How to Get Away with Murder came to an end Thursday on ABC with an episode that left several main characters dead. After seeing glimpses of her funeral throughout Season 6, Episode 15 finally revealed what killed Annalise Keating (played by Viola Davis).
If you missed HTGAWM Season 6, Episode 15, titled "Stay," the finale is streaming now on ABC and Hulu and is expected to come to Netflix in mid-June.
Who killed Annalise Keating in the How to Get Away with Murder finale?
The final episode of HTGAWM had one last twist up its sleeve.
When we cut to Annalise's funeral this time, we learned that it was not a case of who killed her but what killed her. Though the show had led us to believe the funeral was in the present day, we then learned that it was many years in the future, and the professor died of natural causes.
Though we had previously seen a photo of present-day-Annalise at the funeral, in the finale we saw that just behind it there was a photo of her in her later years.
This fake-out was also achieved by having actor Alfred Enoch at the funeral. Viewers were led to believe that he was appearing as his character Wes, but in Season 6, Episode 15 we learned he was playing a grown-up Christopher, the son of Wes and Laurel (Karla Souza).
Speaking to Deadline, HTGAWM showrunner Pete Nowalk said of this last trick: "It was not the ending I always envisioned because I never envisioned one. I only go from season to season.
"But, last hiatus after season five, I did have this idea that we could play with who killed Annalise but really the answer is no one killed Annalise. The way we could do that is to use [Enoch] for people to think he was Wes but he's actually Christopher. The magic of he's the right age for that to be true and he was available and generous enough to come back and shoot all of this with us."
However, Annalise was not the only person who we saw dead in the finale of How to Get Away with Murder. After Annalise was acquitted on all counts and gave an impromptu press conference on the courthouse steps, Frank (Charlie Weber) is seen heading towards her with a gun. He kills Governor Birkhead (Laura Innes) to protect Annalise but is killed himself in the resulting chaos. As he is bleeding out in Bonnie's (Liza Weil) arms, Bonnie learns that she too has been shot. She also dies on the courthouse steps.
"If everyone was going to walk away with their life," Nowalk told TVLine, "then it wasn't at all going to feel like a good story or a true story. And then it really started with Frank. I understood that he would sacrifice himself for Annalise.
"Then, within that, we debated the Bonnie thing a lot in the writers' room...the only thing that made me feel OK about it was that her and Frank did really love each other, and it was like Romeo and Juliet for them to die together."
The How to Get Away With Murder series finale is streaming now on ABC and Hulu.
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