There might have been a couple of happy moments in How to Get Away with Murder‘s “Ask Him About Stella” — Laurel gets to see her baby! Connor and Oliver’s engagement is back on! — but amidst those were, of course, a few crazy moments.
But was the biggest OMG moment the truth about what happened to Stella? Or was it one of two confrontations, one involving blackmail and the other a demand to know how two people knew each other? Or was it the moment that set up the crossover with Scandal?
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The Truth About Stella
Finding out what really happened the night of Stella’s death wasn’t really that surprising. Isaac revealed to Annalise that contrary to what he’d told her earlier in the episode, he hadn’t been sober 23 years before his recent relapse and Stella had gotten into his stash of K-pex and taken everything he had the night of her death. Not wanting Jacqueline to know the truth, after failing to resuscitate her, he’d staged the scene and written the text on his daughter’s phone. That explained the 15 minutes it took him to call the police.
What was surprising was that this truth came out as soon as it did. However, with everything else going on, it did make sense to, in a way, get that out of the way and have it out in the open — and for Annalise to call Jacqueline and essentially leave her to deal with Isaac — before the upcoming Scandal crossover, rather than, perhaps, leave it as a loose end to deal with after.
Bonnie Took a Big Risk
When Bonnie failed to get the ADA to drop the investigation against Isaac — he didn’t buy her smiles and figured out she was working for Annalise — she went straight to Denver and blackmailed him by threatening to release the recordings of their conversations if anything happened to her. Yes, the investigation into Isaac was dropped, but Bonnie was left worried about her life, making sure her gun was accessible and telling Frank she wanted him to move back in.
Could Bonnie have just set herself up to be part of a future episode’s biggest OMG moment? It seems so and it seems like she thinks it’s a strong possibility, given her hesitation before confronting Denver and her fear while calling Frank.
Can Laurel’s Mother Be Trusted?
Maybe? It would have really been shocking if she had been working with Jorge and not just calling him every day to convince him to let Laurel visit her baby without him there — let’s assume she was telling the truth about that — given their history.
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But we still don’t know why she met with Wes or even how she even knew him, and that was what Frank was determined to find out in “Ask Him About Stella.” In fact, when his digging got him nowhere — there was nothing in her phone records, bills, any of it — he actually went to her and asked her to her face how she knew Christophe. We don’t know yet if that’ll actually work and give him the answers he’s looking for, but did you expect him to just walk up to her on the street and ask? I didn’t.
How to … Set up a Crossover
Annalise’s class action had to be leading up to something big, given the fact that it was a big storyline at the same time as everything else going on, and what better way to accomplish that than by setting up the upcoming HTGAWM/Scandal crossover?
After the class action was moved to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and dismissed, Michaela refused to just give up and instead decided that they needed to get the Supreme Court to hear it. And the only way to do that was to know someone who has influence and can fix problems: Olivia Pope.
Knowing the crossover is coming didn’t make that moment, of Annalise walking into the lecture hall where Olivia Pope was teaching “How to Survive a Scandal,” any less surprising. There needed to be a big enough reason for these two shows to cross over and these two women to meet, and that’s exactly what happened in this episode.
And while, looking back, the episode did a pretty good job of tying up some loose ends and setting up what’s to come for some characters — the investigation into Isaac, Bonnie’s decision to blackmail Denver, Connor’s decision to return to law school and Laurel finally meeting her baby — before the crossover, it didn’t heavily foreshadow that ending either, which was why it worked and why it was so unexpected.
What do you think the biggest OMG moment was from this episode? Did you expect it to set up the crossover in its final scene?
How to Get Away with Murder season 4 airs Thursdays at 10/9c on ABC. Want more news? Like our Facebook page.
(Image courtesy of ABC)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
If it’s on TV — especially if it’s a procedural or superhero show — chances are Meredith watches it. She has a love for all things fiction, starting from a young age with ER and The X-Files on the small screen and the Nancy Drew books. Arrow kicked off the Arrowverse and her true passion for all things heroes. She’s enjoyed getting into the minds of serial killers since Criminal Minds, so it should be no surprise that her latest obsession is Prodigal Son.
