TV Recap: A Split-Second Decision Will Haunt "Will Trent" Forever

Will Trent is in hot water this week, or should I say cold blood? The GBI’s star Special Agent has made several mistakes recently, which have culminated in a tragic death. We find Will Trent dealing with a mess beyond repair in the latest episode, which feels like it’s building up to this season’s finale. Let’s recap.

Season 3, Episode 11 - “Best of Your Recollection" - Written by Rebecca Murga

Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez) sits on the other side of the table in an interrogation room, blood on his forehead, hands, and sleeves: None of it is his. Captain Heller (Todd Allen Durkin) enters and asks for Will’s weapons, his ammo removed for inspection. Will is given a Miranda Waiver to sign, but his dyslexia prevents him from reading it. He knows what it says, but he’s in shock, and Heller needs to follow the process. Asked about a lawyer, Will tells the APD Captain that he doesn’t need one. Heller warns him that the Atlanta Mayor is looking to close this quickly, strongly advising him to get legal counsel or he could go to jail. Released, Will gets in an elevator, looking back on what led to this moment.

In a flashback to 2 hours prior, Will was chasing a man named Paco (Marsuvio Sanchez) down the stairs of an apartment building, trailed by his partner, Faith Mitchell (Iantha Richardson). Paco tossed a trash can in Will’s path, forcing him to trip and giving Paco more distance. As Paco disappeared around a corner, Faith saw an alternative path to catch up to him and left Will, who followed Paco back into the building through a fire escape. When Will rounded the corner, Paco was standing at the door to an apartment with a gun drawn. There was a bang, and Will fired his gun twice, shooting Paco in the shoulder. He was in the process of handcuffing Paco when the adjacent apartment door opened and a teenager (Nico Gomez) stepped out, yelling for help. It was then that Will noticed one of his bullets had hit the wall, blasting through it. He chained Paco to a pipe and rushed in to find another teenager who had been shot in the chest. A neighbor (Jasmine Yampierre) stepped in and saw what happened, screaming, just as Faith rushed in. Will asked her to call an ambulance. Faith was stunned, asking what had happened. “I shot him," Will said, panicking.

The mood is tense at the GBI as Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn) tries to manage the crisis with HR (Henry Basemore) and PR(Fred Galyean) representatives. Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen) passes by on her way to Will’s office, hearing Amanda tell the team that Will Trent’s record is unimpeachable.

Will sits at his desk, still covered in blood. Angie heard that Will refused an attorney, and she came to try to help him see reason. She tells him she knows how he’s feeling right now, and he’s not thinking about himself, which is why an attorney could help. And it just so happens that Will Trent is dating one who enters on queue. As Marion Alba (Gina Rodriguez) steps in, Angie encourages him to accept her help.

Marion tells Will she is taking some days off to recuse herself from the case, but is acting as his friend and advisor. She warns him that Odessa Shaw is the lead investigator for all officer-involved shootings and that she is very thorough. Marion wants to review all of the details from the last 24 hours of Will’s life to help him prepare. “I was teaching you how to cook," he recalls about last night.

24 hours ago, after making a bad dinner, Will and Marion took it to Michael Ormewood’s (Jake McLaughlin) house. Along with Faith, they played Pictionary and had a lot of fun. But when Faith ended up at the table alone, with Will’s phone, she saw that her son, Jeremy, was trying to call Will. The mood became tense when she called Will back to the dining room, asking why her son was trying to call him. Will nervously took the call, but Faith pulled his phone away, demanding her son explain why he’s been ignoring her calls but talking to Will. Their argument moved to the backyard, where Will told Faith about how he saved Jeremy from going to jail by making him an informant. Faith was furious, but their fight was interrupted by Marion asking if they were alright. Will said they have to go, and that was that.

Will still refuses to tell Marion what he and Faith fought about. She warns him that nothing from the past 24 hours can be private with Odessa, and since Faith is being questioned separately, their stories need to be in synch or he will look guilty. Will asks for a break, going to the bathroom to wash the blood off his hands and face. As he washes up, Faith enters, checking the stalls to make sure they’re alone. She warns Will that they need to keep Jeremy’s name out of the report because CI’s (Confidential Informants) are often killed when their details are exposed. “You keep my son’s name out of that report," she warns him.

Captain Heller serves as a witness as Faith is interviewed by Odessa Shaw (Kecia Lewis), who gets granular with the details, trying to see if Faith’s diabetes could’ve impaired her that morning. The assignment was to follow up on a request from the Alabama State Police to locate a man named Francisco Ortiz who missed a probation hearing. Faith says this was a routine request, and backup isn’t usually required. Asked about Will, Faith tells Odessa that his behavior was perfectly ordinary.

Faith lied. In a flashback, Will and Faith's moods are tense as they arrive on the scene together. Faith revealed that she was putting in a request for a new partner. When Will tried to talk about it, she got out of the car. They went into the building to knock on the door of an apartment where Francisco was believed to be. The man who answered, Paco, said he was Francisco’s cousin. When he found out they were with the GBI, he barged past them and ran for it, resulting in the chase.

Odessa asks Faith why she separated from Will when protocol is for agents to stay together. Captain Heller intervenes, pointing out that deviations from protocol are allowed in the field when the situation calls for it. Faith says she saw an alternative way for Paco to escape, and she thought she could cover all their bases. Unfortunately, the path she took led to a locked gate. That’s where she was when she heard the gunshots. Faith is sure she only heard two gunshots, which differs from Will’s account of Paco firing before he shot back twice. Odessa asks Faith if she saw Paco’s gun. “No. I never saw a gun," she confirms, “but if Will Trent says there was a gun, then there was a gun."

Marion runs through the number of gunshots with Will. He is certain that Paco shot at him before he fired twice. He closes his eyes and tries to visualize the scene. Marion asks if he saw anyone else there. Will remembers a woman with a red scarf who ran into her apartment and slammed the door just before the shots were fired. Marion asks Will if the door slamming could’ve been mistaken for a gunshot. Will says no, Paco definitely shot a gun, but his memory seems to be changing. He no longer sees Paco with a gun, and he asks Marion why she’s asking these questions. “Did they find a gun at the scene?" he asks. Marion shakes her head. Amanda enters to announce that Odessa is ready for Will. There’s no more time to prepare.

Angie and Ormewood go to the apartment building to assist with the investigation. As Angie looks at a bullet casing on the ground with an evidence marker, she notices a woman with a red scarf peeking out at the activity in the hallway. There aren’t any security cameras in the building, and there weren’t any eyewitnesses to back up Will’s story. Another officer, Randolph (Drez Ryan), tells Angie that the woman hasn’t been willing to talk to the police. Ormewood asks Randolph to go get some tacos while he and Angie try to work with the neighbor. Angie notices that the doorbell is a kind used by deaf people. The woman, Ruth (Deanne Bray), tells them to go away, and her daughter, Lily (Margot Anderson Song), comes to the door to assist. Angie uses her notebook to write a message, asking if they can help answer a few questions. Lily reluctantly lets them in.

Ruth sits at her sewing machine as Angie and Ormewood enter the small apartment. There’s a family photo nearby of Ruth, Lily, and a son. Ruth grabs the photo and hides it, then signs something to Lily that reveals her frustration. Lily asks Ormewood to leave, saying he reminds Ruth of an officer who messed things up when her brother died. Ormewood obliges, and Angie apologizes. Angie asks what the officer messed up, and Lily tells her they misplaced her brother's body at the morgue, so the funeral had to be delayed, and his belongings were never returned. Angie gets his name, Oscar, and has Lily teach her how to sign an apology, making that gesture to Ruth before leaving.

Angie asks Randolph to see if he can find anything about Oscar’s unreturned belongings. Meanwhile, a cellphone video from a neighbor has been turned in. It shows Will holding the shot boy, telling Faith he shot him. The camera then pans down the hallway to Paco on the floor. Someone is walking away from the scene, seemingly putting something in their bag as they go to the laundry room down the hall. Angie and Ormewood search the laundry room, finding a string hanging out of an air duct. Ormewood goes in and comes out with a tin lunchbox full of drugs. At the bottom of the box is a gun, which they send to the lab for inspection. Unfortunately, it comes back without any fingerprints or DNA.

This information has made its way to Odessa in real time, and she shares it with Will as part of her interview. She gets to her last question, asking the GBI Agent why he didn’t wait for an ambulance.

In a flashback, Faith tells Will that the ambulance will be there in 20 minutes. The neighbor says they never get emergency services there in under 40 minutes because it’s a bad neighborhood. Will, who is trying to stop the boy’s bleeding, tells Faith they can’t wait. Will sits with the boy in the back seat, putting pressure on his wound, as Faith drives with the sirens on. They encounter deadlocked traffic near the hospital, so Faith puts on the hazard lights and continues on foot to get a gurney and a doctor.

Will tells Odessa that the boy would’ve died if they hadn’t acted. “He did die," she corrects him. Will looks down at his bloody sleeves.

Angie returns to Ruth and Lily’s apartment with a bag. Ruth sobs as she opens it, finding Oscar’s belongings. She motions to Lily, who gets up and goes to the doorbell’s receiver, removing an SD card and giving it to Angie. She reveals that the doorbell has a camera in it, but they didn’t want to get in trouble with any neighbors. “We have to live here," she explains. “We just want to stay out of it."

Odessa steps back into Will’s interrogation room to announce that video footage has been turned in of the altercation. Paco did have a gun, and he drew it at Will, but never fired. However,  Will’s actions have been deemed justifiable, and he is cleared of all charges. “You don’t want to hear how he died?" Will asks, stunned. Odessa tells him that the bullet hit his thoracic aorta, so he would’ve died no matter what. Will wants to talk about it, but Odessa is cold, telling him he will have to live with those details.

Marion visits Will at his desk to share that he’s going to be put on desk duty until his mandatory counseling is done. Captain Heller and Amanda Wagner enter. Heller gives Will a replacement gun until his comes back from the crime lab, and Will signs for it. Amanda tells him he will be OK. Alone, Marion tries to cheer up Will, saying, “It was a clean shoot," meaning there are no penalties. “I killed a 14-year-old boy today, Marion," Will bitterly replies, closing the gun case and getting up to leave. Marion offers help, whatever Will needs, trying to be there for him the way he’s been there for her. But he doesn’t want anything from her. “There’s no such thing as a clean shoot," he says on his way out.

Will returns to his dark, mostly empty home. Not even his adorable chihuahua, Betty, can cheer him up. She cries outside the bathroom door as Will washes blood off all of his belongings.

Will grieves the boy’s death, remembering what happened after Faith left the car. He asked the boy’s name, Marco (Tony Aparicio), and learned that he skipped school. Marco was worried his mom would be upset with him, and wanted to be with her. He asked Will if he was going to be OK, and Will told him he would be. But moments later, Marco lost consciousness. Will checked his pulse, and it was gone. He began to break down, apologizing to the boy, as he started to yell for help.

On the inside, Will Trent is still yelling for help at his bathroom sink. Only the sound of the doorbell brings him out of his fugue. He walks slowly to the front door, like a zombie, opening it to find Angie there. She steps in and hugs him. The person who understands him more than anyone else in the world. The only person Will knows who could possibly understand what he’s going through. Will sobs into Angie’s shoulder.

On the kitchen table that Will and Angie refurbished together, we see Will’s phone. Marion is trying to call. And as that call goes unanswered, we see that she’s been trying to reach him all night.

Songs Featured in This Episode:

Next Episode: “You’re the Worst Person In the World" - Airing Tuesday, April 1st, at 8/7c on ABC

While grappling with his own trauma, Will goes undercover at Olas Collective, a suspicious wellness community, to uncover the truth behind the organization and investigate a string of deaths tied to its members.