‘How To Get Away With Murder’ Season 6 theories: How is Wes still alive, and how will his return affect others?
Mid-season breaks of long-running shows are always hard on the audience, especially when they leave you hanging with a shocking revelation right at the very end.
'HTGAWM' is no different. Every season, when they are on a break, they leave us with some cliffhanging tension.
However, season 6 outdid all the previous ones when we saw a glimpse of Wes in a flashforward of Annalise’s funeral (or so we are suspecting). This is perhaps the biggest and the most jaw-dropping scene the show has left us with on its fall finale. And we cannot stop thinking why and how could that be even possible.
So, before we start speculating, here's a quick recap: Wes Gibbons, who turned out to be our main protagonist since season 1, dies a horrific death in season 3. And then, suddenly, at the ending scene of season 6 fall finale, he appears like a ghost. His character had been driving the entire plot arc for three consecutive seasons and whatever followed was some kind of an after-effect to his death.
Whether it was Laurel avenging her boyfriend’s death from her father, the others living in constant fear, or Annalise trying hard to protect her people, everything that ensued was because Wes was involved in the biggest cover-up of Annalise and K5’s lives. And when such a character is gone from the equation, there are bound to be serious repercussions.
But that’s not what’s been bothering us. Not that we didn’t miss Wes over the last three seasons. He is the sweetest and most lovable of all and his death was hard for all of us to take in. However, we managed to get over it as people got away with it. After all, the show is about ‘getting away with murder’. While we were busy focusing on the other situations that have been upturning everyone’s lives, especially Annalise’s, Wes just appears out of thin air.
And the first thought that hits our mind, after the brief moment of shock and awe, is, ‘how’?
Fans of the show have gone berserk after this truly remarkable twist.
So, we decided to break it down and look at all the possibilities.
#1: Maybe Wes didn’t die after all. Yes, we did see a charred body, half-burned face, et al, but that can mean a lot of things. Some third-degree burn victims, though rare, do manage to survive, but with great difficulties. So, it is possible that Wes managed to live through his accident and then stayed in hiding for years, perhaps healing and waiting for the right moment. But maybe, he was a little late and ended up at Annalise’s funeral.
#2: What if Wes was never injured in the fire? When Dominick (Jorge’s right-hand man and Laurel’s friend) renders Wes unconscious and then sets fire to the house, we see that Wes is trapped in the basement. Now, there are two ways things could have gone from here. One, Wes could have regained consciousness and managed to escape somehow. But that will leave us with the question of how his body would magically appear at the morgue. So, the second possibility is that Dominick might have helped save Wes. Now, Dominick maybe Jorge’s man but he has a love interest in Laurel and perhaps was helping them both and earn some good karma after all. So, he could have saved Wes, making him appear dead enough to get onto the good books of Jorge and then help Wes escape.
But whichever of the above is true, it still does not negate the fact that, for the last two and a half seasons, we have been living a lie. Or so we think.
Wes’s appearance in the fall finale episode changes everything that we knew, saw, or understood.
Also, if Wes can come back from the dead, so can Asher, or any of the other characters that we had loved and lost. We have started to believe that the writers have been leading us down the primrose path and nothing we have seen is true. Creatively speaking, this could be the most incredible plot twist of the entire show, across six seasons.
‘How To Get Away With Murder’ Season 6 part two returns in April 2020.