‘Will Trent’ Episode 12 Recap & Ending, Explained: How Is Will’s Past Connected To The Murders?

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ABC’s detective drama series “Will Trent” returns with a greatly balanced episode, combining the past and the present to weave a tense mystery that is thoroughly enjoyable. Last week, we witnessed how APD’s Angie Polaski falsely claimed to have killed Lenny only in order to save the teenage stepdaughter who had actually stabbed him. While Angie’s disciplinary hearing is awaited and the detective remains temporarily suspended from duty, a new series of gruesome murders start to occur, and links with Will and Angie’s past are gradually found. What is even more interesting is the fact that the case is also linked with an old case that Amanda Wagner and Evelyn Mitchell worked on together many years ago when they were new in the police profession.

 Spoilers Ahead


What Is The Connection Between The Murders And Will And Angie’s Childhood?

The case at present begins with the body of a murdered woman being found, with a very odd characteristic about it—the eyelids and mouth of the body had been sewn shut, and a single puncture wound on the chest suggested that a screwdriver had been driven into her heart. While the APD’s Michael Ormewood looks into this case, the GBI’s Faith Mitchell informs them that they had already found another body, this time of a male, a few days ago, which had all the same odd characteristics. One more strange similarity found in the two bodies was that both their nails had been painted with the same red polish, suggesting that it was the work of the killer. The two victims, one a woman belonging to an upper-middle-class status and the other a man struggling to pay his bills, seem very different from each other, making it all the more strange that both had been murdered by a possible serial killer. Since detective Angie Polaski is still out of the APD, Michael Ormewood partners up with Faith Mitchell and interrogates the husband of the murdered woman, and from him, they get to know that the woman had spent her childhood and years as a minor at an orphanage home. Around this same time, Will goes through the belongings of the murdered man and realizes that he knew him in the past.

Going over to meet with Angie, who is at his house packing up her things to move back to her apartment, Will reveals more about the two murdered victims. They had both actually grown up in the same orphanage where Will and Angie used to live, the Holy Grace Children’s Home. The reason Will takes this long to identify the victims is that he had last seen them as children and also knew them by their original names, Teddy Connor and Brooke Tandy, which had changed after they had been adopted and married, respectively. Only sometime later, Paul Campano comes over to Will’s house in order to report an attack on his life that had just taken place. Paul had also grown up in the same children’s home, and the character was earlier seen in episode 1 and episode 2 when a friend of his daughter had been found murdered in his house. Paul now says that he had entered his car to drive home from the gym when he realized that someone might have broken into it. Just then, someone sitting in the backseat tried to strangle Paul with a belt. The only reason Paul survived was that he threw his protein drink on the attacker’s face, and the perpetrator, therefore, had to rush out. This attack on Paul Campano confirms Will’s suspicion that someone was intentionally hunting down people who had lived in the Holy Grace Children’s Home during their childhood.

As their first suspect to look into, Will and Angie decide on a boy they knew as Percy, who used to be a terrible creep during their childhood days and could now very well be linked to the crimes. The GBI special agent asks his partner Faith and Ormewood to find any information about Percy at present, but this turns out to be an extremely time-consuming task. Although the GBI and the APD have been working together on this case, meaning that both their resources were being used, no information on anyone named Percy could be found in the state records. Like numerous other instances throughout “Will Trent,” this matter is also there to highlight the very little care or concern shown towards individuals who grow up in the orphanage system. In order to find out more about Percy themselves, Will and Angie return to their old orphanage, which is now just an abandoned building. Visiting the place where they had not very pleasant memories is a difficult task for the protagonists, but they still make their way in. However, Will finds that all the documents and paperwork that once used to be kept in the office room have been moved away recently, making it clear that the perpetrator must have done so in order to hide their identity and information about their present life. But the detectives do manage to find a clue, with the help of Will’s dog Betty, as a decorative box had been left behind as if only for Will and Angie to find. The box contains an old group photograph of all the kids that had been raised at the children’s home, and three particular children have their eyes crossed out, signifying that they had been made the target and have been killed. While the first two kids are Teddy and Brooke, the third, named David Reynolds, has not been killed yet. But just then, Will’s phone rings and someone from the GBI informs him that David Reynolds has also been found murdered in the same fashion as the others.

Investigating David’s death, it is found that he had been contacted by a certain Georgia Housing Endowment agency, which claimed that David was entitled to some monetary settlement because he had lived at Holy Grace Children’s Home. David had responded to this information and had gone missing since then, meaning that this fake agency was directly linked to the man’s death. After some time, Will and Ormewood find the target they had been looking for—Percy, or Perseus Larson as he is now called—and it is found that Percy was the one sending these fake letters to each of the victims who had died. The man is arrested and brought in for questioning, but he claims to have nothing to do with the murders. Percy admits that he works as a private investigator, and it was he who removed all the paperwork from the orphanage building. But the reason he had done so was because someone had anonymously appointed him to a case. This case involved posing as the fake Georgia Housing Endowment agency and reaching out to the people who had spent their childhood at the orphanage. In fact, Percy had also been approached because he was part of the same group, and the person who had hired him had learned about him from an article that had been written about Will Trent solving the case regarding Paul Campano. Will now finds the article and realizes that it described the Holy Grace Children’s Home in full detail, and therefore these serial killings technically originated from that very article.


What Does Amanda Wagner Reveal About Will’s Past?

Along with being linked to Will and Angie’s childhood at the orphanage, this serial killing case is also quite linked to Amanda Wagner’s own professional career. In 1986, Amanda Wagner had recently joined the Atlanta Police Force and had become very good friends with her partner, Evelyn Mitchell. Being Black women in a predominantly male and white police department, the two had to face extreme misogyny and professional harassment, but both were determined to do something good for the people and society. One time, during their regular traffic beat, Amanda and Evelyn found the body of a woman who had been killed and left behind in the same manner as the victims of the serial killer in the present day. Identifying the same characteristics and modus operandi that were being used, Amanda now calls upon the help of Evelyn, and together they relive the days of their initial investigation. The woman murdered in 1986 was found to be a prostitute who worked around the neighborhood. Her pimp, a suspicious man named Julius Walker, or Juice, used to regularly beat up the women he worked with, and in the end, it was Juice who had been punished for the crime. Although Amanda and Evelyn did not really believe Juice had committed the murder, they could not really investigate any further as they were shut off by their male superiors at the APD. At present, the two women discuss how Juice died of old age in prison a few years ago, meaning that he could not be linked to the current crimes, but they suspect that the man could have talked about his acts to someone in prison, and they are now impersonating him.

In order to find out more about the case, Amanda and Evelyn meet with the lawyer who had represented Juice and learn of a different suspect that had been initially thought of in the 1986 case. Many of the women who used to work for Juice had reported that a man who was their regular client used to take time to carefully put nail polish on their hands, and this act seemed eerily similar to the act of putting color on the nails of the dead woman. However, no particular details about this man could be found, so the suspicion could not be pursued any further. At present, Amanda keeps all of this a secret from Will because these memories bring up a different suppressed memory in her as well. Also, the GBI official truly wants to keep Will safe because she genuinely cares about him. Around the same time in 1986, Amanda and Evelyn had grown very close to a Puerto Rican woman named Lucy Morales, who was also a sex worker in the same area. Lucy had gotten pregnant, and she was fully determined to have the child and raise it by herself, so Amanda had convinced her to leave her profession and start living in a shelter run by nuns. Amanda and Evelyn had ensured that Lucy would be taken in, and the woman had agreed to go to the place with them the next morning. But Amanda and Evelyn were held back unfairly by their male colleagues and were therefore late in meeting Lucy. By the time they arrived at the designated meeting spot, Lucy was nowhere to be seen, but signs of her presence were left behind.

Lucy had been kidnapped and then possibly killed in the next few days. It can be assumed that she gave birth within these days and that the baby had been left behind in a dumpster. As fate had it, this baby grew up to be Will Trent, someone Amanda had found when he was a teenager and had then carefully looked after. But Amanda did not initially know that Will was the son of Lucy; it was only some years later, when she started looking into Will’s past, that she found that he was actually the son of the woman who had been so dear to her. Amanda had never told Will about any of this until now, at the very end of “Will Trent” episode 12, and her extra love and care for the detective came out of a very maternal feeling toward him. After hearing all of this, Will is hurt and angry that Amanda has decided it was better for him not to know, and he walks away from her office.


What Can We Expect From ‘Will Trent’ Episode 13?

“Will Trent” episode 12 ends with one last shocker when Ormewood and the rest of the APD officials remain seated for Angie’s disciplinary hearing, but the woman is still nowhere to be seen. On the other side, Will returns home to find the place ransacked, with clear evidence of someone having broken in. Making use of his sharp investigation skills, Will then finds a photograph lying on the floor, and this happens to be a photo of Angie, but her eyes have been crossed out by someone. Such an ending raises the tension as Angie has been clearly kidnapped from Will’s house by the perpetrator, and she is in grave danger. Will now not only has to find the serial killer but also rescue the love of his life from their evil grasp. His recent falling out with Amanda Wagner will perhaps make things difficult for such an investigation, or the case might even reunite the characters. Either way, “Will Trent” episode 13 is going to be one worth waiting for.


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Sourya Sur Roy
Sourya Sur Roy
Sourya keeps an avid interest in all sorts of films, history, sports, videogames and everything related to New Media. Holding a Master of Arts degree in Film Studies, he is currently working as a teacher of Film Studies at a private school and also remotely as a Research Assistant and Translator on a postdoctoral project at UdK Berlin.

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