The Will Trent season 2 finale promises to be packed with intense scenes, shocking plot twists, and a conclusion that will leave viewers agonizingly waiting for season 3. The ABC crime drama, created by Liz Heldens, Karin Slaughter, and Daniel T. Thomsen, is based on Slaughter’s Will Trent book series and follows a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent with a traumatic past. Will Trent was abandoned as a child and raised in a series of foster homes, where he endured endless abuse. The show continually explores Will’s trauma, and the season 2 finale will reveal more disturbing aspects of his past.
Unfortunately, after the Will Trent season 2 finale, the show won’t be returning until 2025. ABC has announced its 2024-2025 TV season schedule, and Will Trent wasn’t scheduled to air in the fall of 2024. It was held back to mid-season, meaning Will Trent season 3 will air in early 2025, leaving fans with at least eight months to wait for new episodes. The good news is that the 18 episodes of season 3 will be released back-to-back, so there won’t be any breaks between episodes. However, one aspect of the season 2 ending suggests that the season 3 release date could be detrimental to the show.
In an interview with TVLine following the release of episode 7 of Will Trent season 2, Ramón Rodríguez, who plays the show’s eponymous character, teased what will happen in the finale. While the actor’s comments spark excitement about what’s to come in the finale, they also make the delayed release date of season 3 all the more disappointing. When discussing the ending of season 2, Rodríguez said, “There’s a little bit of suspense, no doubt. Season 2, towards the end, when we’re piecing together the whole idea of what happened through this childhood trauma—this flashback, this memory that he blocked out—there are some things that [Will] gains, which is great, and there are some things that he loses, which is not great.” According to Rodríguez, Will Trent season 2 will end on a cliffhanger. Of course, a shocking cliffhanger ending isn’t too surprising, given how the season has played out with revealing traumatic moments from Will’s past and the recent developments in Will and Angie’s relationship. Plus, even the Will Trent season 2 premiere had a cliffhanger ending, and the first episode shouldn’t have been better than the finale. However, the fact that the ending will leave viewers in suspense means that they’ll have to wait in anticipation for what happens next, and it won’t be until 2025, leaving fans even more upset.
As fans recall, Will finally pieced together the pieces of his repressed memories in Will Trent season 2 episode 8, and it was even more unsettling than anyone could have imagined. Will has been experiencing flashes of a forgotten memory from his childhood throughout the season, and a case he solves in episode eight helps him finally solve the puzzle. As a teenager, Will had a foster mother, Anna, who he treated very well (unlike his other foster parents). But Anna’s partner, Jack, was abusive, so Will hid his foster father’s gun to protect her.
[Will Trent season 2] episode 10 features more scenes of Will trying to process his trauma, while also discovering more painful information about his past.
One night, when Jack injured Anna, Will grabbed the gun and shot Jack in the arm. Jack wrestled the gun away from Will, hit him with it, and nearly killed him, but Anna intervened. Sadly, Jack shot and killed Anna, and Will felt responsible for his foster mother’s death. As a result, his brain repressed the memory, causing him to forget it until now. Will’s uncle Antonio took him to Puerto Rico in episode nine to escape the trauma he’s been rediscovering, but Will’s backstory will return in the Will Trent season 2 finale. “In [episode] eight, we get to see the culmination of the childhood trauma that Will has blocked from his memory,” Ramón Rodríguez tells TVLine. “[It] comes together—the meaning and the symbolism of it—and it’s very intense. And we get a reprieve, we get a moment to come up for air, but very quickly [we’re] pulled back under the water again with a really intense twist. But I will say it’s a really intense ending [to the season] that I don’t think people saw coming, and it’s a case that pays off in a really hard way.”
The reveal of Will’s past is shocking in itself, but according to Rodríguez, the show has more tricks up its sleeve. Episode 10 features more of Will trying to process his trauma, while also uncovering more distressing information about his past. In the next hour, the GBI and APD team up to solve a serial killer case that began in episode
