Yahoo Lifestyle Will Trent’s Ramón Rodríguez Unpacks Tragic Twist, Reveals Impact on Will’s Three Most Important Relationships
GBI Special Agent Will Trent won’t have an easy time getting over this latest loss.
Tuesday’s episode of the ABC crime drama started off with a foot chase. Will caught up to an armed parolee in the hall of an apartment complex, and was forced to fire his weapon. Alas, one of Will’s bullets ricocheted, pierced a wall and struck innocent 14-year-old bystander Marco, who died in his arms on their way to the hospital. An internal investigation cleared Will of any wrongdoing, but the damage on his already tortured psyche has been done.
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Below, Rodríguez unpacks this latest tragedy in Will’s life and reveals how it will impact our protagonist for the remainder of Season 3 — and possibly beyond.
TVLINE | Will is no stranger to trauma. Where do you think this shooting ranks among the worst moments in his life?
I mean, it’s up there. This is something that, although it was accidental, he was the cause of it, and I think it’s a little different when you’re the cause of trauma versus just receiving trauma, so it’s really high up there. He has never done anything like this. It’s one of those moments that is going to change him forever. It is something that will continue to haunt him, and that he will have to deal with [throughout Season 3] because he cannot come to terms with it. It’s a very difficult thing.
We have a great GBI consultant that works with us in Atlanta. His name is Brian, and I got to talk to him and other cop friends about it, and it’s one of the most horrific things that could ever happen on duty, where something happens to go awry and ends up taking a life away — a child’s life. It’s horrific.
TVLINE | Last season, we saw Will blame himself for the death of his foster mom Anna. He even blames himself, in part, for the fate of his birth mom Lucy. Is he going to find a way to work through all of this self-loathing, or is Marco’s death going to be another tragedy in his life where he can’t quite shake this feeling that he was at fault?
This is something that he’s going to struggle with for a while. Is it going to be something that he completely gets over? I can’t answer that, but I will tell you that it’s something that’s going to [propel him] to figure out what’s going on with him. Up until this point, he’s never really— we’ve heard him talk about some stuff that’s happened [in his past], but we’ve never actively seen him try to do anything about it. He’s just developed coping mechanisms throughout the years. He’s someone that needs to be doing something, being active, and that’s a way of him coping — whether it’s work, or building something, or working on the house or whatever. This will be the first time that we’re able to finally activate him, to become a bit more involved in trying to figure out what’s actually happening and if there is anything he can really do about it.
TVLINE | The department supplies Will with a new gun after he is cleared of any wrongdoing. I can’t help but wonder, though: Is Will going to find it difficult to pull the trigger the next time he is forced to use his weapon?
I mean, that was a motif we kind of use throughout the episode — just seeing the gun up close, the thing that caused all this harm, even though it was Will that pulled the trigger. Like you said, it’s probably the first time that doubt enters his mind. He has to be so confident, so sure of what he does, and when that is challenged — when something goes wrong — he begins to doubt himself and his abilities. It’s something that we talked about a lot, and so it will come up later on. It’s something that we were very mindful of. There’s a particular I can think of — I can’t talk about it because it’s a future episode — where that comes up that we kind of went back and forth on. It’s a big thing, because it can also be something that affects him for the rest of his life. Can Will ever pull the trigger again? That can be a thing. However, we’re the GBI, and he’s a cop, and at some point we’re probably going to need him to pull out his weapon and be confident to do his job. It’s a great question.
TVLINE | Marion is there to support Will, but she approaches this crisis like an ADA, not necessarily like a girlfriend. Do you think Will resents her for that? Or does he know in his heart of hearts that she’s doing her best in an unfortunate situation?
I think Will is so caught up in what happened that he can’t properly receive any guidance. Marion’s tactics are fair, noble, kind, generous — she is trying to find ways to help him, to see what he’s about to get into, and what the reality of all this means — and she’s also trying to be there for him, slightly emotionally. But I think you’re right about how she approaches it: She puts her ADA hat on. I just think he has a tough time, as somebody who is always trying to do right and do things the right way, and something went wrong. Because of him, this horrific thing happens. It takes a little while, and she questions him, and he gets bristled. I really appreciate that we had her trying to get to him and reach him on many levels. I think it’s really mostly Will that was unable to receive anything. He was just very much in his head.
TVLINE | Angie made a point of “releasing” Will earlier this season. But she still shows up at his home to provide emotional support when he needs it most. Where do things stand with them moving forward?
I mean, they’ve both found new people, which is really incredible. Angie finds Seth, Will finds Marion, and I think they’re both feeling pretty excited. It’s almost like, “Oh, there’s this other version of a relationship that I can have that’s maybe not toxic — not the trauma-bonded thing I’ve always had.” They’re always going to be bonded, that’s for sure. They’re always going to have a real deep friendship and relationship. At this point, where they’re at now, they’re trying to find their way in these new relationships and seeing what can come of them. Again, this event is really going to shift things a lot for Will, specifically, and in a lot of different ways. But it was a great moment to see Angie show up for him, just as a friend. They’re obviously not romantically involved, but there’s a lot of history there. There’s a lot of love, and I think there will always be a lot of love, but in this moment I think they’re just trying to be good friends, and she’s showing up for him in a dark moment.
TVLINE | Because Angie is at Will’s front door, he misses a call from Marion. What sort of impact will that have on their relationship?
We talked about that a lot about that moment where we don’t know who’s at the door. There’s a knock, he walks up, and we reveal it’s Angie. And that was really interesting, especially knowing how he just left Marion. I think we’re all expecting that it might be Marion at the door. I don’t think people expect that it would be Angie.
Does missing the call from Marion mean anything? Not really. But I think it is interesting that when he’s at his lowest moment this season, we see who shows up for him at the door, and we see how he responds to it. And what I loved about that scene… there were words in that scene, I should say, and we lifted them [from the episode]. We made it where it’s just these two people who know each other so well that they don’t have to say much. It ended up working really nicely. We just kept it simple. But there will be some ramifications — not specifically because Will missed the call, but more because of his behavior, because Will’s having a tough time shaking it off.
TVLINE | Faith is rightfully upset with Will for keeping her in the dark about Jeremy, but she still defends Will throughout this internal investigation. Will she proceed with her request for a new partner?
She will be. She wants a new partner. I don’t think that’s going to work out, but I will say, that Jeremy story is really fantastic. It’s heartbreaking, it’s tough. I do think Will does the best he can in that specific moment [in Episode 9, when he thinks fast and says that Jeremy is his confidential informant]. It will come to a head between Will and Faith, and also Faith and Jeremy. What I also appreciate is that Jeremy defends Will [in a future episode]. Because Will really did come up with a pretty damn good solution in a very stressful, very dire situation.
TVLINE | We’re still waiting to learn what dirt Rafael Wexler has on Will. Will this tragedy involving Marco, and its impact on Will, bring us any closer to learning what happened all those years ago?
We will definitely touch on what happened in their childhood that Raphael has been holding over Will’s head this entire season. We will get to that moment and the specifics of what happened. It has been really fun, kind of like a cat-and-mouse game going on, where Will is trying to pin down Raphael, and Raphael seems to keep digging himself deeper and deeper — or getting involved in more things that are making it more challenging for Will to not arrest him.
What did you think of Will Trent Season 3, Episode 11: “Best of Your Recollection”? Drop your thoughts in a comment below.
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