‘Will Trent’ Reveals a Horrifying Truth (RECAP)

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the latest episode of Will Trent, Season 2 Episode 8 “Why is Jack’s Arm Bleeding?”]

The mystery that’s been plaguing Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez) all season long finally comes to a head in Tuesday’s new episode, and it’s an even more heartbreaking revelation about his past than we might’ve expected.

In recent episodes, Will has been repeatedly visited by an apparition of his younger self, reminding him of a time when he faced the unthinkable: the murder of his foster mother by his foster father, right in front of himself and their other wards. Only, there are several details about the incident that he has had trouble remembering, and he’s decided that doing a little of his signature style of detective work on his own mind might just be the key to making his teen self stop showing up in random places.

Of course, there is another, more pressing case to attend to first. He and Faith (Iantha Richardson) warm up a cold missing person file and get to work after a woman’s body is discovered in a construction site more than a decade after she vanished. Lily Watkins was just a teenager when she disappeared during an apparent morning trail run, but one look at the clothing indicates there’s much more to the story than anyone knew.

Will’s focus on the case is repeatedly interrupted, though, by disorienting flashbacks to his childhood — the beads on the doorway, a white refrigerator, and a cookie jar… What could the connection between these random objects possibly be? His frustration with the blurred spots in his memory is so intense that he even calls himself the cruel childhood nickname he got from being abandoned in a bin, “Trash.”

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As Will and Faith start to put together the pieces of Lily’s case, he simultaneously begins patching together his memories to form a fuller picture of what really happened on the night on a neverending loop in his head. It turns out he’d hidden away his foster father Jack’s gun, on account of his consistent spousal abuse of their foster mother Anna. He didn’t go to the police because he wanted to keep living with Anna, and, during one particularly violent evening, Will retrieved and loaded the gun with the intention of stopping Jack in his tracks. Only, Jack got his hands on the gun and pointed it at Will, which then caused Anna to intervene and be shot instead.

As the memory floods back to him, Will is beset with immediately crippling devastation, as he realizes, “The whole time it was me. … It was my fault.”

“I wanted to kill him. Oh my god. I tried to kill Jack. I shot him. What the hell was I thinking? He grabbed the gun. And he started beating me with it. He beat me and beat me,” Will says with a level of gutting intensity not yet seen on this series. “He shot her, killed Anna with the gun I retrieved, the gun I loaded with the bullets, the gun I used on Jack. Because of me.”

Fortunately, Will’s Uncle Antonio drops by just in time to assure him that it was not in any way his fault that this happened. “She died because an abusive man killed her, not because a brave child wanted to protect her,” he assures. “It’s not your fault. Not one bit.”

Are Will’s visions going to end now? That remains to be seen. Certainly, though, Antonio has an idea for how to help him cope: introducing him to some of the maternal relatives he didn’t get to know before in Puerto Rico.

Plus, now that Angie (Erika Christensen) seems all-in on making their longtime relationship work, and his partnership with Faith is as strong as ever, this could be the thing he needed to finally move on from his trauma. Here’s hoping.

Will Trent, Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.