‘Will Trent’ showrunners handle shocking character deaths
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for “Will Trent” Season 4 Episode 15, “The Blank Expanse of Nothing,” streaming on Hulu,
“Will Trent” just killed off one of its main characters, fundamentally changing the structure of the ABC police drama.
Amanda Wagner, who has been played by Sonja Sohn since the show launched, met her end in this week’s episode. In the episode, Amanda secretly works with the FBI to find information about the Commander, the mysterious figure linked to Adelaide Trevens (Mallory Jansen) and the cult-like group dedicated to serial killer James Ulster.
Amanda is able to find a young man connected to the commander Will encountered earlier this season. But as she tries to follow him, she is suddenly surprised by an invisible assailant. Meanwhile, Will (Ramón Rodríguez) is involved in a cat-and-mouse game with Adelaide in hopes of rescuing his kidnapped uncle.
Will agrees to meet Adelaide at a bar, but when he tries to place a tracking device on her, she disappears, only to call him and say she left a gift for him around the corner. Will then finds Amanda dead in the street with what appears to be multiple stab wounds.
In an interview with VarietyShowrunners Liz Heldens, Daniel T. Thomsen and Karine Rosenthal say Amanda’s death “sets off a chain of events that will take us to the end of the season.”
“Amanda has been the character who has protected Will for as long as she has known him,” Rosenthal says. “So this gives us the opportunity for a completely new dynamic in the GBI, because her replacement won’t have the same relationship with Will. Her death had the most impact on most of the characters. It really leaves everyone reeling from this enormous loss. So it’s such a reset for our characters in a way that’s painful but exciting for Season 5.”
The three also say that Sohn knew about her character’s death early on and that she handled the news with “an impressive amount of grace.”
“No one should always leave their shows — even on the writing side — on their own terms,” says Thomsen. “It’s hard to do that with grace. So it was just very impressive. She’s a true professional.”
Fans of “Will Trent” will remember that Amanda had a brush with death at the end of Season 3 when she was shot during a GBI hostage situation. According to Heldens, there were discussions about the character’s death at the time, but “nobody had the heart to do it. I don’t think we were ready for it, to be honest.”
“I also don’t want to get through this interview without really honoring the work that Sonja Sohn has done for this character,” Heldens adds. “At the beginning of this season, I went back to watch the Season 1 finale, and her work is impeccable.”
And of course, actors whose characters are extinct on the show have later appeared as projections of Will’s mind as he struggles with problems or tries to solve a case. The showrunners say the door is open for Sohn to return in that capacity.
“It’s always a bit of a relief that we have a mechanism by which we can bring people back if Will needs to work something out,” says Heldens.
