At the beginning of Will Trent Season 4, everyone is still coping with their emotional baggage. Especially Will, who almost lost his maternal figure, Amanda, and gained a new father in Caleb.
Will doesn’t handle emotions well, so he’s still insisting he’s fine, while the rest of the team is facing injuries and new medical diagnoses.
We’re in for another splendid season of Will Trent, and I had the pleasure of speaking with the Will Trent EPs: Liz Heldens, Daniel Thomsen, and Karine Rosenthal.
During the first part of our interview, they detailed the time jump, each character’s emotional state and coping strategy, and how the team leans on each other more.
How soon after the cliffhangers does Will Trent Season 4 pick up, and where is everyone emotionally?
Karine Rosenthal: It picks up five months after the cliffhanger. We are skipping past the unfun parts of dealing with a gunshot wound, a cancer diagnosis, and perhaps morning sickness, and getting right into stuff.
Ormewood is emotionally dealing with this new, life-changing situation that he has been in, coping with cancer and coming to the end of his treatments, and wondering what this means for his future.
Amanda has been slowly fighting to get back physically after the trauma of the Will Trent Season 3 Episode 18 injuries, and trying to convince herself that she still feels strong. She’s trying to convince others that she still feels strong.
Angie has been embracing, perhaps with a bit of terror, this enormous change coming into her life.
Will, based on the huge revelation of meeting his biological father, has been trying to integrate this new information slowly and figure out what it means for him.
He’s had this identity he’s held on to his whole life: being alone.
As we saw in the first couple of seasons, he slowly realized he wasn’t alone, and he has found a family that he has built over his life.
First, he had his uncle; now, he has a father, and what that means for him.
It is making him integrate new parts of himself that he has perhaps tried to repress for most of his life. And it’s really shaking him up and causing him to feel unsteady on the ground as he figures out this next stage of his life.
Absolutely. Based on that, what are the main themes of Will Trent Season 4?
Liz Heldens: I think it’s ‘unraveling.’
Daniel Thomsen: This isn’t exactly a theme. But as I was listening to Karine and Liz talk, I realized this is maybe something that can be said about a lot of TV shows, but the way Will Trent Season 4 begins, it feels like everybody has had these seismic events happen to them, and yet they are trying to push through.
It’s like we start with this feeling of like, ‘well, life has to go on, so life goes on.’ But then, very quickly, all this keeps happening, making it very difficult to go on with life.
It’s like whenever you think you have a handle on something terrible that’s happened to you, or a trauma in your past, and you’re starting to understand it, then something else pops up.
I think what we’re exploring in this season is what happens when that dark stuff starts to get the best of you, and how you react.
Right up top in the Will Trent Season 4 premiere, there’s an interrogation that Franklin leads that is very specific to his character and is very fun.
Will Trent Season 4 premieres on ABC on Tuesday, January 6 at 8/7c.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of our exclusive interview with the Will Trent EPs after the premiere as they dissect the premiere and tease more spoilers.
