The finale of ABC’s Season 1 crime drama Will Trent was completely worth the wait that the showrunners put us through in the weeks in between. The penultimate episode ended with Will Trent’s girlfriend, Angie Pulaski, getting kidnapped by a psycho killer who’s been active since 1986. His M.O. had been murdering sex workers and sewing their mouths shut, and he’d made a return. As the entire GBI and APD start looking for Detective Angie Pulaski, the tension reaches a crescendo. Is Trent able to catch the killer, and does Angie survive? Find out what happens in the Will Trent season finale.
Spoilers Ahead
Tracing Back The Steps
While the forensic department and the cops scour Trent’s place, looking for clues following Angie’s kidnapping, the special agent suddenly realizes he can’t find his recorder. The brilliant detective that he is, Trent begins retracing the things Angie must’ve done based on the myriad clues she’d left behind. The security system had been turned off, so Angie never realized the kidnapper was sneaking in; she had her back turned to him, and it was Betty who alerted her about the intruder. He’d tried strangling her, but the two fought, and Betty even bit the attacker as Angie fled into the bathroom with Trent’s recorder. Inside, she puts Betty inside the hamper where she was found in Will Trent Episode 12 and puts in a description of the attacker before keeping the recorder inside the mirror cabinet. The attacker had then broken in and taken Angie away, but he didn’t know about the recorder. The intruder is described as medium-built, 6′ tall, and blue-eyed, and that’s enough to get the cops started looking for the psycho. Trent returns to the case after being taken off by Amanda Wagner and alerts everyone that there are 42 hours before the murderer kills Angie.
The Gold Jaguar
At the GBI, Trent looks at the old case files from 1986 with Amanda and Evelyn Mitchell, but his boss tries to stop him from looking at the Lucy Morales file—his mother. Evelyn informs him that the attacker kept Lucy alive for a long time, and she died in childbirth, and Trent wishes to speak to the superiors of Evelyn and Amanda from the ’80s. Former captain Mitchell tells Trent that Rick was injured and went out of commission, but Butch can be found. Before leaving, Trent asks if the ladies know about his father, but they don’t because Lucy never revealed it. In 1986, when officers Amanda and Evelyn approached detectives Rick and Butch and alerted them about the golden Jaguar that’d been spotted watching the sex workers, the superiors chose to be sexist instead of acting. Butch proceeded to make sexual threats to Amanda when she reminded the pig that she was an officer and she had a hunch that something bad was about to happen.
Both Faith and Michael Ormewood learn from the neighbors that an unlicensed gold Jaguar has been spotted in Trent’s area, and when Faith calls to inform his partner, Trent connects the dots from ’86. He adds that he’s in the area where Brooke Miller was found, and hence, this killer intentionally drops the bodies in a visible spot because he’s arrogant. The two deduce that there must be some connection between the victims that superseded their profession, and Faith agrees to look at the boxes of the victims once more. Trent gets another call while looking through the trash, and a raspy voice says he’s right behind Trent, calling him “Trashcan.” Trent turns to find a Jaguar staring at him, and when he questions where Angie is, the car speeds at him, so he must dodge at the last moment to escape being run over.
At Trent’s place, Paul Campano has brought over an entire supply of hand lotions to sniff out the one the killer was wearing from the time he tried strangling Campano. Trent seems restless to catch the killer while he recounts that the murderer is targeting people related to Trent’s childhood, meaning he holds Trent responsible for his mother’s death. Campano asks the agent to calm down and show some affection to the chihuahua who’d bravely bitten the attacker. Trent picks up Betty and cuddles her before leaving to find more information about the suspect. Butch shows up at the GBI, and Evelyn, Amanda, and Trent question his methods, and as it turns out, he’s just as awful and nauseating as he was four decades ago. Trent notes the injury on Butch’s finger before directly considering him as a suspect in these recent murders, along with a few choice words that seem to infuriate the detective. Butch leaves huffing, but the older ladies inform Trent that the killer is meticulous and careful, so it can’t be the misogynist Butch because he’d once thrown up at a crime scene.
A Blast From The Past
Faith arrives to alert the lot that a witness has resurfaced from the past, but she warns Trent that he needs to use caution while speaking to her. The warning turns out to be for good reason because Trent meets Kitty, one of the victims of the psycho from ’86, but who miraculously made it out alive. There’s no question that she’s who she claims to be because of the faded sewing wounds across her lips, and she’s severely traumatized. She narrates how a customer had asked her to get into his car and then blindfolded her, but after he started strangling her seriously, she began screaming. This is when he’d sewn her mouth shut and left the car without locking it, which was Kitty’s opportunity to crawl out and run as fast and hard as she could. When Trent asks her for more details about the killer, Kitty screams in panic, saying the murderer never stops until he feels like it, and it’s obvious she’s spent her whole life since the encounter in fear.
Angie’s Fate
Speaking of fear, in some undisclosed location, Angie warns the kidnapper who’s standing before her that he won’t get any screams or tears from her lest he sews her mouth or eyes shut. He leaves her in the basement as she quietly sobs before listening intently to the footsteps to make a mental note of the escape route she’ll have to take. At the GBI, Ormewood, and Faith arrive to show Trent a note from Juice’s attorney, James Ulster, from the ’80s, which reads that Butch was known to beat up sex workers. Amanda and Evelyn head over to gather more information about the same from Ulster and ask Faith, Ormewood, and Trent to keep their eyes fixed on Butch in the meantime. The two ladies arrive at the place Ulster frequents, but the lawyer is with a client, so Evelyn quickly draws the man away, asking him for a dance, while Amanda questions the lawyer. After a bit of hesitation, he admits that Butch was known to sexually assault sex workers and was severely rough with them, and his antics didn’t exclude strangling the women. Meanwhile, the three agents decide to scare Butch by cornering him when he steps out of a bar. Threatened, Butch decides the best course of action would be to bring out a sniper rifle from his trunk and aim at the special agents. Ormewood brings out an assault rifle and aims it at Butch, and when the horrid detective keeps throwing slurs at sex workers, Trent tells Ormewood to bring him down. A well-placed bullet in his arm downs Butch, and he’s later found at the hospital, unconscious after surgery. Trent wants to question him, but Amanda arrives to inform him that another body has been found, and it was dropped when the agents had Butch surrounded, so he can’t be the murderer. However, he’s not spotless; instead, he’s a rapist, so he’ll be convicted anyway.
Another Murder
Amanda and Trent arrive at the crime scene to find that it’s Kitty who has been murdered, with her lips sewn shut once more. Trent learns that Kitty freaked out and ran from the safe house where she was being kept, but she never reached home, and he expresses his frustration and sadness at not being able to save Kitty and starts questioning if Angie is even alive. Just then, Trent gets another phone call, and it’s from the psycho, who says he couldn’t help himself but murder the victim that’d once slipped through. Trent shouts at the murderer to come to get him instead of harming the innocents, but the psycho hangs up. At the office, Trent is at his wit’s end and feels frustrated when, in his mind, he sees Lucy appear, who consoles him and hugs him. He says he’s got several questions for her, including if he’s ever made her proud, and she assures her that he has. She regrets not being able to watch him grow up and says her son is very special and should never listen to anyone who says otherwise. He questions her about his father, her life, and several other things, but she stays quiet, and in the end, she says that it’s the normal people who read top to bottom and left to right. After Trent returns to the present from his reverie, he suddenly spots the paper that Ormewood had brought about. Butch’s markings match the markings of a paper from four months later.
When the murderer approaches Angie with a box in his hand, he finds her unconscious, and upon trying to shake her awake, she attacks him and breaks herself free to escape. She runs for the front door, but it’s locked, so she grabs the phone and dials Trent’s number, but by the time Trent picks up, Angie is on the floor, and the attacker says he has smashed her brain and spine. Trent calls the psycho by his name, and it’s none other than James Ulster, the lawyer who was present in everything. While Trent heads over to Ulster’s place, Amanda and Evelyn are worried that they’ve not heard from him when Paul Campano barges in, claiming he’s solved the mystery. Campano says the fragrance he’d found on the attacker is the smell of the soap from the men’s room at the By George restaurant. Evelyn immediately remembers that it’s the place that Ulster always visits, and they know where to go.
Final Showdown
Trent arrives at the psycho’s house, but Ulster is in no hurry to take him to Angie and instead drinks champagne from a bottle and even offers Trent a glass that he obviously refuses. While Trent itches to rip the monster into pieces, Ulster goes on to explain how happy he was with Lucy and how she’d only briefly screamed before talking for hours, and Trent has to ask if this monster is his father. Ulster says no father would leave his son in a trashcan before taking out a revolver and leading Trent into the basement, where Angie lies unconscious. He then says that since Trent killed Lucy as soon as he was born, Ulster is going to kill Angie so that they can be even, and Trent’s anger crescendoes, and he begins brutally beating the psychopath. He’s about to blow the psycho’s brains out when he’s distracted by Angie’s feeble voice, and he rushes over to attend to her. He makes her move her tongue, her fingers, and her toes to see if her spine has been damaged, but what he doesn’t see is that her toes don’t move. With police sirens in the background, Trent puts a foot on Ulster’s back and arrests him for murdering several people, but he suddenly notices the psycho frothing at the mouth. He’d drank the champagne laced with poison so that he’d not live to be arrested, and Trent starts thumping on Ulster’s chest because he won’t let his mother’s killer take the easy route. APD arrives led by Amanda, and as she watches Trent, she’s reminded of the time in ’86.
Baby In A Trashcan
Evelyn and Amanda had followed the gold Jaguar to a shady place where the attacker had shoved Amanda and fled, and she’d run into a room to find Lucy dead, having bled out in childbirth. She immediately starts looking for the baby, and while looking through the several trash cans, she hears a baby’s cry from one of the cans and finds a baby in it. Amanda had immediately taken up the baby and held him to her chest with immense love, and the same Amanda looked down at the child decades later, fuming at the fact that a psycho may get the easy way out.
Who Was Lucy Morales? Who Had Killed Her?
At the hospital, the doctor informs Trent, Faith, and Ormewood that immediate treatment has been given to Angie, and she’s out of danger, but her lower body’s movement hasn’t returned yet. Trent fears paralysis, but the doctor assures him that, for now, he should focus on the fact that she’s alive and in her senses. Ulster isn’t dead but, in a coma, and Amanda hopes that he’s experiencing hell, wherever he might be. Ormewood leaves for home as Evelyn sits beside Trent and says Amanda’s father’s name was Wilbur, and her mother’s maiden name was Trent. Amanda had been the one who’d found Trent that night and taken her home, and she’d even bought a brand-new crib for the baby with plans to raise him as her own. However, three weeks later, given how regressed society was back then, she’d have to give him up, but she never would’ve thought he’d bounce around from foster home to foster home. Evelyn adds that it was fate that 19 years later, Trent was arrested and taken to the same station where Amanda was a cop, so the two are connected.
Trent walks up to Amanda, who looks at her reflection in the glass of a coffee dispensing machine and sees the woman she used to be. He stands beside her, and neither can come up with words that’d explain the welling emotions, so Trent just says, “Thank you,” and she hands her a small envelope before walking away. Inside the envelope is the necklace that Lucy used to wear, and he thinks about the mother he never knew. Trent finds out the truth about his identity: that his mother was Lucy Morales, a sex worker who was murdered by James Ulster, the primary antagonist. He’d been rescued by Amanda Wagner, which explains why she cared about him so much, even though she seldom showed it. She’s the one who gave him his name and shielded him when she found him again 19 years later. Finally, he gets the only piece of his mother, the necklace that Amanda had kept safe all these years, hoping that she’d be able to hand it to Trent when the time was right. Season 1 of “Will Trent” ends on a bittersweet note, where Trent finds out about his past, his early life, and his mother, but he’ll never experience her love. Thus, he clutches onto the necklace for dear life because that’s the only link he has with his mother as he gears up for new challenges he’s to face when Season 2 arrives.
