Watching Season 1 of ABC's newest Shonda Rhimes hit How To Get Away With Murder often feels like playing a months-long game of Clue with a grand chessmaster who's always at least five steps ahead of you. No, scratch that. It feels like playing two months-long games of Clue with a grand chessmaster who's always at least ten steps ahead of you. Those who thought HTGAWM would be simple whodunnit obviously don't know Shonda Rhimes very well, because she gave us two murders for the price of one: the mysterious slaying of college student Lila Stangard and the brutal killing of Professor Annalise Keating's husband Sam. And while the former case is still unsolved, we finally got the answers to the latter in the nail-biting midseason finale, "Kill Me, Kill Me, Kill Me."
So who was Sam's murderer? Was it Sam's jilted crush Bonnie? Bearded creepster Frank? Annalise herself? And how did the Keating Four (Wes, Connor, Michaela, and Laurel) get involved? And where was Annalise's fifth intern, Asher, during all of this? (Having a late-night booty call with the recently-fired Bonnie, that's where.) A little foggy on the details two months after the midseason finale? Never you fear, I've assembled everything we learned about the murder of Sam Keating right here.
And no, it wasn't Ms. Scarlet in the conservatory with the wrench.
Victim: Sam Keating
Annalise's philandering husband, a person of interest in the death of Lila Stangard. Annalise found out Sam had been having an affair with the dead girl when she found dic pics from him on her phone. Awwkwarrrrrd. Rebecca Sutter, the state's prime suspect in Lila's case, breaks into the Keatings' apartment to get evidence off of Sam's laptop. That's when things go south.
Killer #1: Michaela Pratt
Rebecca barricades herself in the bedroom as an enraged Sam tries to break the door down. Wes, Conor, Michaela, and Laurel try to stop him. In the ensuing struggle, Michaela accidentally sends the older man sailing over the balcony, where he plummets to the ground floor.
Room: Hall
Thud. The kids thought Sam was dead from his fall, but — just like any good horror movie villain — he's not down for the count quite yet. He gasps back to life, only to be dispatched for good by...
Killer #2: Wes Gibbins
Annalise's naïve protege, the soft-spoken kid the other students nicknamed "Wait List" and who has a crush on possible murderess Rebecca. He bashes Sam's skull in to prevent him from...
Motive: Saving Rebecca
...killing his girlfriend. Rebecca had unwisely crouched over Sam's not-dead-yet body, so he started choking her when he woke up.
Weapon: Trophy
Not the trophy that star Viola Davis just won from the Screen Actors Guild for her performance in HTGAWM, thus becoming only the third woman of color to win the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series after Sandra Oh and Chandra Wilson in 2005 and 2006, respectively, for their performances in another Shonda Rhimes production, Grey's Anatomy. No, the blunt object Wes used to finish Sam off for good was the trophy depicting Lady Justice, the "immunity idol" the students could win to get out of exams. Michaela had brought it to Annalise's office/apartment to turn it in after stealing it from Asher.
Disposal: Dumpster
The kids had quite the mess on their hands what with a dead body and a blood-spattered trophy. The rolled Sam's corpse up in Annalise's rug and carried him into the woods, where they burned it to incinerate any of their own DNA that might have been transferred to the body. They then hacked Sam up into little pieces, stuffed him in trash bags, and threw those bags into a dumpster. Somewhere during this process, Michaela lost her wedding ring. Is it in a trash bag? In the woods? In Annalise's living room?
Accomplice: Annalise Keating
In an episode-ending flashback, it was revealed that when Wes returned to the scene of the crime to retrieve the murder weapon, he found Annalise sitting at her desk, staring at her husband's dead body. So everything we'd seen her do during the midseason finale after Sam's murder (sleeping with Nate, leaving Sam an apologetic voicemail) had been done with full knowledge that her husband was dead. And she knows that Wes was involved. Heck, she probably gave him all the instructions of how to dispose of his body!
What's going to happen in the second half of Season 1? Will Wes get arrested for Sam's murder? Will we ever find out who actually killed Lila? Could this show get any more addictive??
Images: Mitchell Haaseth/ABC; whygremlin, howtogetawaywithmurderx (3), thosedamnwerewolves (2), fyrebeccasutter, oliverconor/tumblr
