‘Will Trent’ Finally Brings Angie Face to Face With Her Mother — With Devastating Results

[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for Will Trent Season 3 Episode 15, “The Most Beautiful, Fierce, Smart, Powerful Creature in the Whole World.”]

It’s a tale of two cities on Tuesday (April 22) night’s new episode of Will Trent. One is an island where Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn) and Evelyn Mitchell (LisaGay Hamilton) are vacationing before a murder mystery emerges and ropes Faith (Iantha Richardson) and Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin) into the mix. The other is back in Atlanta as Will (Ramón Rodríguez) and Angie (Erika Christensen) separately deal with devastations that neither of them could see coming.

The island getaway plot is a mostly fun one — well, at least for those who survive it — and things get a little spicy, too. The resort hotel Amanda and Evelyn are staying at is soft launching with all kinds of hiccups, including a dead body with a hand missing. Amanda (whose younger self was apparently nicknamed “Randy Mandy” for her bedroom behaviors as Evelyn encourages her to get back into the saddle) immediately calls for a lockdown. She surmises the stolen hand is meant for use on a biometric scanner for a safe, so someone in the place must be looking to make a major score. Even with the case of the day in play, she still makes time to cozy up to a handsome male suitor, but, ruh roh, he turns out to be a jewel thief — er, a retired one. Once he’s cleared of wrongdoing in this heist, he’s able to help with the case. With added support from Faith and Michael and an olfactorily-gifted pup, the team figures out that the supposedly pregnant hotel assistant is faking labor pains as a cover-up for her heist. Michael still has the matter of his diagnosis to deal with, but this case, at least, is closed.

Disney / Zac Popik

Will, meanwhile, has much bigger problems on his hands. Upon coming home, Betty alerts him to an intruder in the house, and he walks in to find a young boy with a gun in his bag who turns out to be the little brother of Marco, the kid who was killed by a ricochet in Will’s officer-involved shooting incident. Will greets the child with empathy and even tries to help him with a household chore — changing the fire alarm battery as it’s out of reach — as he tries to be “the man of the house” in the wake of Marco’s death. Marco’s mother comes home and is none too pleased to see her son’s shooter — cleared of wrongdoing or not — in her living room and yells for him to leave. However, she later comes to Will to offer him words of forgiveness, even if the sentiment behind them isn’t real, to set a good example for her surviving son. She does seem genuinely grateful when Will agrees to explain, in detail, what happened that day and explains how he held and comforted Marco in his final moments. This story is far from done, of course.

Angie, too, has an emotional reckoning in the episode as she finds out her mother is hospitalized. First, we see a flashback to 2004 in a happier moment between the two as her mother encourages her after she’s bullied by calling her the title phrase of the episode, “the most beautiful, fierce, smart, powerful creature in the whole world.” It’s here we learn that Angie’s mom hates grey hair, and thus present-day Angie is desperate to get her hands on some hair dye upon seeing her mother unconscious on the hospital bed with a head full of white locks.

The next flashback, this time to 2012, is not so positive. In this one, Angie is now a rookie beat cop who is talking to her mother in jail. Her mom has been arrested for a DUI that landed two people in the hospital, and she has less than zero remorse. Angie eventually confronts her mother over the abuses she put her through as a child, saying, “Were you my mother when you dropped me off at Steve’s house when I was 5 years old and didn’t come back for two days? Do you want to know the specifics of what went down?” Angie’s mother is defiant as Angie demands she admit to selling her into sexual slavery as a tender-aged child; instead, she tells Angie cruelly, “Sometimes I think when God gave me you, he was punishing me.”

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In the present day, Angie dutifully does her sleeping mother’s makeup and whispers, “Please wake up. Everyone deserves another chance.” Soon, she does just that (at least, as Angie sees it) and tells Angie the things she’s needed to hear for decades now: She was a terrible mother, and Angie deserved better. However, she also then drops a bombshell on her by saying that Angie has the same addiction affliction as she does — right before she falls into eternal slumber right in front of her. Angie is visibly devastated and her first act after leaving the hospital is to stop at a local bar for a glass of whiskey.

Angie’s already been through so much recently. First, there was the situation with Lenny, her former abuser, and Crystal, the woman who killed him (and then a bunch of others, too). Then, she was arrested by Will for that cover-up of Crystal’s murder of Lenny, which caused a potentially forever breakup. And now this death, too? Oof. We’ll have to wait to see what the inevitable fallout will entail as the final episodes of the season come through.

Coming up, on next week’s episode — titled, “Push, Jump, Fall” — Angie will continue to grapple with the aftermath of this loss. The teaser for the episode reads, “Will and Faith fight to clear an innocent woman’s name while uncovering a deadly drug ring. Meanwhile, Angie spirals after a traumatic event, and Ormewood grapples with his diagnosis, unsure of how much to share with those closest to him.”

Then, for the May 6 episode, on which Erika Christensen makes her directorial debut, the saga will continue. Titled, “Why Hello, Sheriff,” the episode is described like so: “While investigating a murder in a rural town and clashing with the local sheriff, Will uncovers surprising truths about his past. Meanwhile, Angie makes an unexpected discovery, and Ormewood continues to struggle with his diagnosis.” That will be the penultimate episode of the season before Will Trent‘s Season 3 finale airs Tuesday, May 13.

Will Trent, Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC