At the beginning of Will Trent Season 4, everyone is still coping with their emotional baggage. Especially Will, who almost lost his maternal figure, Amanda, and gained a new father in Caleb.
Will doesn’t handle emotions well, so he’s still insisting he’s fine, while the rest of the team is facing injuries and new medical diagnoses.
We’re in for another splendid season of Will Trent, and I had the pleasure of speaking with the Will Trent EPs: Liz Heldens, Daniel Thomsen, and Karine Rosenthal.
During the first part of our interview, they detailed the time jump, each character’s emotional state and coping strategy, and how the team leans on each other more.
Check it out below.
How soon after the cliffhangers does Will Trent Season 4 pick up, and where is everyone emotionally?
Karine Rosenthal: It picks up five months after the cliffhanger. We are skipping past the unfun parts of dealing with a gunshot wound, a cancer diagnosis, and perhaps morning sickness, and getting right into stuff.
Ormewood is emotionally dealing with this new, life-changing situation that he has been in, coping with cancer and coming to the end of his treatments, and wondering what this means for his future.
Amanda has been slowly fighting to get back physically after the trauma of the Will Trent Season 3 Episode 18 injuries, and trying to convince herself that she still feels strong. She’s trying to convince others that she still feels strong.
Angie has been embracing, perhaps with a bit of terror, this enormous change coming into her life.
Will, based on the huge revelation of meeting his biological father, has been trying to integrate this new information slowly and figure out what it means for him.
He’s had this identity he’s held on to his whole life: being alone.
As we saw in the first couple of seasons, he slowly realized he wasn’t alone, and he has found a family that he has built over his life.
First, he had his uncle; now, he has a father, and what that means for him.
It is making him integrate new parts of himself that he has perhaps tried to repress for most of his life. And it’s really shaking him up and causing him to feel unsteady on the ground as he figures out this next stage of his life.
Liz Heldens: You see it in the key art. He’s just a little bit unraveling this season. He’s been in therapy. A lot of emotions are coming up that he survived by ignoring for most of his life.
Now he’s examining them, and he’s losing his temper a little bit more.
He’s acting a little more spontaneously than we’ve seen him. I think it’s a vibrant territory for the show and for Ramon Rodriguez to play.
Absolutely. Based on that, what are the main themes of Will Trent Season 4?
Liz Heldens: I think it’s ‘unraveling.’
Daniel Thomsen: This isn’t exactly a theme. But as I was listening to Karine and Liz talk, I realized this is maybe something that can be said about a lot of TV shows, but the way Will Trent Season 4 begins, it feels like everybody has had these seismic events happen to them, and yet they are trying to push through.
It’s like we start with this feeling of like, ‘well, life has to go on, so life goes on.’ But then, very quickly, all this keeps happening, making it very difficult to go on with life.
It’s like whenever you think you have a handle on something terrible that’s happened to you, or a trauma in your past, and you’re starting to understand it, then something else pops up.
I think what we’re exploring in this season is what happens when that dark stuff starts to get the best of you, and how you react.
Karine Rosenthal: Another theme that we’ve talked about a little bit is sort of the theme of healing, since we ended Will Trent Season 3 with some significant injuries, disease, and revelations.
And what Liz said about unraveling, sometimes the road to healing emotionally or physically, whatever it is, can look pretty bad. It doesn’t look like healing. It looks like you’re falling apart, and you’re slowly getting to a place where you’re…
You guys help me out. I just totally lost my train of thought.
Daniel Thomsen: So, the idea of like, what happens if Netflix buys the GBI?
Karine Rosenthal: [laughs] That’s exactly it.
Liz Heldens: I think everybody is changing. New relationships. New everything. In the meantime, we have significant cases coming up, and these meat-and-potatoes cases will test all of our characters.
Can’t wait. So, with everything everyone is going through, will we see more “found family” scenes, or will anyone’s extended family be popping in this season?
Liz Heldens: A little bit of both. Despite their differences, these characters have become intertwined. It’s very moving the way they are stepping up for one another this season.
Will is also trying to get to know Caleb, his biological father, and grappling with what he may have missed. So, all that is really rich and interesting for us.
Why was it the right time to promote Kevin Daniels, and do you have anything fun planned for Franklin?
Daniel Thomsen: Liz’s been very proud of this. Sometimes, when you’re working with writers and you’ve been working with them for a while, watching them hit on an idea that they really want to do, that turns out amazing, it’s an enjoyable thing to do.
It’s like being a spectator, watching another athlete make a three-pointer. When we promoted Kevin Daniels, we wanted to learn more about Franklin, but we also wanted to give him his due as an investigator in a way that we haven’t seen before.
Right up top in the Will Trent Season 4 premiere, there’s an interrogation that Franklin leads that is very specific to his character and is very fun.
Will Trent Season 4 premieres on ABC on Tuesday, January 6 at 8/7c.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of our exclusive interview with the Will Trent EPs after the premiere as they dissect the premiere and tease more spoilers.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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