Will Trent shocked fans with a heartbreaking character death, and the showrunners are talking about it!
Caution: This article contains SPOILERS for Will Trent season 4 finale
Will Trent fans are still reeling from the unexpected murder of GBI boss and Will’s mentor Amanda (Sonja Sohn) earlier in season 4. Yet they still weren’t ready for the season finale as the main team investigated a kidnapping that exposed a child trafficking ring with major ties to Atlanta power players.
In the midst of it all, Angie (Erika Christensen) finally went into labor (after several episodes joking about her long pregnancy). She and husband Seth (Scott Foley) raced to the hospital only to be hit by a car on the way. As Angie was brought to the operating room, Seth was shown grabbing his side and collapsing.
Will (Ramon Rodriguez) arrived and told terrible news, his expression making fans worry Angie or her baby or both had perished. Instead, while they had survived, Seth had died of his wounds. A time-skip montage showed Will caring for Angie and her child for a few months before they all returned to work.
Speaking to TVLine, showrunners Liz Heldens, Karine Rosenthal, and Daniel Thomsen discussed Seth’s fate and how they had it all planned, despite how wonderful Foley was. In unison the pair confirmed that Seth was always marked for dead and they knew his and Angie's happily ever after would be short-lived.
"We did," Rosenthal admitted of knowing that the pair would not get a happy ending. “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 added, “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.”
Why Seth had to die on Will Trent
Fans had been worried about Seth’s fate in the show, especially given he was stabbed in an earlier episode, which contributed to his later fatal internal bleeding. The creators admitted they wanted to play around with viewers, making them think Seth would die there, then make them think he was safe afterward.
As Thomsen explained, “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."
It appears that a major reason for Seth’s death is the simple fact that Scott Foley is a pretty in-demand actor. Remember, he’s never been a full main cast member, only listed as recurring since his debut in season 3. Foley also has the Prime Video series It’s Not Like That as a distraction. Heldens even acknowledged that they weren’t able to use Foley as much as they wanted to and thus wanted a big send-off.
“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.”
Obviously, Seth’s loss will rock Angie for a long time as she adjusts to motherhood, even with Will at her side. It’s a sad loss for the show but it serves the character to go out protecting his family and adds more drama to Will Trent.
Will Trent is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
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