These Gabriel Maddox Clues Could Help You Solve The Big New 'HTGAWM' Mystery

Longtime How To Get Away With Murder viewers know that nothing’s really done on this show, and few people are ever really dead. Just as Season 4 was settling, wafting away like a salty breeze — BAM. The show dropped another bomb and will make us all wait until next season to figure it out. That bomb is handsome and charming, but a bomb nonetheless. These clues about How To Get Away With Murder's Gabriel Maddox could explain how exactly this prospective college student is about to shake things up on the show.

Everything was going just fine — for once — before Gabriel showed up in the season finale. Laurel got her baby back, and her father was arrested. She probably killed her mother (judging by the scratches all over Laurel’s arms in the finale), but hey — Laurel’s finally coming out the other side of a very long, very arduous (for viewers, I mean) ordeal. Connor was applying to law school again, and he and Oliver are still getting married. Michaela and Asher are broken up because she cheated on him, but Asher has a new place and a new lease on life. Bonnie is miserable (but like, the good kind, because that’s the only emotion she has), but her happy-sadness is soon to be broken, because when Frank showed up to take a Middleton College tour for the “hitman-makes-good” storyline the show is clearly planning, he saw a kid named Gabriel Maddox flashing his megawatt smile.

Gabriel Maddox, you say? Frank tells someone on the phone, “Hey, looks like the good times didn’t last too long. Her kid’s here.” Here’s what we know about that kid so far, and what those details could mean:

Gabriel Could Be Bonnie’s Son

D.A. Denver (dearly departed, thankfully) had files on all of Annalise’s associates, and when Nate was snooping through everyone’s files, he saw a note in Bonnie’s file that said “child still alive!” This is important, because, when Bonnie was young, her father pimped her out to men that would abuse and rape her. She became pregnant at 15 and had a baby, and Bonnie’s father told Bonnie that the baby died. Uh, but what if that baby didn’t die, and he’s standing right in front of us? This is the strongest case for Gabriel’s origins, which means that it will probably get destroyed. How To Get Away With Murder showrunner Pete Nowalk told TVGuide that Gabriel is “mid-20s. He’s our classic law student age,” which means that the timeline works out. If Gabriel is 25 and Bonnie is about 40, it all makes sense.

The Reveal Will Be Parsed Out Slowly

Nowalk also told TVGuide that we don’t know much about Gabriel on purpose, and we won’t know where he came from for a while. “My instinct right now is it's going to be a little bit of a mystery. Won't be too long, but I think, you know, Frank seems to know who he is,” he said. “But I don't know who else does on the show. And I think it's going to be really fun to slowly — I want people to get to know Gabriel before we know his origins.” Oh, so we’ll fall in love with him and then find out he’s the son of Satan or something? Thanks, Nowalk.

That “Her” Thing Is Important

On the phone with whoever, Frank said, “Her kid is here.” That means that wherever Gabriel came from, it has to do with one of the women on the show. Is it Bonnie’s? (I think so.) Is it Annalise's? (Probably not, since that baby would be about ten years younger than Gabriel.) I don’t know! But it’s important. Even Nowalk said so. “We really like to play with the pronouns here. Obviously, Gabriel has a mother, and Frank knows of that mother or knows the mother,” he said to TVGuide. “So that is a huge mystery, and we're going to be giving hints about it all next season.”

All next season? Well, I guess we’ve found How To Get Away With Murder's next season-long mystery. And if he's anything like all the others, Gabriel will certainly be dredging up secrets from the past, which some would probably like to stay buried forever.