ABC’s newest weekly episodic crime drama series, “Will Trent,” where the eponymous special agent solves cases based on his adept observation skills and deduction abilities, dropped its latest episode today. In the story so far, peculiar Will Trent has had to form an unlikely partnership with Faith Mitchell, while his romantic interest Angie Polaski has paired off with Michael Ormewood, with whom she shares a history. In Episode 2, Polaski breaks it off with Trent because he reminds her of her messy past, and she doesn’t want to use her trauma to help solve cases. With both teams being sent off to new cases, here’s what happens in the latest episode.
Spoilers Ahead
Burnt Body On A Boat
“Will Trent” Episode 3 begins on the banks of Lake Lanier, Georgia, where an elderly man who looks mentally unstable is knelt down, crying and talking into the chilly night air when a nurse rushes out and tries taking him inside. Just then, a boat on fire sails into view with a body hanging off the rails, and the old man asks if they have come for him and that he’s earnestly sorry. Back at the GBI, Will Trent and Faith Mitchell are looking at a body that’s been burnt to a crisp, and Trent’s supervisor, Amanda, informs them that the victim is the mayor of Oakmead County, Georgia, Randy Cordette, who was killed by a bullet to the head. While Trent suggests that setting Cordette’s boat on fire was a political statement, Faith suggests that it could be the work of spirits. Amanda asks Trent and Faith to head to Oakmead and adds that the sheriff is new, but she can only hope that the newest Sheriff won’t be racist like the one before her. While entrusting his pet Chihuahua to Nico, the new dog walker, Trent gets a call from someone named Ivy, who supposedly asks him out on a date.
Trent and Faith finally head out to Lake Lanier in Faith’s scrappy car, but a tire blows out midway. Without any other options, the agents head to a mechanic, but he doesn’t have spare tires ready for Faith’s mini Cooper. Trent is amazed, however, at the grandeur of the repair shop and mentions in passing that he heard what happened to the mayor. The mechanic says Randy and him grew up together and studied in high school together and that he even knows what the politician was a part of. He leans in to let Trent know that Cordette was a member of a tribe of reptilian people. Absolute nonsense or playing ignorant wilfully?
Trent and Faith reach the scene of the crime and are greeted by Sheriff Josie Miller. Faith and her comment on how nice the mayor’s private dock seemed. Trent fishes out his trusty tape recorder and starts noting that the suspect who had shot the mayor from a distance must have been trained and probably overconfident. However, the first bullet hit the mayor’s shoulder, so a second was needed. Using his keen observation skills, he finds a nail sticking out with blood on it and deduces that it’s the killer’s blood; they must have nicked themselves while rushing towards the victim. Setting the boat on fire was to probably erase traces of the blood that was spilled on the boat. While speaking to the widowed Mrs. Cordette, Trent and Faith find out that the mayor had become deeply disturbed after finding a toy orange station wagon on their doorstep. Josie also asks Deputy Riley to bring the token that was left near the body of Alan Kramer, which was found a few days ago. Initially passed off as a hunting accident, Trent connects the two deaths because of the toy that was placed near each victim. Over a video meet, Amanda informs them that these deaths are linked to an unsolved case from 30 years ago, where a family was found dead in an orange station wagon out in the woods. The killer was never found, and the then-Sheriff swept it under the rug.
The Homicide Team
Elsewhere, Ormewood and Angie have a homicide case, and a body is brought in with a head wound. The eyewitness reveals that he has seen the one responsible while the suspect was running away, and he even shouted at the eyewitness. Pleasantly surprised to have such an open-and-shut case at hand, Angie tells him that he’ll need to look through a few photos when Ormewood invites her to dinner. Apparently, it’s his wife who invited her over to get to know her husband’s partner better. While Ormewood and Angie argue over her coming to dinner, the eyewitness identifies the suspect, but things get complicated when Ormewood finds that the suspect is an identical triplet, and each brother has been arrested. Repeated attempts to get a confession out of the triplets fail, so Polaski tries something else. She throws two candy bars at the starving triplets and asks them to fight to see who gets to eat. A scuffle ensues, and quickly, two of them pin the other against the two-way mirror and say that it’s his crime that they’ve been detained for. The killer is identified, and the case is closed.
Joining The Dots
At a shared motel room, Trent shares with Faith how he compartmentalizes traumatic events and that he has a date. Faith suggests that he goes on the date. Trent notices that the photographs from the crime scene of the triple murder are weird—the wagon was parked near the woods, away from the 4th of July fireworks. Faith notes that a witness had spotted four men near the crime scene, had given a partial license plate that Sheriff Merrick never followed up on and instead chose to bury it. The next morning, Amanda arrives at the Sheriff’s office, and states that after matching the partial license plates from the cold case three decades back, 40,000 matches came up. But on running it with the recent cases, it was found that the Bronco belonged to the now-dead Alan Kramer. The agents deduce that Kramer and Cordette must have been involved in the killings, which is why they’re dead days apart. Amanda asks them to find the remaining two men. Trent asks Josie for Sheriff Merrick’s location, but Josie sounds sceptical. As it turns out, Sheriff Merrick was none other than the senile old man from the first scene who begged forgiveness. Trent asks him about the night of the incident, but the old man keeps talking about the noise he heard and how he has someone, and they’re safe. As Trent keeps questioning, the nurse barges in, and so does Merrick’s son. He informs them that Merrick was deeply disturbed after investigating the triple homicide of the black family, but the son doesn’t know much because he was off to college, and Merrick’s wife passed away 6 years back. All pathways to the clues seem blocked.
The three women, Amanda, Faith, and Josie, meet Theresa, a crusader for black journalism who had covered the story of the triple homicide. As Theresa leads Amanda away, Josie and Faith shuffle through the old cases and photographs while bonding over how both women have been victims of racism. While talking, Faith mentions how her mother helped her against a racist captain, but she’s no longer in the force because she had overstepped her boundaries. Suddenly, Josie finds an old picture with the Bronco, and the plate numbers match too. Josie recognizes two of the four men in the picture as Kramer and Cordette, but the third man cannot be identified but Faith says that GBI technology will help. Thanks to advanced technology, the third man is identified as Otis Granger, the mechanic who helped Faith and Trent. When the agents, Amanda and Josie, arrive at Otis’ property, he has a gun at the ready and two dogs ready to pounce. He says he’s innocent of the triple homicide, and former sheriff Merrick will confirm. Trent pleads with him to just talk to them; Otis refuses and raises his gun, so Josie shoots him right in the head. How about shooting the weapon or even the arm if you’re so perfect with your aim, Josie?
And The Killer Is…
Faith is on her way to meet Merrick and is carrying the picture to jog his memory when Josie asks to tag along, and Faith takes the sheriff’s car. At the office, in a flurry of spouting random things, Deputy Riley mentions how the orange station wagon is stored in Otis Granger’s salvage yard, within Trent’s earshot. Josie, who had mentioned that Merrick was always nice to her, sits down in front of him and asks him to point at the men. He mentions the three who are already dead, but when asked about the back-turned man in a jersey, he starts calling for Chip. It’s the nickname the old man had for his son, David, whom we met earlier. As it turns out, the fourth accomplice of the three men was David, the Sheriff’s son, which is why he closed the case. While explaining to Trent about how they made Merrick talk, Trent asks why his partner brought along Josie, who’s on administrative leave. Meanwhile, Amanda is fighting with the lab workers because they say that the nail with the blood of the killer never reached them. While recording how Merrick’s discovery of the bodies must have played out on his tape, Trent finds the wagon under a tarp. He spots teeth marks on the passenger seat belt and a bag of powder at the back seat while Amanda retrieves a cassette from the car’s tape player. At the station, Trent deduces that Merrick had found the baby of the murdered family, who had parked the wagon in the woods to feed it. The sheriff had kept saying that he’s got the baby, something that comes back to haunt him after all these years. Meanwhile, Faith spills soda all over her at a gas station inside Josie’s car and looks for wipes in the glove compartment but ends up finding the same bloody nail that Trent had asked her to be sent to the lab. It’s immediately clear that Josie was picking off her family’s killers and had intentionally hidden the nail because it’d incriminate her. Trent phones her to inform who the killer might be, and the moment Faith says her name out aloud, Josie taps against the window with her gun pointed at Faith.
At a bridge over the Lake Lanier, David Merrick is handcuffed to Faith as Josie demands him to say what happened all those years back. David, aka Chip, says that Randy, Alan, Otis, and him were drunk when they spotted the wagon. Alan tried talking to them, but the family ignored them, which irritated him, and David was the one who shot Josie’s father. Josie then says that Sheriff Merrick went over there to clean up his son’s mess when he found Josie, who later learned about her family and entered law enforcement for revenge, according to Faith. The agent asks if Josie will shoot her, too, to which Josie says that all she needs to do is slow Faith down and shoots David in the knee. The bridge is blocked off by armed police as Amanda and Trent approach the perpetrator. Amanda tries to shoot at Josie when Faith begs her not to and commands Josie to surrender because her parents wouldn’t want their baby to be one more body in Lake Lanier, and immediately realizes what she has said. With only one option ahead of her that doesn’t involve prison, Josie jumps into the lake.
The Aftermath…And A Reunion
At the station, Trent brings hot chocolate to Faith’s desk—a welcome change from having her sit on the floor. He also informs her that Josie’s body was found in the lake, but Faith’s dry response confuses him. She replies that she, too, is trying to compartmentalize, but Trent says it doesn’t work and asks her to share something. Faith tearfully says that she had a stupid fantasy that Josie would have swam to the banks of the lake and boarded a plane waiting for her to escape to some country in South America, but now she’s one of the several ghosts that Lake Lanier has claimed. That night, at Ormewood’s place, Angie has a great time talking to his wife and playing with the children. On her way out, the daughters give her a hug. After sending the kids to bed, Mrs. Ormewood singles Angie out and says that another cop’s wife told her that Angie had approached her husband’s car two years back, and that they’d slept together. Michael’s wife tells Angie to not make the same mistake a second time, as Angie has to leave before she breaks down in tears. She goes back to Trent’s house and says how she and Ormewood had had relations, a couple of years back when her and Trent’s relationship was on a break. When Trent asks why she’s telling it to him now, Angie says that she can’t keep secrets anymore and that she doesn’t want Trent to consider her ugly. The special agent replies that he’ll never be able to consider her ugly, and they instinctively kiss. He then offers to make her dinner before saying that he has to call someone.
‘Will Trent’ Episode 3: Ending Explained – Is Angie and Will Trent’s Relationship Over for Good?
The episode explores the growing partnership between Faith and Trent and answers a question from last week: would Trent and Angie eve get back together? Trent begins warming up to Faith and shares his secrets as Faith reveals her dreams and fears. “Will Trent” Episode 3 also throws light on the racist treatment of black people in the ’70s and how places like Lake Lanier have seen decades of racist violence. The baby who had been rescued by one of the suspects’ father, Sheriff Merrick, turns out to be Josie, the new Sheriff, who exacts vengeance on her family’s killers. However, the episode gave several clues from the start, like her killing a suspect instead of questioning him, tagging along with Faith to look for clues while being on leave, all pointing at her being involved.
At the Trent and Angie front, the phone call Trent talks about could be to Ivy, who had asked him out. In all probability, after that moment with Angie, he knows what to do and plans to call Ivy to cancel the date. However, it shows that Mrs. Ormewood knew about her husband and Angie, and the monologue to her in the end sent her back to Trent. Thus, no matter how much Angie may dislike the fact that Trent reminds her of her traumas, he’s the only one she can turn to when in need.
