you deserve. The future we all deserve. And the future we came to law school for, the future where we get to be the people that make the world a better place. Because I still think you can all be those good people. You can all still make the right decision,” he concludes. “And I’m here to help you do that. Just do what’s right because I promise you, you will feel so much better when you do. I guess I just wanted to tell you all this so you could understand or at least try. Just don’t hate me.”
After, his friends toast to him. “Thanks for being fun and funny and all the baking and dancing and bad jokes and for just being a cornball,” Connor says. “You made the hell that is our lives bearable, and I didn’t realize how much I need you until you were gone.”
How to Get Away With Murder, Thursdays, 10/9c, ABC
