TV Recap: "Will Trent" Tackles Murder, Manipulation, and a Mean Girl Mystery

It’s all school dances and limited-edition sandwiches in this week’s Will Trent. After being mostly absent this season, Michael Ormewood gets to reconnect with his kids while working on an APD case with Angie. Like last week’s episode, this is the B storyline, which for recap purposes, I’ve separated from the A storyline, which follows Will Trent and Faith Mitchell as they solve a teenager’s death.

Season 3, Episode 10 - “Regarding the Death of Whitney McAdams" - Written by Aja Hogatt

GBI Story - Whitney McAdams’ Murder

Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez) relaxes in bed with his chihuahua Betty while Marion Alba (Gina Rodriguez) gets dressed to go to a juggling class. When she reveals that her birthday is this Friday, Will asks why she isn’t making a big deal of it. She says she comes from a big family that often forgets her birthday, just like in Sixteen Candles, and she doesn’t like to make a big deal of it. Will asks her to dinner to celebrate, using Betty’s adorable eyes to coax her to agree.

After Marion leaves, will gets a call from Jeremy Mitchell (Deion Smith), who is anxious about being Will’s informant for Rafael Wexford. Since making the drop from the previous episode, Rafael has been leaving Jeremy alone, but Will has tasked him with looking for a specific name on contracts and bookkeeping records. Moments after getting off the phone with Jeremy, his mother calls Will - his partner, Faith Mitchell (Iantha Richardson). Feeling guilt over hiding a secret from her, Will delays answering the call, and Faith notices. She’s on her way to pick him up for a case, a personal favor for Amanda, and one that Faith thinks is just a teenager who went out for a night of fun she didn’t want her parents to know about.

Will and Faith arrive at the luxurious home of Michelle McAdams (Yvonne Senat Jones), who just returned from a wellness retreat to find that her overachieving daughter is missing, her wallet and car still at the house, but her cellphone missing. Security camera footage at the house was turned off for several hours, during which time Whitney disappeared. As Faith talks to the mom, Will goes into the backyard and searches by the pool, finding used wineglasses. Behind a bush, he finds a shovel that has red stains on it. He sees that the hot tub cover is on, so he lifts it up, seeing a human hand in red water. Michelle is beside herself with grief upon discovering that her daughter was murdered.

Will and Faith search Whitney’s bedroom, which is pristinely clean and eerily cold compared to the rest of the house. A notebook is open on Whitney’s desk with a drawing of a chemical compound. Faith suggests Will search the sock drawer, which is where she hid things as a teenager. Inside, Will finds a fake ID and a blunt, while Faith looks into Whitney’s direct messages and finds some that she had invited a man named Elijah over last night. Faith departs as Will sees a beautiful white dress hanging in Whitney’s closet. Alone in the room, Will asks Whitney what she was hiding. And then, as has happened before, Will imagines Whitney McAdams (Briyana Guadalupe) there with him, a sassy teenager who accuses Will of putting his friend’s son in danger. Faith returns with some news - Elijah isn’t a teenager, he’s a choreographer at Whitney’s school, the Belle Rose League.

Will and Faith go to the school, which Faith tells him is the highest echelon of Atlanta’s Black society. It’s where she went as a teenager, before she got pregnant and was kicked out. The director, Lorraine Potts (Latarsha Rose), introduces herself, thinking they’re parents looking to enroll a student. They reveal themselves to be GBI agents, asking to meet with Elijah.

Elijah Buckley (Darius Jordan Lee) is nervous about being interrogated, and he asks to record the conversation. When asked about Whitney’s invitation, he describes Whitney as having a crush on him, something inappropriate that he didn’t humor. She invited him over, and he ignored the text. He is shocked to hear that his student was murdered, and his alibi is checkable - he was teaching a class, and afterward he had dinner with friends.

The news quickly spread through Whitney’s class, and Will and Faith quickly begin to interrogate students. They learn that Whitney was a star student, but that she also had a mean streak. Among the students who felt threatened by her is Tasha Hargrove (A’Zaria Carter), who was Whitney’s best friend before she became popular. Will observes Tasha taking some prescription medication, and she tells him everyone thinks she’s crazy ever since her mother died. Tasha had confided to Whitney about her mental health struggles, and Whitney told the whole school. Tasha’s stepdad, Gavin Overton (Lazell Brown), arrives and shuts down the interview. But before being pulled away, Tasha tells Will to talk to Jayden, who can usually be found in his Tesla in the parking lot.

Just like Tasha said, Will and Faith find Jayden (Christian Chase Jones) making out with his girlfriend Molly (Kaylan Mary Montgomery) in his car. Molly is upset to hear that Jayden may have been cheating on her with Whitney. And when Will sees a pool towel in Jayden’s backseat, just like the ones from Whitney’s backyard, he decides they need to bring the boy in for questioning.

Jayden is accompanied by his Lawyer (Jai Santiago) at the GBI as Will and Faith question the teen. Whitney had invited him to her house last night, leaving him a series of audio messages that he ignored. The last one, left before 8:00 pm, ended with Whitney seemingly being interrupted, asking “What the hell are you doing here?" Jayden got to Whitney’s after 9:00 pm and let himself into the backyard. He didn’t see Whitney, so he left. He tells them he saw a Black BMW 7 Series leaving Whitney’s driveway when he arrived. Asked if he knows anything else, Jayden adds that Whitney had a lot of enemies, most recently clashing with Ms. Potts.

Faith and Will return to Belle Rose. Will imagines Whitney in the backseat, taunting him by saying that there are no dogs in heaven. Faith received security footage form one of the McAdams’ neighbors of the Black BMW leaving the house and she is having the plates run.

Faith goes inside, watching Elijah choreograph a dance on his own. When he sees her, Faith mentions that she was a Belle Rose student and that she still loves to dance, taking lessons at Beltline Dance Studio where he teaches at night. She tells him about getting kicked out and never getting to attend cotillion. He invites her as his date, and she reluctantly accepts. They also talk about the students’ behavior, but Elijah doesn’t have much insight about who would’ve wanted to kill Whitney.

Will meets with Lorraine Potts and asks what her fight with Whitney was about. Loraine says that Whitney didn’t complete enough hours to compete in the cotillion, and when Whitney was told this, she dug up dirt on Ms. Potts, discovering that she lied about her degree on her resumé. Whitney blackmailed Ms. Potts into signing off on her hours. She tells Will that she drives a Green Volvo. When she gets a call from someone identified only with heart emoji, she asks Will to leave.

The car Jayden saw is traced back to Tasha’s step-father and the duo are brought into the GBI for questioning. Tasha doesn’t remember going to Whitney’s house the night she died, but her medication has caused blackouts before. Gavin’s alibi is that he was at a sports bar and Tasha knew how to get in touch with him if she had a problem. Asked about Whitney telling Tasha’s friends about her mental health hospitalization, Gavin adds that when he came home from work, he found that Tasha had stabbed many household objects. Tasha begins to freak out, and Will and Faith decide to pause the meeting, asking Gavin to join them in the hallway. He tells them he doesn’t think his daughter-in-law could’ve done this.

Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn) meets with Will and Faith in the GBI conference room to get an update for her friend Michelle, Whitney’s mother. Faith was able to pull video footage from Tasha’s 72-hour psychiatric hold, during which she only had one visitor - Whitney. There’s no audio, but Faith tries to read Whitney’s lips and believes she said  “I’m going to help you, I’ll find out what drug." Will rushes to his office to grab Whitney’s notebook, imagining the teenager cheering him on in a cheerleader uniform. He brings the notebook to the conference room to say this must be what Whitney was looking at. Will theorizes that Gavin has been drugging Tasha with something that’s causing her problems, and that Whitney was going to use Belle Rose’s mass spectrometer to analyze her medication. Will thinks Whitney was trying to save Tasha. He also learned that Tasha’s inheritance was put in a trust for her, something Gavin could only access if he became a conservator to his stepdaughter. Will thinks Gavin killed Whitney when he learned she was on to him.

Will and Faith try to apprehend Gavin outside of his office, but he runs for it. They chase him into the street, where he is hit by a car. Afterward, they search his home and find the medication he’d been using to manipulate Tasha, as well as conservatorship paperwork. Tasha has an aunt she will live with, but it seems that Gavin was Whitney’s killer.

We see Will getting ready for his date with Marion for her birthday, but he is interrupted by the vision of Whitney, who should be at peace now. She reminds him about Jayden’s audio message, and how she sounded calm when she was interrupted. If Gavin had come for her, she would’ve been alarmed. Marion steps in, telling Will he looks handsome, but suggesting her bring a coat because it’s cold. And then he thinks about  how cold Whitney’s bedroom was.

They take a detour on their way to dinner, back to the McAdams house. Will opens the airvent and finds what was blocking the heat, a shoebox that contained a secret phone and notes about Tasha’s medication. Opening the phone, Will finds a homemade video of Gavin having sex with someone, who Will quickly realizes was Whitney’s real killer. “We’re not going to make our reservation," he apologizes to Marion.

We see Faith, looking beautiful in a radiance yellow dress, opening a package at Michael Ormewood’s house and taking out her new statement bag as she heads to the ball. At the event, Faith comments Elijah on how well-choreographed the students are. But her date is crashed by Will, who asks her to follow him and play along.

Will and Faith sit on either side of Lorraine Potts at her table, and Will uses a handkerchief to take her wineglass, telling her that they’re going to compare the prints to the ones on the wine glasses in Whitney’s backyard. Will warns the head of the school not to ruin the event by causing a scene. “You were sleeping with Gavin when you found out she threatened you," Will reveals about the real dirt Whitney had on her. Will and Faith quietly arrest Whitney’s killer.

As the dance wraps up, Faith and Elijah end up with the dancefloor to themselves. She thanks him for giving her a redeeming moment of closure on the end of her time as a Belle Rose student. “I need more fun in my life," Faith tells Elijah as they make plans for another date.

Will is a wallflower, joined by the imaginary Whitney, who thanks him for finding her killer. She also warns him that he should tell Faith his secret before she hears it from somebody else. And she tells him that she lied about there not being dogs in heaven. She says goodbye.

Back home, Will tries to salvage Marion’s birthday. She sits by a fire while he brings her a stack of pancakes with a single candle in it. “This is the best birthday I’ve had in many years," she tells him, as they recreate the iconic ending of Sixteen Candles as Betty watches.

APD Story - The Curious Shooting of Monroe Tiveret

Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin) took his kids, Max (Owen Trumbly) and Cooper (Jophielle Love), on a hike over the weekend, and they both came down with poison ivy. His ex-wife says this is his fault and he needs to care for the kids as they recover, so he has his partner, Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen), bring work to him. The living room is awkward as she arrives, with Max saying he’d rather be at his mom’s house.

They’re new case is a man named Monroe Tiveret, a well-liked air conditioner repairman. When Ormewood hears that Monroe was divorced, he applies his own situation and instantly assumes it was the ex-wife, but Angie says she was in Tampa. He suggests the ex hired a hitman, but Angie suggests they look elsewhere.

As Ormewood and Angie do a video call with coroner Pete Chin (Kurt Yue), Max and Cooper argue about how they’re already out of Sprite. Pete mentions that Monroe didn’t have much food in his stomach, but he found traces of food on his body. As he lists off the ingredients, Cooper begins to sing a song with them. Ormewood and Angie learn that a sandwich shop called Jean & Tony’s was running radio ads for a limited-time offering containing those same ingredients. And it turns out that the sandwich shop was just around the corner from where Monroe was shot.

When they get to Jean & Tony’s, Tony (Randy Bardco) shares the bad news - the sandwich is sold out. They order other sandwiches, and Angie also shows her badge, asking for security footage. Meanwhile, Ormewood and Max talk in a booth and Max reveals that he’s taking a break from wrestling to try acting. He was worried his dad would make fun of him for wanting to play Romeo in Romeo & Juliet, but Ormewood tries to be supportive. Max thinks the pink spots on his face will cost him the role, but Ormewood suggests he turn it into a joke and then crush the audition.

Angie brings over video of Monroe at the sandwich shop, and they see a man behind him get angry when he learns that Monroe got the last one. The angry man leaves the restaurant in a huff. No sandwich was found at the scene, so it seems that Monroe was murdered over his lunch.

After eating, Ormewood helps Max run lines as Angie and Cooper giggle. But when Cooper looks out the window and sees the man who followed Monroe out of the shop, she brings it to their attention. Ormewood and Angie leap into action, running outside and apprehending the man. It seems to earn Ormewood some respect from Max.

That night, Ormewood and Cooper snuggle on the couch watching a nature documentary about bears. Cooper is confused why someone would kill over a sandwich. “Sometimes bad things happen and they don’t make a lot of sense," Ormewood tells his daughter. After Faith leaves for her date, Max comes home to announce that, while he didn’t get the part of Romeo, he was cast as his friend Mercutio, which is a more fun part to play.

Next Episode: “Best of Your Recollection" - Airing Tuesday, March 25th, at 8/7c on ABC

After a traumatic shooting, Will faces a tense internal investigation and the fallout from his actions. Meanwhile, his friendship with Faith is put to the test, and Will finds himself torn between his lingering feelings for Marion and Angie.

Songs Featured in This Episode: