ABC’s crime drama “Will Trent” is known for the impressive detective skills that the titular sleuth employs to apprehend the murderers, but the showrunners make sure to present his many flaws in interpersonal relationships, especially with his romantic partner, Angie Polaski. However, this episode takes a slightly different route and chooses to go down memory lane and focus more on the story of Trent and Angie as teenagers running away from a foster home and the journey they have had. When Trent makes a shocking discovery, thanks to his pet dog Betty, he starts thinking back to a very significant day in his life, in his teens, and that forms the crux of this episode.
The latest episode begins with Trent waking up to the voice of a woman calling him, and he finds himself in a truck wagon, heavily wounded, with a tarp hiding him from view. However, the severity of his injuries make him pass out again. We go back one day, where a shirtless Trent prepares food for his dog Betty, and the faded scars near his neck are clearly visible. Betty starts chewing on a crumpled paper ball, and after extracting it from her mouth, Trent realizes it’s the instruction manual for a pregnancy test kit. The detective doesn’t get enough time to ponder this potentially life-altering piece of information as his reverie is rudely interrupted by Amanda, who announces trouble is brewing.
The Neo-Nazi group called Confederate Front was already known to be gathering men to exhibit the strength of white supremacy, and to make matters worse, a container of assault rifles worth almost a million dollars had gone missing. She adds that the rifles were last known to be at the Atkins Co. Container Yard, and if the Neo-Nazis get access to that container, the rifles can arm a small militia and lead to the deaths of several innocents. Trent hasn’t had time to process this gust of information, which is when his partner Faith arrives. Amanda informs the annoyed sleuth that Babs, the shift manager at Atkins, is waiting for Trent to arrive on the scene, while Faith finds the crumpled up instruction manual in Trent’s kitchen. He tries calling Angie, but his call goes to voicemail.
The story goes back in time to 2001, when the teenage Trent and Angie escape from their foster home after taking the car keys. Back to the present, Trent and Faith arrive at the Atkins Co. Container Yard, where Babs introduces them to Taki Georgiou, the terminal grounds person looking into the container, and tells him that they’re UTL – Unable to Locate. Georgiou tells the agents that the previous day, a truck arrived with a proper waybill, but the container it was here to pick up couldn’t be located. Meanwhile, Trent spots something fishy with the numbers on the containers, and soon he strips off a digit to reveal that the containers have been messed with, along with the waybills. Babs vouches for her men, saying that they wouldn’t do something shady, but soon, a decomposing body is discovered near the abandoned containers.
Back at the Atlanta Police Department morgue, Angie and Ormewood stand in while the coroner explains how the homicide victim Roland Wynders died in a shootout outside a sneaker store while it was releasing the newest lot. Ormewood says that they already have eyewitnesses and motives, so it’s going to be an open-and-shut case, and heads to speak to the store manager. The store manager in question, Lou Lou, says that Roland had just bought the last pair of sneakers when someone barged in, shot Roland, grabbed the box of sneakers, and bolted. She also says that she suspects a sneaker reseller named Pun’kin—her competitor—who was present at the store and caused commotion, but the thing that catches Angie off guard is that Lou Lou addresses Ormewood by his first name, Michael.
While Angie heads outside, the store manager reminds Ormewood that he owes her, to which he responds that’s the reason he accepted the case. Jerry Kilargis, another eyewitness, introduces himself to Angie and says that although the killer had a hoodie on, he spotted that the attacker was wearing Bobos—a very old sneaker brand that had gone out of fashion decades ago. While interrogating Pun’kin, Ormewood comes down hard on him and almost apprehends him as the criminal, while Angie sneakily takes a picture of the reseller’s fancy sneakers. She calls Ormewood outside and says that the suspect’s shoes don’t match the description by Kilargis, but her partner argues that a pair of stolen sneakers was recovered from Pun’kin’s car, so he’ll be arrested any moment now.
Inside the GBI, Faith informs Trent that the victim was a logistics coordinator named Jed Pipski, and although he had no connections with the Confederate Front, he did exchange a questionably high number of calls with Babs. The emotional shift manager is brought in for questioning, who tearfully informs her that everyone in the yard is pretty shaken over Jed’s death and that they’d be commemorating him that night at a local bar named The Truck Stop. Babs proudly announces that Jed was the best at his job before confessing that the two were having an affair, and she saw him three nights prior—the same night he went missing. Trent points out that with the missing container and Jed’s dead body, everything was pointing at Babs, and to rid herself of suspicion; she names Craig McDonald, a known Confederate Front supporter. McDonald would also be present at the wake at The Truck Stop, and could be easily identified by his Confederate tattoo that reads “C.F.” on his arm. Trent speaks to Amanda and says that Jed might’ve just been present at the wrong place at the wrong time, which got him killed. She sends him to find something to bring McDonald in as the threat of the Confederates is getting higher.
After stepping inside an elevator, Trent’s mind races back to the car ride with Angie as a teenager, where he asked her to go to the police because their foster dad had raped her and got her pregnant. She shoots down the suggestion and says the police won’t listen to her and that Trent was thrown through a plate glass door when he tried reporting someone. The young Trent’s neck is covered in bandages, and the mystery of the adult detective’s scars on the neck is finally solved. But the teen can’t let go of the crime this easily and says that if the police don’t listen, he’ll kill the rapist himself. Angie makes him stop the car, and he questions if she plans to walk to an abortion center. The elevator door opens, and he snaps back to reality, walks over to the adult Angie, and informs her that he found the instruction manual. She drags him into an evidence room and says that although she hasn’t taken the test, she knows for a fact that she’s completely unfit to be a mother, despite Trent trying to tell her otherwise. Irritated, he shoots back that Angie wasn’t the only person who had to climb out of a dark stage in life, and she delivers a massive gut punch, saying she’s not even sure if Trent is the baby’s father. Trent is severely hurt and rushes out after telling Angie that her attitude makes it almost impossible to deal with her at times. He once again remembers the day when the two sat in an open field, with Angie’s head on his shoulder, while she contemplated the things she said inside the evidence room until duty called.
At the bar that night, Trent advises using subtlety to catch McDonald in one of his lies, but the Neo-Nazi picks a fight with Georgiou and is thrown out. Trent follows him outside, and he barely has time to start asking him questions before the rest of the Confederates surround him and start attacking—it took very little to get them to get physical, but you can’t expect decency from a Nazi. Trent is hit in the back of his head, and his gun is knocked away, so he has to hide inside a truck under the tarp to avoid detection. Realizing the rest of the GBI would arrive any moment; the Confederates escape while Trent’s head wound makes him pass out. A while later, Faith calls Amanda to inform her that her partner is missing and that she found his gun along with blood. The tough supervisor’s countenance grows horrified, and she slumps into her chair before telling Faith that she’ll send a mobile command unit to the location, while Faith has to take the point in the missing guns case. Amanda warns her that if the Nazis don’t mind attacking a GBI agent, their plans are severely sinister, to say the least.
Angie arrives at Trent’s place, and Amanda calls her to tell her that Will has gone missing and that she needs to stay put at Trent’s home because the agent may need medical attention if he arrives home. She vents about the frustrations she has over her own life to Betty, who’s a silent listener, and how Angie had no reason to hurt him by telling Trent that the baby might not even be his before admitting that he has always accepted her despite her various flaws. After ranting about what a horrible person she is and that she might even be mean to the unborn child, she reveals her real wish: that she wants Trent to return. Her memories shoot back to the day they left the foster home when the two teenagers stayed in the park till dark, and Trent promised that they’d stick by each other for two more years till they were 18. She accepted, and they proceeded to kiss until an oncoming police car made them leave.
The voice of young Angie echoes in Trent’s ear, telling him that he needs to wake up, who finds himself at the base of the Neo-Nazis, who are arming themselves. At the police station, Ormewood checks up on Angie the next morning, and she’s grossly sleep-deprived and worried. The captain asks for information on the homicide of Roland, and Ormewood informs him that Pun’kin will be processed any moment now, but Angie says that based on the online digging she did, the Bobos that the suspect was wearing are issued from Georgia State Penitentiary, and while Roland was released a couple of years ago, Billy Thompson was released last week. She adds that it’s important to at least check on this lead before Pun’kin is sent to prison, and the captain agrees. Ormewood, however, is very upset because Angie went over his head while she questioned his motive behind trying to indict an innocent man based on the statement of a woman who has dirt on Ormewood. He immediately loses his temper and smashes his coffee cup against the wall, shouting at her not to dig into the matter any further before marching off in a huff.
Angie chases after Billy Thompson, but it seems that he’ll outrun her until Ormewood tackles him out of nowhere, and Angie takes away the suspect’s gun—the murder weapon. Meanwhile, Faith interrogates Georgiou and threatens to charge her with every crime, from manslaughter to hate crime and a GBI agent going missing, in the book. He finally breaks down and says that he and McDonald were stealing the container when Jed caught them red-handed, so the Neo-Nazi battered him to death. Georgiou also adds that there was a warehouse where they had collected the advance payment, and it’s in Jackson. On the other hand, Trent is hiding out under the tarp and tries using his phone, but his ancient flip phone’s battery is long drained.
However, Georgiou’s tip helps, and a team swarms the location and arrests one person there, but Faith spots that one of the crates of guns is missing and demands to know where the Confederates took the guns. At the spot where GBI is looking, Trent quietly steps out of the truck and stealthily creeps on to the Neo-Nazis practicing with the rifles, while McDonald declares his plan to crash a peaceful protest trying to take down a Confederate statue—with obvious plans of using the guns on the protestors. Trent finds a gun, but it has no magazine, and he resorts to recording audio on his trustee tape recorder, where he admits the stupidity of his plan before apologizing to Angie for their fight and says that he’d have no problem raising the child with a woman as amazing as her and that he loves her.
After recording this moving note, Trent swoops into the Neo-Nazi gathering and takes one of the members hostage with his rifle pointed at him, asking the others to lower their rifles because his team is waiting outside. McDonald, the evilest of the lot, remarks that the gun has no bullets, but Trent keeps pushing his luck, and the leader is about to unload his magazine into the detective when the special unit arrives and arrests them. Faith hugs her partner and sends medical attention for him, and back at the bureau, Amanda hands him a bill saying how much they spent to rescue him. She also asks him to stay back for a briefing before walking away, but the others don’t see her tears of relief trickling down. Angie taps his shoulder before walking away, and the final flashback shows Trent waiting outside a clinic for Angie and gifting her a teddy bear after she had her abortion. She thanks him for being there for her, and he says he’ll always be there.
Angie arrives to inform Ormewood that Billy has confessed to the murder of Roland, and she also thanks him for checking up on her earlier. Her partner then opens up that once, Ormewood had beat down a suspect violently for kneeing him in the groin outside Lou Lou’s store, and he had been caught on camera. The beat-down was so vicious that she used that as leverage over him to get him to solve the case as early as he could – so basically, a sneakers store manager was blackmailing a detective because he hadn’t been able to keep his rage in check. He adds that after being let go from the army, Ormewood underwent a therapy of sorts to keep his emotions in check, and he assures Angie that he’s working on keeping his rage in check. Back home, while waiting for the test results to come back, Angie is about to tell what she had been thinking about when she finds out that she’s not pregnant. The two embrace, and when she’s not in the room, he removes the tape from his recorder and hides it in his drawer.
‘Will Trent’ Episode 7: Ending Explained – How Does Will Trent Solve The Case Of Missing Guns?
Being rather different from the ones that preceded this, this episode focuses more on the interpersonal relationships of the agents and their lives than the cases they handle this week. For the first time, we get to see flashbacks of Trent and Angie’s younger selves and the circumstances that made them escape their foster home. We realize what made Angie—a victim of sexual assault—turn to drugs to numb the pains she has endured in this lifetime and how Trent came to have scars on his neck. It also shows how he stood by her through the hardest times of her life and how she loved him more than anything else. The sad thing was, however, that neither could admit it to the other because of the several traumas that each shared, which is why Angie turned to Betty as a confidante and Trent kept his confessions hidden in his drawers. Trent and Angie fighting weren’t new, and neither were they reconciling by the time the episode came to a close, but today, they admitted, albeit to themselves, that they loved each other so passionately. We also see just how much Amanda, the strict and rigid boss, cared for Trent and how much his partner worried for his safety. So, it turns out that he did have people in this world who bothered about him.
On another note, Ormewood’s rage and the tough spot it got him into are laid bare, and his vulnerabilities are exposed. He has an outburst inside the APD, but he later comes through and helps Angie arrest the perp before confessing that his rage was destructive, but he’s trying to get a hold of it and be a better man every day.
