GBI Special Agent Will Trent manages to thwart a bioterrorism attack with the help of law enforcement’s finest — including GBI Deputy Director Amanda Wagner, Bradford County Sheriff Caleb Roussard, Special Agent Faith Mitchell, and Detectives Michael Ormewood and Angie Polaski.
Alas, not everyone makes it out of Season 3 unscathed.
When Amanda (Sonja Sohn) and Angie engage in gunfire with members of Founders Front, Amanda takes a bullet to the sternum. She survives surgery, but doctors say that the next 48 hours are “critical.” Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin), meanwhile, still hasn’t been able to schedule a CT scan at the VA, and he ends Tuesday’s finale on the floor of his kitchen, mid-seizure, as Faith calls for an ambulance.
In happier news, Angie has not had a miscarriage. Will joins his ex for her first sonogram, but leaves as soon as baby daddy Seth arrives, at which point our title character makes his way over to Amanda’s hospital room to be with his “family.”
Also this week: Caleb recalls “the most amazing weekend” of his life with Lucy Morales — a weekend that culminated in Will’s conception. But Caleb swears to Will that he didn’t know Lucy was pregnant. “I wanted to marry her from the second I saw her,” he says. “I tried to call her, I wrote letters, I never heard anything back. I figured, ‘She doesn’t want anything to do with me.’” Caleb, however, is determined to make up for lost time with the son he never knew he had, and invites Will over to meet to his wife and kids.
Below, co-showrunners Liz Heldens and Daniel Thomsen break down the Season 3 finale and offer early intel on Will Trent Season 4, which will air on ABC in January 2026.
TVLINE | Why was now the time to introduce Will’s biological father?
THOMSEN | We’d been thinking about Will’s father since Season 1. For me, I wanted to get a little bit of space from the introduction of Will’s mother and her story, just because I felt like that was so emotional and so impactful, and I didn’t want it to feel like we immediately just shifted from that to the father. And it was just feeling, like, at this point, I think we — all the creatives — all agreed that it was time for Will to continue to expand his understanding of himself and where he came from.
TVLINE | James Ulster is Will’s biological father in the books. Talk to me about the decision to pivot and create this new character.
HELDENS | Well, I think it felt a little bit like it was just laying there, you know? It was a maybe [that Ulster was his father]. I think the last time we talked about it was Season 2, Episode 2, and it was a maybe — maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, but Will didn’t want to take a test because he didn’t want to know — and then it seemed like, to make that guy his father was kind of like… [shrugs]. And so we thought, well, let’s just do something completely different and go in a completely different direction, make him law enforcement, and make him a different kind of cop than Will is. It seemed like creating a character with a little bit more gray area than James Ulster, who was just a really bad guy — I mean, [Greg Germann is] fun to write for, and he’s fun to put in scenes, for sure, and I hope we have not seen the last of him — but it seemed like there was opportunity in giving Will a father that could be positive and could also have really negative qualities that we could explore in Season 4.
THOMSEN | Adding Caleb provides so many story opportunities that we’re excited about exploring. But also, as Liz was alluding to, James Ulster is somebody who is going to have a point of view on Will’s father coming into the picture. Even though he’s not Will’s father, he clearly feels a sense of connection to Will — a sense of possessiveness — so it kind of feels like you get to add somebody without subtracting Ulster, so… more ingredients in the pot!
TVLINE | Caleb details his whirlwind romance with Lucy. This is a show that plays with flashback. What are the chances audiences will get to see that love story in Season 4?
HELDENS | We thought about it — and I’m not I’m really not into rules, but it sort of seems like point-of-view flashbacks might be reserved for one through five on the call sheet, you know? That said, it’s a good idea, Ryan, and I’m writing it down! [Laughs]
TVLINE | Caleb says he’d like for Will to come over for dinner and meet his wife and children. Obviously, Will met a blood relative in Season 2 when you introduced Uncle Antonio, but this is the first time this character is being presented with a complete family unit — not only a father, but half-siblings he didn’t know he had. How big a role will Caleb’s family have in Will’s life?
THOMSEN | We’re still exploring that. I think what you’re pointing out was deliberate in the sense that, when he met his uncle, his uncle was another lone-wolf character who was going through life on his own. We didn’t want to overwhelm Will, who at that point had just been defined by being an orphan, but now it kind of feels like, you know… let’s see what he does when he has to drop into an ecosystem, and not just on one person. That is something that we really want to explore.
TVLINE | Caleb doesn’t specify whether his kids are all grown up, or whether they’re on the younger side. Can we expect Will to have a contemporary — someone close to his own age — among his half-siblings?
HELDENS | I find that idea creatively very exciting. You know, when you do television, it sometimes feels like we draw on our own life. Ramón Rodríguez has, I think, two older sisters. [Will] would be the oldest, but I do like the idea of Will having a half-sister. I think that dynamic could be very fun. That said, we have to do the work of his relationship with Caleb before we start mushrooming out with other people, so we’ll see how far we get.
TVLINE | How big a part will Yul Vazquez have next season? Surely he’ll recur, but are there talks of making him a series regular?
HELDENS | I mean, he’s so great. We haven’t really nailed it down, but we would love to see him next season. As Dan said, we really do want to explore that relationship and explore the way they’re different insofar as both of them being in law enforcement, so I hope we get him for a handful of episodes, for sure.
TVLINE | How seriously should Will and Angie ‘shippers take Angie’s ringtone, Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”?
HELDENS | [Laughs] OK… you don’t put that choice of ringtone on your phone unless you still have some kind of feelings — whether it’s being mad, whether it’s being sad, whether it’s being rebellious. But I think that she’s got a wicked sense of humor, you know? I think it’s a little reminder for her — like, “I’m not doing this again,” but we also thought it was funny.
THOMSEN | There’s the discussion in the hospital room when they’re looking at the sonogram — the discussion about how this was not how they pictured this moment being, but they’re still together. They’re still able to look at each other, and talk to each other, and make it a moment for them in their relationship. It’s another moment in a relationship that has, since they were children, not gone the way that either of them had hoped. It’s not the happily-ever-after, fairy tale relationship, but they’re still together, and they still find ways to make it work, and find ways to stay connected.
TVLINE | Absolutely. As I was watching that scene, I was thinking about the fantasy of Will and Angie’s future at the end of Season 2, and where he and Angie find themselves at the end of Season 3. In any other show, this scene would mark the end of a relationship, but that certainly is not the case here.
HELDENS | I think that relationship is one of the most interesting and emotional parts of the show — that they are trying to be OK in the world, and trying to look after each other in the world. I love them together, and I love them as friends. I love them both ways, and we’ll just see. I mean, look, stuff happens in life. People get pregnant, people have children… they’re human beings who are moving through the world, existing and changing, and sometimes things aren’t expected. For us, it’s about, “What is the obstacle for those two?” and “Can they get past it?” We try to be honest in the way we talk about these characters in the writers’ room. I don’t know what the answer is, but I know that it will be interesting. We have not found the thing that they can’t get over yet.
TVLINE | Angie and Seth are having this baby together, which means, unless something goes horribly wrong, Seth is going to play a significant role in Angie’s life moving forward. That said, Scott Foley has a show in the works at Amazon. How big a role will he have next season?
HELDENS | Well, that show [also] shoots in Atlanta. Isn’t that convenient? Scott and I worked on The Big Leap together. He is a great guy. We can shoot him in and out of our show pretty easily — like, in a day for an episode, so we’ll see how that all unfolds. Dan, do you have anything else to contribute?
THOMSEN | I mean, I guess the only thing I would say is I [only] knew him as a fan. Even still, I was blown away with how he was able to come in and immediately just feel like part of the family on the show. My test audience is typically my mom and my aunts, who had previously been huge Will/Angie ‘shippers, and they were, like, “He’s so great!” I say this just to say that I don’t think we’re going to let business stuff get in the way of telling the story we want to with Scott.
TVLINE | Talk to me a bit about putting Amanda in peril. She’s not blood, but she’s the closest thing Will has to a mother, and she’s put in harm’s way just as a biological parent he didn’t know existed has come into his life. Surely, the timing of these events is not coincidental.
THOMSEN | I mean, for me, it’s that. Also, I was really moved by how it turned out — when Will has to move from that hospital room with Angie, and Seth is there, and then he goes to Amanda. It’s this incredible reminder for everybody that this relationship [he has with Amanda] means more than ever. This is family. And in a world where you you’re not sure what the next twist is going to be, and what adversity you’re going to face, like, God, you can’t afford to lose Amanda! That was one of the most powerful parts of the finale for me.
HELDENS | When we shot it at 2 am, I was really taken aback by how moved I was. I wrote this episode with Inda Craig-Galván, so it’s kind of stupid to say you were moved by your own stuff, but….
TVLINE | Seeing it performed is very different than seeing it on the page.
HELDENS | Yeah, and I thought Will has never come close to saying any of these things to her. Neither one of them is good at expressing their feelings, and there’s so much between them. I thought it was so satisfying to hear him say what she means to him. That exceeded my expectations.
TVLINE | We know the next 48 hours are critical for Amanda. We also leave Ormewood in the throes of a serious medical crisis. Now, you’ve typically done time jumps between seasons — they’re typically in line with the amount of time the show is actually off the air — but what about Season 4? Do you foresee another big time jump, or will the events of the finale dictate picking up pretty much immediately where we left off?
HELDENS | We don’t know yet. I like taking a little bit of time because I think it’s interesting to back fill what has happened in the last three months because our show, sometimes the next episode is the next day, and sometimes the next episode is, like, 30 seconds later, so it’s nice to let people move and change and grow a little bit [between seasons], but we’re not sure yet.
TVLINE | Just how worried should fans be about Amanda and Ormewood over the hiatus? We’re not losing either of them… right?
HELDENS | I think that we should be concerned for those characters.
THOMSEN | Yeah, because in any scenario, they’re going to be different. They’re going to be changed by what they’ve gone through.
TVLINE | So much of Will’s journey has been about facing his past, and overcoming trauma. Might the introduction of his father, and the potential of family, make Season 4 a season of healing?
HELDENS | I like what you’re saying. I think we had a lot of [trauma in] Season 3, you know, with Episode 11, where he was the cause of a child’s death. I do, personally, like [the idea that there is] some hope on the horizon for him. He’s an orphan. That has been the defining feature — the way he looks at himself — and that’s going to change. He picked a chosen family for himself [before], and now he is going to experience what it’s like to have the family that you didn’t choose. That’s going to come with lots of emotions, and lots of feelings, and lots of experiences. I don’t imagine they’re all going to be positive, but, you know, that’s a different thing for him.
