The most remarkable thing about ABC’s police procedural show Will Trent is how easily it covers light subject matters and then can quickly switch to something extremely serious and intense, and this week’s season 3 episode 11 is a testament to this. The episode happens to be one of the most intense ever produced in the series, as it is the very protagonist, Will Trent, who happens to be under investigation this time. But unlike other possible presentations of such a situation, it is not pesky police officers and a false investigation that bother the protagonist, it is his guilt instead that picks at him with every passing minute, for Will knows that he has made a grave mistake.
Spoiler Alert
Why is Will covered in blood all over?
Season 3 episode 11 begins with a shocking image of GBI Special Agent Will Trent looking down at his hands, which are completely covered in blood, with some smears on his face and shirt as well. As Will inattentively wipes the blood off his hands with a piece of cloth, he is asked by the APD chief, Captain Heller, to hand in his service gun. Both this order and the fact that the men are sitting inside one of the interrogation rooms at the police station make it clear that Will is being temporarily suspended from the service for something he has done. He is then handed a Miranda waiver form, which is typically given to suspected criminals during their arrest, meaning that Will Trent himself is apparently accused of having committed some crime in this episode.
Despite the situation, Captain Heller is understanding enough to read Will the contents of the form, since the protagonist’s trouble with reading due to his dyslexia is a known fact in the police department by now. But Will simply cannot concentrate, for his mind is still trying to process the events from the day, and he is still trying to deal with the emotional consequences of his actions. Heller’s voice fades away as a clicking noise takes over Will’s mind, and the image of a keychain dangling inside a car and the radiator light blinking distract him immediately. It is clear that Will is still in a daze after whatever he has done, and his behavior naturally builds a lot of intrigue around what exactly has gone down.
It is totally to build this intrigue and suspense that Will Trent season 3 episode 11 takes this narrative style, showing the consequences of Will’s action first and then going on to reveal what had really happened. We are taken two hours back, when Will and Faith were pursuing a man named Paco through a crowded residential building. It is later revealed that the Alabama State Police had requested the GBI to find and interrogate a man named Francisco Ortiz, also known as Paco, for some undisclosed reason, and it is for this reason that the GBI detectives had gone over to the address given to them. Since the detectives did not know how Paco looked, the man initially pretended to be his cousin, but then when Will wanted to enter his apartment for a routine check, Paco started to run, for he definitely had something to hide.
The detectives obviously started to chase him, and since all this was taking place inside a crowded residential building complex, Faith felt the need to split from her partner as she thought that Paco might try to escape through the back gates. As she ran towards the back gates, Will went after Paco and ran into one of the buildings that the suspect had just entered. Paco had clearly taken cover inside one of the apartments to pull out a gun and point it at his pursuers, but Will managed to spot this and protect himself by taking cover at the end of the corridor. Then, as he heard a loud bang, Will realized that he was being shot at, and he quickly fired two shots at the suspect, injuring his arm and bringing him down. Will then ran over to Paco and handcuffed him, when a young boy from the next apartment ran out screaming for help. Another boy, later revealed to be named Marco, had been accidentally hit when the second bullet fired by Will had penetrated through the wooden walls between the apartments.
Marco was seriously injured and required immediate medical assistance, so an ambulance was naturally called. However, the authorities had clearly stated that it would take twenty minutes or more for the ambulance to reach the destination, and since both Will and Faith knew that the neighborhood was grossly underdeveloped and neglected by the authorities because of its demographics, they decided to drive the injured boy to the hospital themselves. This move would also later be questioned, as it is generally safer to wait for an ambulance to arrive in these situations, but Will had genuinely tried to save the kid by rushing him to the hospital himself. But an accident on the road had already congested the whole area, and while Faith ran to the hospital to try and get hold of emergency responders, young Marco died in Will’s arms.
While Will was already very disturbed and agitated by all this, it is only later, during his conversation with Marion, that he realizes that he had actually opened fire on Paco. When he had heard a loud bang in the heat of the moment, Will had mistaken it to be the sound of Paco firing at him, while in reality, the source of this sound was one of the doors being shut by a neighbor. Will had panicked and opened fire, discharging his firearm twice, and it resulted in the death of a young boy, who had been innocently playing video games with his friend in the next apartment. The matter is immediately considered an act of police negligence leading to the death of a child, and so the Mayor of Atlanta and also the chiefs of all the official institutions want the case to be closed at the earliest. Meanwhile, a tough and dedicated investigator named Odessa Shaw is brought in to conduct the inquiry, and it is she who interrogates Faith and Will.
How did Faith find out about Will’s secret?
During this investigation, we are taken further into the past, when a significant development had taken place between the GBI detectives, Will Trent and Faith Mitchell. On the previous evening, Will and Marion had gone over to Michael’s house, where Faith had recently moved in, to have a friendly dinner. But while at this place, Will’s phone rang when Jeremy called, but he was away from the room at the time. It was Faith who noticed her partner’s phone and immediately suspected that there was something wrong. She found it very odd that Jeremy had not been receiving her calls or replying to her messages ever since being fired from Rafael Wexford’s studio, but then he was calling Will, and the latter had not informed her of anything about this development. Therefore, she informs Will of the call, and as soon as the protagonist picks up the call, Faith snatches the phone and directly has a word with her son.
This is when Faith learns about the deal that had taken place between Will and Jeremy, in which the young man was appointed as an official informant by the GBI in order to find incriminating evidence against Wexford. Faith is understandably very angry and worried about this situation, for it involves tremendous danger for her son, who still does not have much idea of what he has gotten himself into. Will’s only defense to her confrontation was to state how Jeremy would have surely been arrested and imprisoned had he not stepped in and claimed the boy to be his informant, but it is obviously not enough to calm Faith down. Despite having wanted to save his partner’s son from trouble, Will gets caught in this unfortunate situation only because he had kept the matter a secret from Faith for this long, and she found out about it in the worst possible way.
Thus, the next morning, before the detectives reached Paco’s house, Faith informed Will that she had filed a request to have a new partner, making it clear that she no longer trusted him. This was a massive shock for Will, who was terribly saddened at being misunderstood in this manner, and it might have obviously been on his mind when he opened fire on Paco. But upon the insistence of Faith, the detectives do not mention anything about Jeremy or the terrible argument that they had had because of Faith’s son to the investigators during their questioning.
How does Angie help Will’s situation?
In Will Trent season 3 episode 11, Angie Polaski is clearly the only one who completely trusts Will and knows that he has been telling the truth. For most of the day, what works against the GBI special agent’s favor is the fact that no gun can be found at the crime scene, which suggests that Paco was not even armed when he was shot in the arm. The only casings found at the scene are those of the bullets fired by Will, and although Paco had indeed not fired his gun at all, it is important to prove that he at least carried one. Without this proof, it would seem like Will had opened fire when there was no need to, and the accidental death of the young boy next door would lead to his permanent termination from the service, along with prison time.
Therefore, the APD officers keep searching the crime scene for any more evidence, and this is when they come across a video that had been shot by a neighbor on their phone, right after Will had rushed to help Marco. In this video, an unidentifiable man is seen walking away from the apartment inside which Paco had temporarily taken cover, and he is clearly carrying something away from the spot. Since the man had walked towards the end of the corridor, Angie and Michael do the same and reach the laundry room, which has a suspicious-looking vent outlet on the wall. When they open the vent and Michael crawls in to investigate, a box full of drugs is found, and it also contains a handgun as well.
Despite finding the gun, it cannot be proven that Paco had been carrying it, since no fingerprints or any other form of evidence can be found on it. Although the episode does not clarify this, the most probable theory surrounding this gun is that Paco had actually been a part of a gang that was peddling drugs in the area, and he had been given the gun by them. But when Paco got arrested, the gang sent a different member to remove the gun from the crime scene so that Paco could not be connected to them in any way, and also to make it seem like the GBI officer had opened fire first. While removing the gun, the gang member had also carefully wiped it clean to ensure that Paco’s prints could not be found on it.
Therefore, the only remaining lifeline for Will happened to be the neighbors, a woman named Ruth and her teenage daughter, Lily. Although Will had seen Ruth run into her apartment as Paco had pulled out his gun, the woman refused to speak to the police or cooperate with them in any way. It is later revealed that Ruth not only wanted to stay away from trouble, but she had also had a terrible experience with the Atlanta Police Department earlier in her life. When her son had passed away from a drug overdose some time ago, the investigating officers had misplaced the man’s body at the morgue, because of which they had had to delay the funeral service by two days. Furthermore, the police officers never brought the man’s belongings to his family, and for this reason Ruth absolutely refuses to help the police in any way and instructs her daughter to do the same.
Angie understands the reason behind Ruth’s anger and decides to help her out, also hoping to find aid for Will in this process. She gets hold of the last belongings of Ruth’s son from the police department and then hands them over to the woman, and it is this very action of Angie that ultimately helps Will out. Ruth agrees to hand over an SD card to the police, which contained recordings from the doorbell camera outside her apartment. From the video on this card, it is finally proven that Paco had indeed pulled out a gun and pointed it at Will, ready to fire as soon as the GBI officer would try to pursue him.
This quickly wraps up the investigation, and Will Trent manages to protect himelf from any legal trouble, although he remains absolutely shocked and traumatized by the incident, as his overbearing guilt makes him hold himself responsible for the death of a young boy. None of his friends, not even his lover, Marion, is able to comfort Will, but at the very end of Will Trent season 3 episode 11, Angie is seen visiting his house and giving him a hug, which Will reciprocates as well. Angie has already been in a situation where she had caused the unintentional death of someone, and so she feels for Will a bit more than anyone else can. Similarly, Will can only be comforted by his oldest friend, with whom he had grown up and spent the most vulnerable years of his life. Although this might not translate to any romantic reunion, it is definitely heartwarming to see Angie step in to help her friend at the end of Will Trent season 3 episode 11.
