How to Get Away with Murder

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Research record

How to Get Away with Murder · Staged record CTL-W-1318 · Entity Depth Program · 705 words · Evidence grade: VERIFIED (canonical master, carried unchanged) · Researched 2026-10-25

How to Get Away with Murder premiered on ABC on September 25, 2014, and ran for six seasons and ninety episodes, concluding on May 14, 2020. It was created by Peter Nowalk and produced by Shondaland with ABC Studios; the CTL record's verification rests on ABC's own announcement, republished by TVWeek on July 11, 2019, that the series would end with a sixth and final season. That announcement names the production as an ABC Studios and Shondaland production created and executive produced by Nowalk, and it lists the core cast as the show's identity: Viola Davis as Annalise Keating, Billy Brown as Nate Lahey, Aja Naomi King as Michaela Pratt, and Karla Souza as Laurel Castillo.

The premise folded a law-school classroom into a murder plot. Annalise Keating, a criminal defense attorney and professor at the fictional Middleton University, selected five students — the Keating 5 — to work at her firm, and the series braided her casework with the killings the group committed and concealed together. The five were Wes Gibbins, played by Alfred Enoch; Connor Walsh; Michaela Pratt; Asher Millstone; and Laurel Castillo. Annalise's employees Frank Delfino and Bonnie Winterbottom completed the machine: every season opened a new mystery while the cover-up from the last one tightened. The graph records the characters as the work's featured figures — Annalise Keating, Wes Gibbins, Michaela Pratt, Laurel Castillo, and Nate Lahey — which matches how the show was built and sold, as a character engine around its professor.

The series' historical weight sits on Davis's performance and what it won. Her portrayal of Annalise Keating earned her the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, making her the first Black woman to win that category, along with two Screen Actors Guild Awards and an NAACP Image Award; the series itself won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series. ABC programmed it as the capstone of its Thursday-night Shondaland block, and in 2018 it crossed over with Scandal — the episode airing March 1, 2018 sent Annalise's class-action case toward the Supreme Court with Olivia Pope at her side — an event that treated the two Shondaland heroines as a shared television universe. Nowalk kept the episode count at fifteen per season under the terms of Davis's deal, which gave the series its compressed, twist-driven shape across all six years.

The production was a Shondaland property in the full sense of that brand: ABC Studios produced with Shondaland and Nowalk Entertainment, and ABC scheduled the series as the closing hour of its Thursday-night Shondaland block, the slot that made its title a catchphrase in the culture. Nowalk's structure held across all ninety episodes: a present-tense case or crisis braided against the group's accumulating secrets, with the classroom scenes — Annalise Socratic, exacting, and performing control she did not feel — supplying the series' signature set piece. Fifteen episodes a season, under the terms of Davis's deal, kept the seasons short enough that the plotting never idled.

The historical marker remains Davis herself. Annalise Keating was written as a brilliant defense attorney whose appetites and damage were never softened for likability, and Davis played her at full voltage for six seasons. The industry record followed: the Emmy that made her the first Black woman to win Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, an NAACP Image Award, and the series' own GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series. The March 2018 crossover with Scandal — Annalise's class-action case carried toward the Supreme Court alongside Olivia Pope — treated her as what she had become: a franchise figure in her own right, owed a summit meeting with the other defining Shondaland heroine.

When ABC announced the final season in July 2019, the network was closing one of the defining network dramas of the 2010s: a legal thriller fronted by a Black woman in her fifties, unsoftened in its portrait of her ambition, damage, and desire, and structured so that the classroom itself became a crime scene. CTL catalogs the series as a 2014 ABC television work created by Peter Nowalk for Shondaland and ABC Studios, and holds its graph edges on the characters through whom its story ran.

Sources for this record

• ABC's 'How to Get Away with Murder' Concludes with a Killer Sixth Season — TVWeek, carrying the ABC press release
  Claims supported: ABC announcement of July 11, 2019 that the series concludes with a sixth season; produced by ABC Studios and Shondaland; created and executive produced by Peter Nowalk; cast named: Viola Davis (Annalise Keating), Billy Brown (Nate Lahey), Aja Naomi King (Michaela Pratt), Karla Souza (Laurel Castillo).
• How to Get Away with Murder — Wikipedia
  Claims supported: Premiered September 25, 2014; six seasons, 90 episodes, concluding May 14, 2020; premise at Middleton University; the Keating 5 (Wes Gibbins/Alfred Enoch, Connor Walsh/Jack Falahee, Michaela Pratt, Asher Millstone/Matt McGorry, Laurel Castillo) and employees Frank Delfino and Bonnie Winterbottom; Davis's Emmy made her the first Black woman to win Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, with two SAG Awards and an NAACP Image Award; series won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series; Scandal crossover aired March 1, 2018; fifteen episodes per season under Davis's deal.

Citations

Published October 25, 2026, from the head-verified staged record in the Entity Depth Program (Batches 001–003). Source: CultureTechLens