Will Trent Season 2 Premieres as Charming as Ever
The procedural drama is back, and ABC’s “Will Trent” is a prime example of its appeal and potential for success. The first season was a smash, with its premiere drawing 18.1 million viewers. It even received a few award nominations, mostly for star Ramón Rodríguez’s starring role.
It turns out that old TV formulas still work, and the first episode of “Will Trent” season 2 has all the elements that fans of the genre have come to expect — there are obvious and cryptic clues, murder and murderers, and of course, tough characters who are traumatized by the many horrors they’ve witnessed. This episode is much more relaxed than the first, allowing its characters to play with their types and having some fun along the way—the ever-picky Trent has at least one outburst while Erika Christensen’s Angie Polaski teases his pension to buy a three-piece suit.
The season opens with a scene that will surely delight Rodríguez fans and followers. Based on Karin Slaughter’s books, Will Trent wasn’t originally Latino, but Rodríguez’s casting, not to mention his extraordinary performance as the dyslexic detective who manages to be both lovable and annoying, begged for a rethink. And, by the end of the first season, we learned that the Will Trent on TV was actually Latino, the son of a murdered Puerto Rican prostitute.
He knows this backstory to viewers, having been raised in a foster family with no connection to (or even understanding of) his Boricua culture. We’re talking about a character with a thick Georgian accent. So when the second season opens with Trent speaking really bad Spanish (in real life, Rodríguez speaks fluent Spanish), the result is both hilarious and poignant. To the uninitiated, it’s just a little silly, part of the charm and maturity of the character. But to Latinx viewers who know Rodríguez and our community’s love/hate relationship with the language, it feels like a knowing wink, letting us know that this show and this character have been one of ours all along.
And from there, the first episode soars, setting up the plot for the rest of the season without ever feeling like a chore or checking off boxes, as sometimes happens in lesser shows. Here, we meet new love interests and see old relationship statuses change. We meet a new big bad and reunite with a previous one. There’s a lot of plot development, but “Will Trent” does it briskly without giving up the mystery of the week.
And that’s another place “Will Trent” excels. It plays to the viewer’s current expectations by establishing throughlines between episodes, not just the relationships of the characters but also a larger crime/mystery at play to tie the season together. And it ensures that each episode lives up to its procedural neatness. Here are tragedies that can be resolved in forty-five minutes or less. The bad guys are discovered and delivered; The world is made better again by flawed, upstanding cops.
Of course, the copaganda subgenre has faced its share of criticism lately. And “Will Trent” certainly plays into the fantasy that law enforcement is always (or almost always) a force for good. While the first season opened with Trent facing backlash for investigating himself, that theme is absent from the second season premiere. One can only hope it reappears in future episodes.
Instead, we get to spend time with all of our favorite Georgia law enforcement officers. Iantha Richardson returns as Will’s partner Faith Mitchell, as smart, tough, and vulnerable as ever. Polaski, as Trent’s longtime romantic interest, is on the up and up, with Christensen continuing to show her ironic vulnerability with ease. Sonja Sohn as Will’s boss, Amanda Wagner, doesn’t have much to do in this episode, but her candor still shines on screen. And Angie’s partner Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin), Will’s occasional rival, has a meaningful role, bringing his long lashes and insecure strongman persona to work.
The show’s style remains the same, too. Will’s suit and car are as tailored as ever. Mitchell and Wagner both wear bright, rockabilly-inspired business suits. And the show’s Georgia is portrayed as a society with strong class divisions—there are beautiful, well-appointed offices for Trent’s Georgia Bureau of Investigation and his mostly upper-class suspects.
