‘How to Get Away With Murder’ Victim Speaks Out on His Shocking Death (SPOILERS)

SPOILER ALERT: Do not read ahead if you have not watched the midseason finale of “How to Get Away With Murder,” titled “Who’s Dead?” which aired on Thursday, Nov. 17.

After eight episodes of guessing who’s #UnderTheSheet, the unlucky victim on “How to Get Away With Murder” was revealed. This week’s midseason finale — aptly titled “Who’s Dead?”– answered exactly that.

So who’s dead? Wes is dead.

The shocking reveal came at the end of the episode, and came as a huge surprise to this writer — and likely to many “How to Get Away With Murder” viewers. With each episode this season revealing who is not dead, there were only a few options for who could be under the sheet, and while Wes (Alfred Enoch) was technically an option, his night-of-the-fire storyline was a bit murky in terms of the timeline, so most fans had their bets on Frank (Charlie Weber), Nate (Billy Brown), or Connor (Jack Falahee).

Throughout the episode, the DA (Milauna Jackson) was investigating Annalise (Viola Davis), and part of that investigation trailed back to Rebecca‘s (Katie Findlay) body being found in the woods. The detectives asked Wes about Rebecca, since he was dating her at the time she died. After Wes is in the interrogation room, Annalise calls him and tells him to come to her house immediately for something important. She also calls the rest of the group and asks them the same, but the only people that ended up coming to the house were Laurel (Karla Souza) and Nate — and apparently Wes, though the viewer did not see that.

Moments after Laurel and Nate walk into Annalise’s house, a giant explosion goes off, starting the massive house fire. At this point, the viewer knows that Laurel turns up in the hospital, so it’s a safe assumption that Nate is the one under the sheet. But then the scene shifts away from Annalise’s house, and someone is seen walking into the forensics room and it’s Nate — well and alive.

At that point, the viewer was hit with the hard realization that it was Wes under the sheet, and then his half-burned face was revealed.

As if that wasn’t enough of a shock, Nate then visited Annalise in jail and dropped a bombshell: Wes was already dead at the time of the fire.

Here, Alfred Enoch, who plays Wes, talks to Variety about his big on-screen death.

When did you find out that you would be killed off?

Pete [Nowalk] told me around the seventh episode, so about a month and a half ago. I got a call from his assistant being like, “Hey can you come and talk to Pete?” And I was like, “This is it.” We were all in this state of uncertainty and nervous excitement. We were all anxious to find out. He told me and I went back and told everyone else — I told Pete that I’ve got to tell everyone else and he was like, “Of course you do.” We had time to let the shock set in.

What was your reaction? Did you have any theories that it would be Wes, or were you completely shocked?

In the couple of days leading up to it, I thought it could be Wes. Wes would be a good person to kill because it would be surprising, but also opens up the stories in many ways and affects so many characters. So I had kind of thought it could be him, but then Aja [Naomi King] gave me a bunch of reasons why it couldn’t be Wes and she steered me away.

Did things change on set, once everyone found out you were being killed off?

It’s something that we’ve been dealing with awhile and known for about a month and a half, and it’s something we had to deal with first season when Rebecca died. It’s a difficult thing to lose one in the family.

Pete Nowalk told Variety that Wes will still be in the back-half of the season, since the big mystery will be all about who killed Wes. Do you know how much we will see you?

I don’t know. I just know I’m going to be in it. How exactly that will pan out and how much of the story is onward from the night of the fire and how much is backward from what happened that night is episode-to-episode. With each script, I’m just surprised episode-to-episode with what happens.

If the show is renewed for Season 4, do you know if you’ll still be a series regular? Or will you just be in minor flashback scenes?

I genuinely know nothing about that.

What do you think happened to Wes? Did someone kill him? Who killed him? Did he kill himself?

I do not think he killed himself. That had not even crossed my mind. I guess he’s got a lot of problems in his life and people who present a threat to him — potentially Frank, potentially Charles Mahoney. He obviously matters to Annalise so [him being killed] might not have anything to do with him. This is all entirely speculative, and I’m waiting to see where they go with that. I think that there are a lot of things that could come out of the blue. I kind of gave up on speculating what happens on the show [laughing].

I think most fans are guessing that Wes is the father to Laurel’s baby. What can you say about that?

I can say that it will become apparent in the first episode back. Beyond that, I wouldn’t want to ruin that for anyone. But his relationship with Laurel is very important — it’s developed over the course of the three seasons — she’s always been there for him when he had a problem and had to deal with it, she’s the one helping him through it and supporting it.

Laurel is obviously going to have a tough time dealing with Wes’ death, but how is the Keating Five going to go on from this? Now it’s the Keating Four!

Well, I’m not there, so it’s fundamentally, it’s not the Keating Five — so there’s a start! [Laughing] The stakes have always been high, but now one of them ended up dead, so that seems to bring up the stakes yet again. Even though there are various tensions among the group, they are still a group, whether you like it or not. They’re bonded in blood. They’ve got to deal with losing someone who they were either close to or had problems with so there’s no closure there. It feels like that would be a shadow that looms large.

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