‘How to Get Away With Murder’ Teases a Possible Cause of Death for Annalise (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 6, Episode 12 of How to Get Away With Murder, “Let’s Hurt Him.”]
One of the questions everyone is waiting to see answered in How to Get Away With Murder is, what leads to Annalise’s (Viola Davis) funeral? Well, “Let’s Hurt Him” suggests one possibility, only to take it off the table by the end.
Annalise’s day in court starts off as well as can be expected: the judge approves her to travel to Tegan’s (Amirah Vann) office to work on her case. But then AUSA Montes (Lauren Bowles) throws them for a loop with a notice of intent to make this a capital murder case and pursue the death penalty for the murders of Sinclair and Asher. (Montes later defends her decision to Tegan and calls Annalise “as bad as a mob boss.”)
Annalise insists this is a retaliatory movement to intimidate her, but all she can do is take her challenge to the Department of Justice. Once Michaela (Aja Naomi King), Connor (Jack Falahee), and Oliver (Conrad Ricamora) hear, they begin to wonder if Gabriel (Rome Flynn) might have been telling the truth and the FBI did kill Asher — and wants to take out Annalise next.
(ABC/Bonnie Osborne)
Vivian (Marsha Stephanie Blake) surprises Annalise when she shows up to tell her the FBI killed Asher. Annalise then puts Frank (Charlie Weber) on Pollock (Deborah Levin), and he confirms that she’s connected to Xavier (Gerardo Celsasco) — whom he kidnaps. (That doesn’t end well for Xavier; they bring in Nate, who retaliates for his father’s murder by killing Xavier.)
Michaela tries to appeal to her attorney to get a new deal if, say, hypothetically, the FBI was involved in Asher’s death, but doesn’t get anywhere. (Connor knows his lawyer won’t be able to help, either.)
But what does work is Annalise holding a press conference in which she tells the public that the case is based on the testimony of informants who have been coerced and tricked into lying. The DoJ committee wants to meet after that.
And speaking of those informants, Michaela and Connor approach Annalise with their regrets about potentially playing roles in her getting the death penalty. But they have a way she can get that taken off the table: a recording of Gabriel insisting the FBI killed Asher. She gets them to come clean about being the informants, and they admit they took the deal because Lanford (William R. Moses) used Asher’s murder to coerce them.
(ABC/Richard Cartwright)
Annalise does use a recording when she goes before the committee, but not the one Michaela and Connor provided: the one she made of them. Annalise says they claim the FBI killed Asher, and since Montes is part of that coercion, how can the committee believe her? It works, and the death penalty is taken off the table.
So, if anyone had “Annalise gets the death penalty and is executed” (which probably isn’t likely), you’re wrong. And now there are only three episodes left to see just how this ends — and exactly what’s going on with that funeral scene.
How to Get Away With Murder, Thursdays, 10/9c, ABC
