It’s finally time for the winter finale of How to Get Away With Murder, and, despite the fact that the episodes leading up to here have gotten within a day of our flash-forward events, we still have a lot to answer before we’re able to finally see who shot Annalise. If you’re reading this before watching just to find out that answer, I’ll go ahead and warn you now that I’m not going to spoil the actual reveal. If you’re still here, then let’s take a look at the final episode of 2015, “What Did We Do?”
Since this is the winter finale, I’m going to go a little lighter on spoilers than usual, so know that going in.
The episode opens 14 hours before Annalise is shot as, after Caleb’s revelation in the previous episode, Conner is brought in to help deal with the possibility that Catherine actually murdered the parents. She runs away, leading to Annalise and the rest of the interns having to try and handle the situation. Wes wants to call Nate in, but Annalise just doesn’t want that to happen. Nate, meanwhile, has an interesting confrontation with Sinclair at the police station in which she, again, accuses him of killing his wife. This is the first one-on-one time that these two characters have had together, and there’s definitely some proper aggression present between the two. Knowing what happens to her later this night, though, we know that there won’t be more of this later on.
I’ve talked about it a lot in reviews this season, but I absolutely love what the writers have done to Asher this season. They have really built his character into something much more than the douchey parody that he began the series as, and the entire show is stronger for it. There’s a huge development with him in the first half of the episode that opens doors wide open for exploration through the remainder of the season (in addition to where it takes him in this one).
A lot of “What Did We Do?” had the characters on the show spending their time at the siblings’ house, and it added an incredible amount of tension to the episode since we know what ultimately happens at the end. We knew that Sinclair somehow ends up at the house, too, and the events that led to that were very fun to see. Sinclair has proven to be a multifaceted adversary through the first half of the season, and I hope that the writers have a solid plan in place for how to fill this hole once the show returns in a few months. I think that knowing she would die for so long may have helped make her more than she was, but, nevertheless, she was a fun addition to the show that I’ll miss.
Liza Weil had a great season last year as Bonnie, but she has been built into something truly special this year. I don’t know if it’ll earn her any award consideration (even though it should), but her performance in season 2 is very comparable to Viola Davis last year. I hope we get to see more and more of this caliber acting in the final six episodes.
As I said, I’m not going to venture into spoiler territory for this episode since it’s such a big one, but I do want to praise the writing for “What Did We Do?” While a lot of it is because of the foundation put into place in the first season, the stakes have felt higher all this year than they did last year. This was even more important for tonight’s winter finale, and things felt so much more tense knowing what would happen to Annalise than they did knowing what would happen to Sam. Each character was also written to perfection, and it was just an incredibly fun thing to get to see. The final reveal of Annalise’s shooter and the motivation was an actual surprise and not at all projected (at least to me), and I’m so happy with the progression this story has taken.
“What Did We Do?” managed to live up to all of the expectations that I had for it while still offering plenty of shocks, twists, and turns to keep How to Get Away With Murder one of the most interesting things on television today. This was one of the best episodes of the show so far, and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.
What did you think of “What Did We Do”? Did you enjoy the reveals we got? Let us know your thoughts in the comments down below, and tell us where you think the story is heading when it returns in 2016!
[Photo credit: Mitch Haaseth/ABC]
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