‘Will Trent’: Faith Re-Examines a Painful Part of Her Past

[Warning: The following episode contains spoilers for Will Trent Season 3 Episode 5, “Breathe With Me.”]

We always knew Faith (Iantha Richardson) had a resentful side when it came to her mother, but we didn’t know why … until now.

On Will Trent‘s latest episode, her mother Evelyn (LisaGay Hamilton) comes to visit and begins to get under her skin right from the start. Not only is she unimpressed by Faith’s new place, but she also calls in for emergencies that aren’t really emergencies, until they are.

First, she fears for Faith’s neighbor after he feeds the cat a few too many times. But then, when she sees a robbery underway, she hesitates to call her daughter and instead calls the police, who show up too late to prevent her from being kidnapped during a burglary. As it turns out, the man who died in Faith’s apartment (which was what made it available on the cheap) may not have died by suicide, as previously reported, but rather by murder. After interrogating an antique dealer (and destroying a few items in his store along the way), Faith finds out where her mother is. But will she be too late to save her? Well, of course not. Faith and Will (Ramon Rodriguez) manage to track Evelyn down at the storage unit she’s been hidden away in just before an attacker can strangle her to death. It helps, of course, that Evelyn fought for herself along the way, using a needle full of insulin as a weapon.

It’s not the case or the chase that really stands out in this episode, though. Instead, it’s the bond-building that finally happens between Faith and her mother.

Finally, we learn the reason that Faith has held something of a grudge against her mom: When Faith found out she was pregnant as a teenager, all she wanted was a hug, but instead her mother ran out and screamed. That lack of support has haunted her ever since.

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While her mother is in imminent danger, though, Faith starts to remember a very different memory about her mother’s involvement in that time of her life. After holding her hand through the delivery process, Evelyn also offered Faith another choice beyond setting her newborn boy up for adoption. She also offered to help her raise the baby and tell the parents-in-waiting to get lost if that was what Faith wanted, and she followed through on that promise when Faith decided to keep Jeremy.

After Faith and Evelyn are reunited safely in the present day, Evelyn seizes the opportunity to apologize to Faith for her reaction to her pregnancy news. Instead of being maddened by the news of it, she was deeply disappointed that she hadn’t made her daughter feel safe.

After three seasons of arms-length distance between these two, the wounds have finally been healed. So does this mean we’ll get to see more of Evelyn in the near future? We’ll have to watch on to find out. But certainly, based on her quick thinking in this episode, she’d be an asset to the GBI if so.

Will Trent, Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC