When Does How to Get Away with Murder Season 7 Come Out? Is It Renewed?

What is How to Get Away with Murder about?

Viola Davis is the reason to watch this show. As Annalise Keating, a criminal defense attorney and law professor who is as likely to destroy you as she is to save you, Davis delivers a performance so physically committed and emotionally unpredictable that she makes the show work even when the writers are clearly making things up as they go. And they often are.

Peter Nowalk created the series as part of Shonda Rhimes's ABC empire, and it carries the house style: propulsive pacing, cliffhangers stacked on cliffhangers, a sexual frankness that was still genuinely unusual for network television in 2014. The show introduces a group of law students pulled into Annalise's orbit and then into increasingly baroque criminal conspiracies, and it moves so fast that you rarely have time to notice how little the plotting actually holds together. That speed is both its great strength and its fundamental dishonesty. Each season poses a central mystery, and the answers are usually less satisfying than the questions.

Critics responded warmly at launch, and Davis won an Emmy in 2015 for the role, becoming the first Black woman to win Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama. Audiences were loyal through the middle seasons, though ratings declined as the show got deeper and wilder in its conspiracies. By the final season, the student characters who once felt fresh had been through so much trauma that their stories strained credibility even by soap opera standards.

What lingers is Davis in specific scenes, particularly the famous one in Season 2 where Annalise removes her wig and makeup in front of a mirror. That single moment has more weight than most of what surrounds it, and it points to the show the writers could have made if they had trusted their lead actress over their plot machine.

Created by Peter Nowalk

Is How to Get Away with Murder renewed or cancelled?

Why did How to Get Away with Murder end?

How to Get Away with Murder ended after six seasons because that was more or less the plan. Creator Pete Nowalk had been signaling for a while that the show was winding toward a conclusion, and ABC and Shonda Rhimes's Shondaland production company gave it a final season to wrap up the story rather than letting it limp along or cutting it off abruptly.

The ratings had been declining steadily over the years. The show launched in 2014 as a genuine phenomenon, part of ABC's dominant Thursday night block alongside Scandal, and it pulled in massive live numbers. By the later seasons, that audience had shrunk considerably, which is a common enough pattern for serialized network dramas with complicated mythology. Viewers who fall behind tend not to catch up, and the show's dense, twist-heavy plotting made casual viewing difficult. That kind of audience erosion makes it easier for everyone involved to agree that a graceful exit is better than an indefinite extension.

Nowalk ultimately got to end the show on his own terms, closing out Annalise Keating's story in a way that felt intentional rather than rushed. Six seasons and 90 episodes is a solid run for any network drama, and the finale in May 2020 gave the writers room to actually finish things. This was an ending, not a cancellation.

How to Get Away with Murder Season 7 Release Date

Best & worst episodes

How to Get Away with Murder seasons

How to Get Away with Murder trailer

Where to watch How to Get Away with Murder

HulustreamAmazon VideobuyApple TV StorebuyGoogle Play MoviesbuyFandango At Homebuy

How to Get Away with Murder latest news