Spoilers ahead for the Season 4 premiere of Will Trent, called “…Speaking Of Sharks” and available streaming next day with a Hulu subscription.
Will Trent is finally back on ABC in the 2026 TV schedule, nearly eight months after Season 3 wrapped with the lives of two key characters on the line. “…Speaking Of Sharks” wasted no time in confirming that Ormewood survived his brain tumor and Amanda survived her gunshot, and the five-month time jump meant Angie was quite visibly pregnant. Unfortunately, the arrival of Ulster meant that Willwould have a lot of unpleasantness on his plate to kick off Season 4, leading to another classic Will Trent premiere cliffhanger.
Leading man Ramón Rodriguez addressed the clfifhanger that seemingly pointed towards the deaths of both Will and Ulster, but I can’t be too stressed at this point, because “…Speaking Of Sharks” has me in a good mood about Angie, Will, and Seth.
The First Season 4 Cliffhanger
After Will Trent wasted no time in starting a season by killing off a character played by the lovely Susan Kelechi Watson in early 2024, I tend to go into premieres expecting brutal cliffhangers and two-parters. Those expectations weren’t disappointed in the first episode of Season 4, when Will agreed to go with Ulster after Ulster kidnapped his shark-loving nephew Calvin.
Ulster doesn’t have much left to lose, and the episode ended with Amanda and Faith on the scene of a burned car, with the remains of Will’s recorder indicating that he was inside. So, did Will Trent start a season by killing off Will Trent? Of course not! But Ramón Rodriguez could only go so far in teasing what comes next. Speaking with TV Insider, the star said:
I can’t reveal too much, obviously, but I will say that’s going to be the kind of season where we’re going to really take folks through a real ride. That end of the episode is very questionable. Obviously, the show’s called Will Trent. We’re probably not going to lose our hero in the first episode, but we’re going to see him sort of have to really navigate and deal with some real difficult decisions as to who he is … He’s always been such a morally correct and trying-to-stay-on-the-right-path kind of guy. I think we’re going to really push those boundaries and test him to see how far it will go
Rodriguez didn’t spoil the aftermath of the cliffhanger, but he did make it clear that his character is going to face tough choices as Season 4 continues. The preview already shows Angie and Faith connecting the dots that Will might not be dead after all, but the footage doesn’t drop any clues about what actually happened to him. Fans will just have to stress about it for the next several days until the next episode. Or they can be like me, and just enjoy some of the Angie highlights of “…Speaking Of Sharks.”
Why I’m Feeling Good About Angie And Will
Oddly enough, the scene that made me feel the best about the future of Angie and Will’s relationship didn’t even feature Will himself, but came when she was speaking with Franklin and Ormeword about her engagement to Seth. I was lukewarm about her relationship with Seth in Season 3 despite Scott Foley bringing his usual charm to the role, since the will they/won’t they of Angie and Will has been so central to the series.
The expecting parents settled into a sweet status quo with her pregnancy by the time Season 4 picked up, and he proposed with not one but two rings. Angie accepted, but got candid with her coworkers when they asked about Will. She told them:
I love Seth. He’s so good to me, and when he looks at me, I don’t see all the mistakes I made looking back. But sometimes I think about the universe where it’s Will. I don’t know what that means and I feel really guilty about it.
It was just one quick moment in a jam-packed episode, but Angie laying out why she wants to marry Seth while still caring so deeply for Will makes me feel better about her building that life with Seth. All the baggage between Angie and Will always seems to involve guilt and looking back on mistakes; a fresh start with somebody new seems to be good for Angie, and she seems to genuinely love Seth.
If the relationship lasts, then fans will lose the will they/won’t they of Angie and Will, but possibly gain a more interesting relationship between the two for it. He did tell her that he was happy for her, although he wasn’t exactly jumping for joy at her engagement. Ramón Rodriguez addressed the future of that relationship in Season 4:
What a complicated, loaded relationship these two have. They go so far back. They’ve been through so much together. I think when we saw Will, last season, find out that Angie’s pregnant and it’s not his, obviously, and it’s something he always wanted to start a family, I think that hit him really hard. That’s kind of how we ended the season. And I think this season, we were really interested in watching these two characters who we’ve watched sort of trauma-bonded with each other, and how can they now navigate these new waters of Angie trying to move forward? I mean, I think there’s definitely a sense of Will is happy to see her happy and to see that she’s with a doctor who’s great.
It seems like a safe bet that Will Trent won’t be able to delve too deeply into the relationship until his friends and colleagues definitively learn that he’s among the living. Tune in to ABC on Tuesday, January 13 for the next episode and see how the drama wraps up the story of Ulster and Will… for now, anyway. If nothing else, Will Trent has given fans reason to never count Ulster out for as long as he’s still alive!
