Will Grady (Justin Timberlake), the real estate consultant in Reptile, was like those men who would never let the other person know what was going on inside his mind. He could camouflage his intentions, and that’s why he had been able to sail through the interrogation process at the earlier stage, and nobody got suspicious about him as there were other dubious characters who fit the bill more than he did. He seemed like this good guy who respected his partner, did well in his career, loved his family, and took care of everybody around him, but there was a side to him that no one knew about. He was involved in all sorts of dubious practices, and for years, he had been reaping the benefits from them. Will probably knew that he had the system in his grasp, and no matter what happened, no one would ever come to know about what he and others were up to. Maybe that’s why he went about his business in an unabashed manner because he had cracked the code, and he knew that the ones who pulled the reins were also on his side. There was a tragedy that took place, and Will Grady found himself in the middle of a murder investigation, with a relentless cop heading the process who was not ready to stop before he found out the truth.
Spoiler Alert
How did Will get Summer killed?
In the very first scene of Reptile, we see Will Grady making an advance on his partner, Summer, but she pushed him away and didn’t tell him why she was behaving like that. There was something going on inside Summer’s mind that she wasn’t comfortable telling even her partner about it. Will and his mother, Camille, had organized a conference for aspiring private estate consultants, and he wanted Summer to be there. But Summer didn’t turn up, and she gave a reason that she hadn’t been able to wake up. It had started to bother Will how Summer had been acting for the past few days, but he controlled his anger, probably because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to help her cause. Then, one day, Will came to check on Summer, as he knew that she would be at a property that had been put up for sale. Will found Summer lying inside that property in a pool of blood, and he immediately called the authorities and let them know that his partner had been murdered. Obviously, because he was present at the crime scene, he was added to the list of suspects, but Tom and other police officers never had any doubts about his intentions, as there was no motive on his part that was known up until then.
Will Grady, together with Wally, was involved in illegal sale of properties and they had a very detailed plan in place through which they carried out their business without making the authorities suspicious about it. They were probably running a drug trafficking ring too, and since a lot of other high level police officers and influential people were on their payroll, they were able to have their way without any kind of hassle. Now Summer had come to know about it, and she had also realized that people like Allen and senior officer Marty were also involved in it. She knew that she couldn’t approach the Scarborough police department since she could not trust anybody there, and so she decided that she would call the FBI and let them know what was happening in the town. Unfortunately for Summer, the FBI didn’t pay a lot of attention to her information, and she was stranded, not knowing who she should approach or what she should do next. She must have felt petrified and helpless at the same time, but her conscience just didn’t let her turn a blind eye to the entire scam. Will Grady and Wally must have come to know about what she had been up to, and so they sent their hitman, Rudi Rackozy, to get the job done, and the man killed her in the most brutal manner possible. He devoured her like a reptile, and the poor girl met her tragic and fateful end.
Why did Will kill Eli Phillips?
Eli had a longstanding grudge against the entire Grady family, as they had taken over his father’s farm and forced them to make a deal when they clearly didn’t want to sell their land. Since that time, Eli has been tracking Will’s movement, and he was the first to tell Tom that it was Will who had killed his partner. At that moment, obviously, Tom couldn’t believe him because Eli already had a vendetta against him, and he thought that the man just wanted revenge. But it was not so, as Eli was actually speaking the truth, and the accusations he was making were not baseless. Eli had stolen a pen drive from Will’s office, which had all the documentation about the purchases the company named White Fish had made over the years. Will knew that by looking at the details in the pen drive, anybody would have gotten to know what they were up to. Will went to Eli’s house and threatened to give the pen drive. Eli obviously didn’t agree to it and he ended up paying a huge price for his stubbornness. We believe that Will and Wally would have decided to kill Eli and dispose of his body. Maybe they used acid to dissolve his body, or they buried it somewhere, but after that day, Eli Phillips vanished without leaving behind any trace of evidence.
How did Will Brady get caught?
After Rudi Rackozy was caught with 13 kgs of heroin, Tom realized that Wally was involved in the drug trafficking business and also illegal sale of properties, though he knew that he was not acting alone. The biggest piece of evidence that made Tom realize that even Will Brady was involved in the scheme of things was the call records of Rudi Rackozy. Rudi had called a specific number 17 times on the day Summer was murdered. Tom had gotten to know that the phone number belonged to a property trust, and that’s when he realized that Will Brady was the one who was behind the murder of Summer.
So Wally used to plant drugs on a particular property, which was then seized by the authorities and eventually went for sale at a lower price. The White Fish Company bought all those properties, and then Will sold it back again, and the cycle has been ongoing for many years now. Tom was still connecting the dots when he found a Chrysler Imperial parked in Allen’s garage that they had been wanting to find for a very long time. Summer hadn’t gotten a single penny for the last six houses she had sold, since all of them had been seized, and Will Brady hid that fact from the authorities. At the end of the Reptile, after the massacre that happened at Allen’s house, the truth came out, and the police officers reached out to arrest Brady, who was playing golf at the time.
Will Brady was an extremely inhuman and selfish man, and though we don’t know if he was the one who had come up with the idea of killing Summer, he was more than an accomplice, and all he cared about was saving himself and his illegal business. He told lies during the investigation, and days after the murder, he was seen hanging out with another girl, which made us realize that Summer didn’t mean anything to him. From the multiple phone calls made by Rudi, to the shared postal address of White Fish and Active Duty Consulting, Tom had all the evidence at his disposal, which he would present in the court. It would be quite tough for Will from hereon to save himself, but he would try to use his influence in the area and the money to find some loophole in the law and be released as soon as possible.
