Will Trent Bosses Reflect On 2 Major Deaths In Last 4 Episodes — And Tease Season 5 Shake-Up

The "Will Trent" Season 4 finale delivers another devastating blow: Just four episodes after the ABC drama said goodbye to GBI Deputy Director Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn), Angie Polaski's husband, Dr. Seth McDale (Scott Foley), is killed off in shocking fashion, upending Angie's life just as she welcomes their daughter into the world. (Read our Erika Christensen Q&A here.)

This latest loss also alters Will's life. Two years after he torpedoed his relationship with Angie — prioritizing his duty as a member of law enforcement over their chance at a happily ever after — the pathologically scrupulous GBI agent takes administrative leave to help raise Edie as her mom struggles to recover, both physically and emotionally, over the course of the following year.

Once Will and Angie return to work, a major shift is already underway, with a joint APD-GBI task force headed up by Faith, and a new GBI deputy director incoming — poised to shake up the existing power structure.

In a post-mortem with TVLine, co-showrunners Liz Heldens, Karine Rosenthal, and Daniel Thomsen unpack the decision to kill off Seth, reflect on the emotional fallout from Amanda's death, and preview how Season 5 will build on the changes implemented by the finale.

TVLINE | We haven't talked since Amanda's death, so I'd love to start there. What doors does that loss open up for Season 5 — especially for Will, who has lost the closest thing he had to a mother (besides Lucy), just as he's stepping up to help parent Angie's daughter?
ROSENTHAL | The great thing about the baby is the timing of this — that it really forces him to move forward. It's a gift that he gets to remember Amanda and perhaps be the parent he wishes he could have had... the thing that he wishes Amanda had the opportunity to have. I think now that he's holding a little baby in his hands, he's feeling like, "Oh, she felt this way about me." I think it's the thing you don't realize until you have a baby. You're like, "I can't believe my parents must have been so enthralled by me." I think it's very healing for him, for his relationship with Amanda, and feeling her presence.

Then as far as what else it opens up for him, part of what we were playing in last week's episode was this feeling of she was always part of why he was doing this, the person who was protecting him, taking him down the road. Now he doesn't have that anymore. I think it's a whole new stage of growth where he's going to have to do [things] on his own without her there to protect him — or to be almost a false obstacle. He could call her the obstacle — like, "Amanda's not believing in me, Amanda's giving me a hard time" — but really, she was protecting him the whole time. Now he really has to stand on his own two feet in a way that perhaps he hasn't realized was a next level of growth for him, especially when we bring in a new deputy director of the GBI that he'll have to contend with.

HELDENS | What happens when he's destabilized like that? His work has always been the place where he feels safe and protected. To remove that protection is interesting from a story point. It's interesting as far as setting up some new dynamics in Season 5.

It's a change for everybody. It's certainly a change for Faith. Amanda believed in Faith and Will. She put Faith with Will for a reason, and she looked out for both of them — so what happens if you remove that and replace her with somebody who doesn't have all that history with both of them?

TVLINE | Talk to me about the decision to kill off Seth. At the point where Angie and Seth got married earlier in Season 4, did you already know their happily ever after would be short-lived?
HELDENS, ROSENTHAL & THOMSEN | [In unison] Yeah.

ROSENTHAL | We did. And then when we saw the wedding, we were just like, "Oh my God, how are we even...?" It was awful. We felt like horrible, horrible people. It was so beautiful.

HELDENS | And we were, like, "What else can we do?" Both of these deaths were very hard, and there was a lot of debate in the writers' room. But yeah, we did have that on our mind to get Angie and Will back in each other's orbit.

TVLINE | There was a lot of fan anxiety this season that something like this might happen to Seth — and that elevator stabbing a few weeks back really seemed to heighten it. Watching it, I feared it was a setup for Seth to realize all too late how badly he was bleeding internally, which is ultimately what happens here. Was that designed as a fake-out, knowing how his story ends?
ROSENTHAL | I think it was. [Laughs]

THOMSEN | To me, specifically the stabbing wasn't it, but as we were writing the episode, you were supposed to think like, "Oh no, there's a gunman and Seth is being forced to [treat this patient] at gunpoint..." So yeah, the smart audience — the audience that's seen 10,000 hours of an ABC soap — is going to be, like, "Oh, he's not getting out of this one alive."

ROSENTHAL | Yeah. So it wasn't the stabbing, but yeah, exactly. We did think it was almost, like, "Get ready!"

HELDENS | But we also wanted to get the most out of Scott Foley while we had him. He is just a wonderful man, and I want to work with him many more times in my career. And it was fun to get him in an action sequence on our show, and it was fun to give him some hero moments.

TVLINE | I don't know about all of you, but that "ER" stabbing all those years ago scarred me for life in terms of TV characters getting stabbed in hospitals.
HELDENS | That episode is talked about in every writers' room ever.

ROSENTHAL | For sure.

TVLINE | I've talked to Erika Christensen about Angie wanting to break the cycle of how she was raised. As you look ahead to Season 5, how does becoming a mother under these circumstances — and wanting to honor Seth — shape that drive for her, and the story you want to tell with her moving forward?
ROSENTHAL | I think Angie is going to be a very good mother, for one. I think that she's going to take it very seriously, but I don't think she's going to do something like resign, or try and play things safe. I think that she's going to feel that she needs to set an example for my daughter of being a survivor. This is a girl who's going to grow up without a father, and she'll survive, and she's going to look to us for examples.

HELDENS | It's interesting to think about the conflict of her daughter not having a father, and that conflict for Angie of, like, "How hard do I go? How much harm do I put myself in?" Because Angie is a character that just hurls herself into harm's way, so that's a really good question, and we're going to chew on it when we get back together in the writers' room.

ROSENTHAL | Yes. And my only reason for saying she's not going to resign is because I'm, like, "She can't!" It was bad enough when she had to go on desk duty, you know? When she couldn't go out in the field because she was too pregnant. Poor Erika was such a trooper wearing that belly the entire season.

TVLINE | I couldn't help but think about the contrast between the Season 2 finale montage — where Will imagined a future with Angie he ultimately walked away from — and this finale montage, where he steps in to help raise Edie while Angie heals. Romantically linked or not, how do you see this experience shaping their dynamic — and potentially leading them toward some form of co-parenting — moving forward?
HELDENS | I think that Angie and Will are the beating heart of the show. They're the relationship that everybody follows. I have friends who tell me when they're apart, "Can you just... I miss their scenes together! Put them in frames with each other!" And so it just felt like we wanted to bring them back into each other's orbit, and we'll see when we get into Season 5 if they're coming toward each other romantically or not. We made a point to have that not be what was happening. They've been each other's family since they were children. They help each other through things all the time. That's just what they do for each other. And so we'll see in a Season 5.

ROSENTHAL | The relationship between those two montages is, of course, not by accident. At the end of Season 2, it was Will making this choice that his job was more important than this woman and their relationship. Now, having another decision point and saying, "I'm going to put the job on hold to be here 100% for this person who needs me," we wanted to bring him to that new [place], and bring the two of them to a new place in their relationship.

HELDENS | But it was also for him, too. Because I think it would have been really bad if Will had just gone on working and not stopped, and not taken some space and had some hope. I mean, what's more hopeful than a baby? Just looking into that kid's eyes and seeing there's more to life than murder. There's life and joy and routines that need to be set up, and all the stuff that you have to do when you're nesting with a new baby. It just seemed quite beautiful to us...

ROSENTHAL | And healing after Amanda, for sure.

TVLINE | I remember talking to Ramón Rodríguez about the significance of the dining room table in Will's home — how it symbolized the future he thought he was building with Angie in Season 2. So seeing Edie's crib placed in that same spot in the finale felt significant. Was that meant to reflect this new kind of foundation forming between them?
THOMSEN | I mean, look... I was trying to figure out how much to undercut the moment by making the joke that Will has a very small house. Part of the consideration is that. But that room has become the center of a lot of great moments for Will and his found family, and him and Nico. When I think of his house, that Is the room I think of. I don't think of his bedroom. I don't even think of the pretty living room with the fireplace. I kind of think of all the stuff that's gone on in there.

ROSENTHAL | You know, the house does have two bedrooms, and I don't think we've ever seen the second bedroom on screen. So there was talk about whether we're going to use this [second bedroom] as the baby's room. But no, we really like the idea of — yes, exactly, the symbolism of keeping the baby right there in the middle of the dining room. We'll never see it, but just so you know, Will's been sleeping in the second bedroom. That's what's been happening for the year that you didn't see.

TVLINE | There's typically a time jump between seasons that reflects the time off-air. But this finale montage already moves the story forward roughly a year. As you look to Season 5, do you anticipate another time jump — or, given the formation of this new joint task force, could we pick up much closer to where the finale leaves off?
HELDENS | We haven't talked about it yet. But it has occurred to me, in my brain, that this might be a year where we pick up right where we left off because of that. But we haven't put our heads together on it yet.

ROSENTHAL | Yeah, We're leaning towards a lot closer. We did the time jump early.

TVLINE | You've found ways for APD and GBI to work together throughout the run of the show, but this new world order opens the door to exploring new dynamics among your core group. What excites you most about that pivot — and about having an ongoing investigation as a through-line for Season 5?
THOMSEN | The obvious one is we're all very excited about who the new boss is going to be at the GBI. I mean, it's two things: It's the casting that's really exciting — bringing in somebody with completely new energy — but it's also the story of who this person is, and who is going to not have the same dynamics that Amanda and Will had. So when it comes to the GBI, I'm interested in that, and also seeing how Ormewood can interact in that arena.

Also, I just would say that overall, my biggest excitement for the serialized investigation is allowing us to remember that there is a difference between the APD and the GBI. And I really love this idea of them hiding in the storage room, and doing this investigation that's politically sensitive. To me, it's a story about getting the bad guy, and this is what Amanda left them with — making sure that the bad guys are held accountable, and that is more important than their careers. That is more important than anything else, and I love that sense of righteousness.

TVLINE | When you think about casting a new deputy director, are you envisioning someone who could be a part of the show long term... or does this give you an opportunity to go and cast someone who might serve more as a season long antagonist?
HELDENS | That's a great idea.

ROSENTHAL | A great idea. We're wide open to both things. We haven't landed on that. And I think in the same way that the character of Ormewood started off as kind of a bad cop, and he was going to be kind of more of an antagonist — and then Jake McLaughlin was just so delightful and we realized that everything we handed him, he could knock out of the park, and he had so many different colors that it was, like, "We've got to use him differently" — I think that you always start with some sort of plan, and then you see what you're getting and you pivot. 

Talk to us at the end of next season, and we'll let you know whether this person who just got arrested and taken away in handcuffs, or the person who just got promoted and is going to be around long term, whether that was a plan or a pivot. [Laughs]

THOMSEN | Did you guys watch "Murphy Brown" back in the day? We could do a season where we just fire the deputy director every episode.

TVLINE | While Will, Ormewood, and Franklin will obviously play key roles in this operation, it feels like it carries particular weight for Faith — who's leading this joint venture — and for Angie, as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who now has the potential to help bring down an entire ring of predators. As you head into Season 5, how central is it to you that those women are really steering this mission?
HELDENS | We like that idea. I think we've been — say if I'm wrong, guys — really craving giving Faith and Iantha [Richardson], who plays this part so beautifully and so subtly, a real work case that consumes her. I think it started there. Faith was thinking about leaving, but let's see what it looks like when she's obsessing — when she can't sleep at night because of something — and so we really wanted to give her something that she could tear into, and that's part of what that was designed for. And I always love when Angie and Faith are in scenes together, so it seemed like a fun partnership.

ROSENTHAL | Ditto. Faith is a character who can hold a lot of emotions inside and is pretty controlled. Even seeing the emotion with Amanda's death was unusual, but even then you saw her really taking that on herself, not really sharing that. So the outrage and the desire to protect on behalf of others really allows her to express a lot, and come alive in a way that is a different type of color for the actor to play, and allows us to see a different side of this character.