WARNING: The following article contains MAJOR spoilers for the fall finale of Season 5 of How To Get Away With Murder. Do not read if you have not watched the episode or continue to read ahead at your own risk.
At long last, longtime fans of How To Get Away With Murder finally got to see the wedding between two beloved characters but it didn’t come without a bloody murder and one hell of a shocking reveal.
Let’s just dive right into the biggest question we all wanted to be answered: #WhoDiedAtTheWedding?
Well, before that I’d like to remind everyone what I predicted in last week’s recap:
But how did we get here?
24 hours before the wedding, Nate (Billy Brown) asked Bonnie for some intel from Miller to help Nate solve the mystery surrounding his dad’s death. She does so but Miller goes into a rant about how Annalise (Viola Davis) is bad for Bonnie and is using Bonnie’s “issues” to take advantage of her. Bonnie did not take that well and goes to the wedding alone.
Michaela (Aja Naomi King) interrupts a ‘private moment’ between Connor and Oliver (aka Coliver) to get Olly to hack the warden’s records to see if anything weird pops up. She digs and discovers that the warden had received a call from an unlisted number on the day Nate Sr. died. She tells this to Nate, who has a PI investigate. At the wedding, Nate gets the call from the PI saying the call was traced back to a pay phone and in his email was a photo of Miller at the payphone.
Despite their fight earlier, Miller goes to the wedding to talk to Bonnie. However, she is still upset and pieced together the times he mentioned his contact at the governor’s office and at the hospital. She accuses him of putting the hit on Nate Sr. and she hasn’t even seen the photo Nate was sent yet.
Miller was going to head home but then sets out to look for Bonnie again, which turns out to be a deadly decision. Nate confronts Miller about why he ordered his father’s murder, but Miller denies he did so. Nate is fueled by rage, grief, and anger at this point and promises to make Miller feel the pain his father felt while in prison. Nate punches his former boss over and over and over again to the point of near death. Yet he doesn’t deliver the killer, final punch which would end Miller’s life for good.
You can see the pain on Nate’s face, which quickly turns to regret once he realizes what he’s done. Before I continue, I want to acknowledge Billy Brown’s performance in this episode – from the great acting to the on-point facial expressions during this scene. Wow.
After being informed by Asher that Nate and Miller were talking outside, Bonnie heads out to see a trail of blood leading up to her near-dead boyfriend’s body as well as a shaken and distraught Nate. He beckons Bonnie over to show her the photo and rambles “He hurt my pops” repeatedly, reminding viewers of Nate Sr’s state earlier in the season.
We learned where everyone else was also: Oliver was on a FaceTime call with his dad, baby Christopher was in the snow because Bonnie was babysitting him, and Asher was getting frisky with Connor’s mom because…. he wanted to? Okay, that one was weird.
So the other big mystery of the episode surrounded the true identity of Gabriel Maddox (Rome Flynn); boy, I did not see this one coming at all. Gabriel is Sam’s son from his first wife, whom he cheated on with Annalise. Frank (Charlie Weber) breaks into Gabriel’s apartment and finds a birth certificate stating Vivian Maddox and Sam Keating are his parents. Frank goes to the wedding and tells Annalise; she slaps him.
Remember, Annalise drank an entire bottle of Vodka at the wedding and even needed help from Gabriel after dropping her purse. When Annalise gets home, she collapses on the floor but then hears the floor creaking. Gabriel steps out from the shadows in a truly creepy scene as Annalise tells him she knows exactly who he is. The episode ends as we see Gabe’s face morph into Sam’s.
Episode Notes:
- Questions still remain after the finale, like how did Frank even know who Gabriel was before anyone else? Also, who is “The One” that has called Frank during this first half of the season?
- Why did Frank say, “Gabriel is Annalise’s worst nightmare”? I don’t see it as that big of a deal just yet.
- Did anyone else think Gabriel and Annalise were going to kiss in that church scene? LOL
- What exactly does Gabriel want from Annalise? To kill her? Revenge? It sounds like his mom became an alcoholic because of Sam’s affair.
What did you think of the fall finale? Were your predictions right?
How To Get Away With Murder returns to ABC in the new year.