Welp. Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez) has made the choice he never wanted to. Not only did he finally discern that Angie (Erika Christensen) was not the one who killed her former abuser Lenny, but Crystal (Chapel Elizabeth Oaks), but he also realized that Angie’s decision directly led Crystal to become the spree killer who’d left so many bodies scattered around town in retaliation for their own heinous acts. Though Will and Angie had finally become committed to each other — to the point that they were even envisioning adding little humans to their fancy new dining room table — he decided to turn her in for her crimes… but not before he (and we, by extension) saw a vision of what kind of happy life might be in store for the couple if he covered for her.
After a season spent dealing with the demons of his past and growing his family and creating a happier home with Angie, here’s another trauma for our brilliant detective to deal with.
With Season 3 already in the works, we turned to the series’ executive producers, Liz Heldens and Daniel T. Thomsen, to break down the details of that gutwrenching finale and look ahead at what it all might mean when the show returns to ABC in the midseason.
You guys just have done a doozy here. How are you going to write yourself out of this finale?
Liz Heldens: We’re gonna figure it out on June 3. [Laughs] No, we have some ideas, but… it’s kind of nice to sort of throw all the pieces in the air and figure out where they’re gonna land. And so I think it’ll be a nice challenging shake-up for us. Right, Dan? Do you have a plan?
Daniel T. Thomsen: No, I mean, I think one of the things that people love about the show is how real it feels in terms of what these characters are going through, and I think that this kind of just seismic change that you have to find a way to roll with is kind of a part of life for people. And so yeah, we’re excited to kind of figure out what it looks like for her as well as he is forced to contemplate a chapter of his life without Angie.
So one of the saddest parts about it is that they were starting to be at their most stable — at least, relationship-wise — after Will dealt with his demons throughout the season. Now that the rug has been ripped out from underneath them, can you talk a little bit about how you decided to do that?
Heldens: I think the idea of Crystal came last year when we came back for Season 2, and we were trying to sort of pitch a shape to the network. One of our writers, Kath Ligenfelter, who co-wrote the finale, said, “Oh, she should come back and be a serial killer.” And then we were all like, “Shut up. That’s crazy.” As so often happens, no one had a better idea. But we really liked that Angie did something last year that she really thought was for the best, and she really thought she was not allowing her former foster father to claim another victim’s life and to ruin another person’s life, and she thought by taking the blame for killing Lenny last year that she was righting a wrong, and that came back to haunt her. Because I think what’s so nice about the way it ended up is you can really understand everybody’s point of view in the story. I think anybody would understand why Angie did what she did, and people can understand why Will has to do what he does. And so it just seemed like a really great long arc to pay off for us.
We know where Angie is going, but do we know where Will is heading?
Heldens: We do not. We have some ideas, but we’re not we’re not certain yet.
Do you think Will actually hesitated in that decision?
Heldens: Yeah, I think he absolutely did. I think he walked down the hall and into the elevator, and I think he didn’t know what he was going to do. When he says to young Angie in his office — like, “I don’t know if I can do that” — he really doesn’t know if he can do that. And I think for a moment he contemplates the whole future with her if he could just let this go.
Yeah, I was gonna ask, was that in his head? The visions… Was that his imagination as he was walking or was like a teaser for fans to kind of trick us out?
Heldens: I think it was both. It was in his head. But it was also like, it could have been, and hopefully, people are along for the ride for a little bit before they start to realize, “Oh, this isn’t really happening.”
Will made a comment to her earlier in the episode that he wanted to have children with her. He told her that directly. What does it say about them both that they were at the point where they could consider that despite everything that they had been through?
Thomsen: With Will where there was a pregnancy scare, and we kind of see that Will was gonna roll with it, you know? Well, I think that that’s something that’s been on Will’s mind for a really long time. And I think what was different now was that Angie had kind of gotten to a place this season where she felt a little bit more secure and felt like she could also maybe handle that because you know, it felt to her at the time that things with Crystal were going really well and that she was able to take a role in Crystal’s life that was something like a good role model, a protector — qualities that she hadn’t really seen in herself before. That and Will’s relationship with his uncle. He was able to process a terrible memory from childhood that he had so much guilt for, and his uncle was there, and he was wise and compassionate, said that wasn’t Will’s fault. And I think that is a big step for Will to kind of see that maybe everything that he assumed about himself and what he was able to have in this life, he started to question. And I think he’s a character who has not allowed himself a lot of hopes and dreams. And I think this episode was about him kind of hoping and dreaming. For Will, it’s about survival. It’s just been about fitting in. But I don’t think he dares to wish for that much. And so, what we liked about that sort of montage sequence, which, like I said, this is a character that does not express a lot of wants and desires, like he just did, he has huge dreams and fantasies for himself. And they’re detailed and they’re moving and he just has a huge rich inner life. We don’t always get to show that with him.
Speaking of Uncle Antonio (John Ortiz), do you think we’ll see him going forward?
Thomsen: I really hope so. [Laughs] He’s a very busy actor. We felt incredibly grateful that he was able to fit this in this season. Liz and I had the idea like, “Crap, wouldn’t John Ortiz be perfect?!” And we had a Zoom with him while he was doing, you know, Oscar publicity [for American Fiction]. And so, he’s Zooming with us and we’re like, “Gah, he’s never gonna have … He’s such a fancy guy.” And we ended up having a very similar [perspective]. We talked through what the character was and what he meant to Will and Will’s desire to explore his Puerto Rican roots, and he was like, “Yeah, I want to do it.” So I love that story this season and I really want John to come back. And you know, he had a great time working on the show, I think it’s fair to say, and hopefully, we can make it work.
Disney/Daniel Delgado Jr.
Nice. So going back to Angie and Crystal, what do you think Angie would have done if she had been able to catch Crystal alive and well?
Heldens: I mean, I think she would have arrested her. I do. I don’t think there’s any version of Angie that would let a serial killer go. I think when she said to come with me that she was going to arrest her. That’s in my brain. I suppose that’s open to interpretation.
Thomsen: No, I completely agree. I think Erika did a great job of really showing how much it hit Angie when the revelation dropped. Because Angie is somebody who’s been through so much in her life and has never flirted with that kind of darkness. Really. I mean, the closest she came was probably with Lenny. Yeah, I think she would definitely arrest her.
Now, Angie obviously was being floated as a potential addition to the GBI. But that’s probably not going to happen now. However, Michael (Jake McLaughlin) has been hanging out with them a lot, obviously with the spree killer case. I’m curious if since Angie is out of contention, is there any chance of Michael being chosen to come over?
Heldens: I don’t know. And we haven’t talked about that. We have to figure out what the ecosystem looks like next season. And so we haven’t ever really tried that on in a meaningful way but you know, everything’s on the table.
In the finale, Ormewood has a confrontation with his wife with him saying she can’t take his kids. Before this, he hasn’t come to terms with her wanting to leave him. Do you think that this season was about him finding that footing and being like, “I’m the father,” and it’s independent of her?
Thomsen: I think it’s been a lot of that. I mean, the thing that I love about Ormewood is that he’s somebody who on one level really wants to be a good guy and works hard at it, but he also has these moments of anger that he is unable to control so much. And so I think that this season was about him building a bond with his kids that wasn’t there before, and I think that’s been great for him. But I also think, in that moment, when he’s blindsided by his wife’s decision, that’s also just him being very angry. He’s voicing his betrayal there.
Another thing we got to get into this season that was really cool was seeing Amanda Wagner’s past. I wonder if we’re gonna dig into any more of that experience?
Heldens: Yeah, we love it. We found this young actor in Sydney Park who is such a dead-ringer for Amanda, and it’s so much fun to have them playing together and different timelines kind of that talk to each other. So that was a really lucky thing that happened. And I think Sonja Sohn is fascinating. I think one of the things that’s so great about her and Will is they don’t talk about themselves very much. So that when you get a peek in a flashback or a peek into Will’s mind, it really makes me sit up and it’s so fun. Amanda is such a [force]. She was brought up in a man’s world for sure. She was a Black female police officer at a time when that was really, really hard. The job did make her kind of hard and put up walls, and it’s really — I love going back and seeing her, and I would love to also get LisaGay Hamilton back next season. And I think those stories are always really compelling.
On a lighter note, things seem to be getting more serious between Faith (Iantha Richardson) and Luke. Are you guys like hearing real wedding bells — not imagined ones — in the future for the show?
Heldens: Oh, that’s interesting. We haven’t talked about that. I think it’s interesting to see Faith, to see that relationship evolve. She’s a very self-sufficient person and doesn’t want to let people in, and it’s really fun to see her kind of in a moment of helplessness, and she doesn’t know how to help Will at the end of the season. So she just goes over to Luke’s house and kind of surrenders to that… but I think there’s a lot of stuff to mine maybe before we get to a wedding — ups and downs of relationships with her.
Yeah, I was gonna ask, does that mean that we’ve closed the door on her ex Charles?
Heldens: No, no, I don’t know. Everything is on the table.
What else are you looking forward to with Season 3?
Thomsen: Well I think that what’s going to be different on a very surface level is we have 18 episodes this season instead of 10 in Season 2. And so what I’m looking forward to is that’s going to let us kind of play on a bigger chessboard next season. The whole idea for Season 2 was to make these really tightly plotted arcs, weaving together what our main characters were doing. And I think it is fun to kind of do some mini-arcs and take time with things. You were mentioning Ormewood and trying to figure out if there’s some cool stuff for him to do, that’s kind of new because we don’t know what he’s going to be doing without Angie.
I mean, one of the things we also just love about broadcast—Liz and I both came up in broadcast—is the medium where we have a lot of writers from different backgrounds, and they come in with these ideas that are not things that we would necessarily thought of. For example, this season, we did the episode where Ormewood had to investigate a killing of military veterans, and we learned a little bit about his own military history, and that was written by a military vet. And we also cast a vet to play the character. So just having more space to bring in these little glimpses of different worlds, I think that’s one of the best parts about having a show with episodic cases.
Heldens: I’m also looking for—and Dan touched on this a little bit—more two-parters, more stories that go across more than one episode, and to have the time … I think it’s also very exciting that we’re doing 18 in a row this season.
