How to Get Away with Murder Reaction: Season 1's Wild Fingernail Twist, Pregnancy Bombshell and That Shocking Bonfire Killing

Watching episodes 7, 8 and 9 of How to Get Away with Murder back to back gave us one of the biggest surprises of the whole run so far, and it all builds toward Bonnie showing up at Sam's house at the very end of episode 9 in a moment that genuinely got someone up out of the chair.

For anyone who has not caught up, these episodes matter because they finally answer who got Laya pregnant, they escalate the courtroom fight over exhuming her body into a battle of hired experts, and they end with Sam dead and the whole group of students scrambling to cover it up.

The fake fingernail evidence in Griffin and Rebecca's trial falls apart under cross examination

Griffin's lawyer Mr. Keegan pushes for a second autopsy after his expert claims to spot fingernail puncture wounds on Laya's neck that were supposedly overlooked in the first exam, and Keating fights the exhumation motion at every turn. We watched the defense expert testify that the size, shape and curvature of the marks point to "someone with small hands," only for Keating to reveal an internal DA report questioning his methods in an unrelated case, the Holden case, forcing him to admit under oath that such a report exists. Keating then gets the original medical examiner to backtrack from his own findings, first suggesting the marks might be insect bites, then insisting a species of insect "thrives in water based environments" once pressed on the fact that Laya's body was in a water tank for days, a moment that had us laughing out loud at how flimsy the theory sounded.

A leaked detective statement about drugs and sex triggers a gag order fight between the lawyers

The case takes a nasty turn when a letter, described in court as a direct quote from the detective's statement in discovery, reveals O'Reilly and Sutter had sexual intercourse while high on cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines. Keating argues the prosecution leaked the gossip to the press specifically to shame her client as a promiscuous woman while protecting the "devout born again Christian" quarterback's image, telling the court "it's my client's face smeared across the front page, not Mr. O'Reilly." The judge grants an immediate gag order, but it does not last, since Rebecca later gives an interview to a journalist about sleeping with Griffin, which the prosecution calls a flagrant violation used to blow up a plea deal Wendy Parks had reportedly worked out with Keegan that would have let Griffin walk in exchange for a conviction against Rebecca.

Laya was six weeks pregnant when she died, and Sam is revealed to have known and lied about it

The investigation takes its biggest turn when we learn Laya was six weeks pregnant, something missed in the first autopsy because there was no sign of sexual trauma so the uterus was never inspected. Annalise tells Frank not to share this with Wes for Rebecca's benefit, but Frank immediately tells him anyway, explaining he learned his lesson about keeping secrets from Wes. It later comes out that Sam knew about the pregnancy and lied about sleeping with Laya, and the students start trying to pull his hair for a DNA sample to test against the baby.

The Thomas family sleepwalking murder case turns into a father hiding an affair with his own son's love

In the unrelated murder case the students work on this week, Gretchen Thomas is accused of killing her nanny while supposedly sleepwalking after taking a prescription sleeping pill, with security footage showing her dragging the nanny's bloody body through the house. During cross examination, Keating reveals that Gretchen's husband was prescribed a specific antibiotic for a sexually transmitted infection, the same one their son Cody had been treated for after reporting painful urination, exposing that both father and son had been sleeping with the nanny. Keating lays out that the husband got his drug type A wife drunk that night, knowing she would try to clean up any mess he left behind, and that the blame belongs to him, not his wife. Keating tells him directly, "That burn you feel right now is not because of what I did. It's because of what he did."

Annalise fires Frank after learning he covered for Sam meeting Laya the night she died

Frank reveals he actually met Laya the night she was killed, information he had been sitting on and initially tried to keep from Annalise out of loyalty to Sam, telling Wes it would only devastate her. When Annalise finds out Frank knew about Sam and Laya's connection and said nothing, she fires him on the spot.

Sam accuses Annalise of using him and Annalise accuses him of murder

The tension between Sam and Annalise boils over in the car when Annalise accuses him of being her "window dressing," the black woman on his arm so he could hide, and says that is why she believes he killed Laya. Sam lashes out, telling her she is nothing but "a piece of ass" to him and that he knew she'd sleep with him the day they met. It is a genuinely toxic exchange that ends with Sam grabbing her and Annalise daring him to kill her.

Michaela and Laurel accidentally kill Sam with a trophy while trying to protect Rebecca

Rebecca breaks into Sam and Annalise's house to steal information off his computer, and when Sam finds her there with Wes, Connor, Michaela and Laurel also present, a struggle breaks out. Wes grabs Bonnie's award trophy and hits Sam with it, but when Sam gets back up and comes at Laurel, Michaela shoves him over the railing and he dies. The group spends the rest of the two episodes trying to cover it up, debating whether to bury or burn the body, ultimately deciding to use the bonfire that many students are attending that night as both an alibi and a way to destroy evidence and DNA. Frank shows up uninvited partway through and gets pulled into the cover up as well.

Bonnie's late reveal recontextualizes the voicemail she left pretending to search for Sam

After the body is disposed of, Annalise's colleague Bonnie leaves a voicemail acting worried that Sam is not answering his phone, appearing to build cover for his disappearance. It is only at the very end of episode 9 that Bonnie is shown to have been present at the house the whole time, meaning she already knew what happened and was helping construct the alibi rather than genuinely searching for him, a reveal we did not see coming.

Our overall verdict on these three episodes

We came away really enjoying this stretch of the show, calling it "a lot of fun" despite finding some of the murder cover up material a little taxing to track. The fingernail to insect bite courtroom back and forth got big laughs, the Thomas family reveal caught us completely off guard, and the ending left us stunned, too stunned in one case to stay seated through the credits. Watching the final twist, the reaction was: "That's the craziest twist I've seen in all of Shonda Rhymes."

Do you think Bonnie was in on Sam's murder cover up from the very start, or did she stumble onto it after the fact?