[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for the Will Trent Season 3 Episode 1, “I’m a Guest Here.”]
Will Trent returned with a bang for its Season 3 premiere Tuesday (January 7) night. The episode begins with what seems like an idyllic family day at the pool for Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin) and his fellow police pals but turns deadly when two of the officers are suddenly shot in the suburban street out front, with one’s wounds proving to be fatal.
Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn) puts Faith Mitchell (Iantha Richardson) in charge of the investigation, but the lead suspect in the case, gang boss Rafael Wexler (Antwayn Hopper), insists he will deal with no one else but Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez). Amanda then tracks Will down to his cozy hiding spot in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, where he’s been working as a private investigator for hire, and that’s when the throwing begins. Yes, throughout the episode, every one of Will’s reintroductions to the people he’s left behind at the end of Season 2 is met with a various item being tossed at him in retribution. Notably, this does not include Angie (Erika Christensen), who’s been relegated to neighborhood watch duty during her suspension. This includes a few swings from Rafael, who, it turns out, is someone Will grew up with while in the system.
Will is quickly convinced by Rafael that he’s being set up by the rival leader of the Grove Park Boys and sets out to investigate. First, he finds out the officer who died had a meeting on his schedule and decides to go to it. There, he meets the bright new Assistant District Attorney Marion Alba (Gina Rodriguez). He immediately vents to her about his dedication to the facts, even at the expense of the love of his own life, and she then reciprocates by revealing that she’s been investigating the gang and that the cop she was meeting with wanted immunity for his cooperation. All of this makes Rafael’s sudden confession to his murder even more eyebrow-raising… until Will learns that Rafael’s daughter has been kidnapped and is being held hostage. Dun dun dun….
TV Insider caught up with Ramón Rodríguez to talk about the Season 3 starter and get a sense of what might be ahead for Will and his new partner in crime-fighting and what will happen during the eventual reunion with Angie.
So why does everyone throw things at Will when he comes back to GBI for the Wexler case?
Ramón Rodríguez: We got a kick out of that. Liz [Heldens] and Dan [Thompson, the show’s co-creators,] had the idea. They said, “Hey, what if every time somebody that Will left and is upset with him, they throw things at him?” So there’s Faith with the stapler, Amanda with the rag, Nico [Cora Lu Tran] with, I think it was baloney or something; it’s just, everyone’s upset at him. Everyone’s pissed at him. He left without saying anything to anyone, and he kind of abandoned some friendships and deep relationships, and so they’re pissed. So we thought that’s a great way to really physicalize it and show how they feel about him and how upset they are with him.
And Will has his reasons… Whoever saw that end of Season 2 knows that’s a really hard decision to make, but ethically, morally, Will has his code. And I think he also felt this is something that was going to come out, about Angie and what happened with Crystal, and if it was going to be someone that arrested her, I think he was like, “I’ll do it.” This was going to come out. This was gonna become a big thing. And so we do get to talk about — that’s the nice thing is some of this gets talked about throughout the earlier episodes. We have scenes where they get to really hash out, “What happened? Why did you do it? And now what?”
Related‘Will Trent’ Star Ramon Rodriguez Teases ‘Intense’ Season 3
In this episode, we get to learn a little bit more about his history with Rafael Wexford. How much more are we going to learn about their relationship and Will’s past in general this season?
So Rafael Wexford is someone that Will goes way back with. This is sort of an era after the foster care and after being through the system, he’s out, and we learned that he ends up being taken in by Rafael and his grandma. That first scene where Will confronts Rafael in the first episode, we kind of learned quickly that they have this history. We’re gonna get into what exactly happens. Rafael is just involved in a lot of criminal activity that continues to get in the way of Will in various ways and in various cases, but we will explore what exactly happened because something big did happen in their childhood, where Rafael continuously holds this over Will’s head. And he’s like, “You owe me.” So we’ll get to explore what that is and what this debt is that Will owes to him. Because I think otherwise things might have gone differently if this is somebody that probably wasn’t in Will’s past.
We meet Gina Rodriguez as ADA. What does her character bring to the investigation and also the show in general? And could there be maybe a potential romance there?
So yeah, when Marion and Will meet, it’s interesting because they’re not [supposed to meet] — he’s there for a case. She’s not even aware that she’s there to meet him, essentially. And so they get to understand each other. Will ends up vomiting a bunch of his emotions of what he’s been through to her, which is so funny because he doesn’t even know this woman. But I think the thing that resonates for both of them — and at least I know from Will ’cause he’s very upset — he’s just like, “Doesn’t anybody care about truth and facts? Does that not matter?” And for Will, that’s a very deep code. That’s something that is like a pillar for him. And I think that does resonate for Marion. It’s something that she responds to, and that is something that maybe she also abides by. And so they end up connecting on that kind of level of like, “There’s a way to do things, the right thing. Truth and facts do matter.” And she ends up becoming somebody that I think Will unexpectedly sees.
She’s a new person for him in so many ways. The way she treats him, the way she looks at him, she doesn’t judge him. It’s not toxic. It’s like the opposite of what Angie was in his life, in many ways. [Angie] was wonderful in certain aspects, but yet they had such trauma, and they would trigger each other. [Will and Marion] do end up having a deeper connection outside of just professionally, and it’s a really beautiful thing to watch them sort of be there for each other through a lot of hard things throughout the season. I think for Will, it’s really refreshing to be in something healthy. I mean, we’ve only had Angie. We had Cricket for one episode that had a lot of potential, but that ended up blowing up, literally.
And then we have Marion, which I think shows a lot of hope and potential of what something healthy could look like. And I think for Will, that’s a really exciting thing because he’s grasped onto this concept of family since he’s never had it. And that’s what that dining table represented. So the question is, “Can that still happen for him?” That’s a big question.
Will Trent, Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC
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