‘Will Trent’ Brings Back Amanda Wagner, With a Twist (Recap)

Will Trent took its title character (Ramón Rodríguez) on a really wild ride through his own psyche, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the disco dance bonanza, on Tuesday’s (April 28) new episode. The journey allowed him to both solve a murder case and grapple with his grief over the death of Amanda Wagner. That meant Amanda returned to his side to talk him through their long, storied history as well as his sense of loss … only, with a twist. Warning: Spoilers for Will Trent Season 4 Episode 17, “Where’d You Come From, Little Angel?” ahead!

Instead of having Sonja Sohn come back to the role, it was actually Sydney Park who reprised her part as the younger version of Amanda in an extended and very creepy dream sequence.

Park, who’d previously guest-starred in flashback scenes from Seasons 1 and 2, teased her return on social media ahead of the airing and praised Sohn for the role she’s inhabited so fashionably before. “It’s been such an honor to step into the shoes of Young Amanda on #WillTrent. @sonjasohn, you are one special lady… so full of good humor, genuine love of your craft. Where’d you come from little angel? The epitome of beauty & brains,” she wrote, alongside an image of herself in costume at the then-captain’s desk.

So, how did Amanda’s return play out?

Well, it started with Will joining Faith (Iantha Richardson) on site for a double murder case that didn’t quite make sense to Will. While the female victim in the case, Christa, was strangled one way, the male subject, Ethan, had different injuries. Will was still too bent out of shape about Amanda’s death, though, to make heads or tails of the scene and only came back later to look at the bodies in the morgue.

Instead of getting the peace and quiet he needed to concentrate, though, Will was soon whacked on the head by an unknown assailant. He was then transported into a dream wherein he first encountered a man in a chem suit who warned him there were neurotoxins at the crime scene before guiding him downstairs. There, he ran into baby Faith at her mom’s desk and, eventually, Amanda showed up. From there, he remembered his first time at the station as a teen boy who’d been pinched for shoplifting after his hustle business with Rafael Wexler went awry.

This encounter gave him the chance to confront this version of Amanda about her decision to not adopt and raise him, despite being the one who rescued him as a baby from a garbage can at his mother’s murder scene. Everything could have been different if she had, he insisted. To that, Amanda said, she would spend the rest of her life making up for it by ensuring he have a strong future right alongside her at the GBI.

Along the way, Will subconsciously worked to decipher the clues of the case — with a very uncomfortable appearance by Dr. Seth (Scott Foley) bragging about marrying the love of his life and having a baby with her and being endlessly happy about it, too. Soon, he realized Ethan was an aficionado on worms and would then know that certain worms emit a heart-slowing chemical.

In the real world, all the while, Will was actually trapped inside of a morgue freezer, losing oxygen and slowly suffocating and freezing to death while his mind went wild.

Angie (Erika Christensen), Faith, Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin), and Franklin (Kevin Daniels) worked to unearth details about the two victims. They tracked down Ethan’s former boss and learned from his assistant that they’d had a conversation about bringing him back to work because of a brilliant new formula he’d invented; then, they talked to a friend of Christa’s and searched her bank records to ultimately determine Christa was secretly working for Ethan’s boss to steal his secret formula. So, after discovering her betrayal, he killed her and dosed himself to appear dead, sneaking out of the morgue after attacking Will and stashing his body.

This led to a massively nightmarish fight scene between Will, young Amanda, Ethan, and the chem suit stranger that was both exciting and cathartic. After all the punches were thrown, Will got to have the goodbye exchange he didn’t get to have in real life with Amanda.

“You have to trust me. Let me go,” she told him.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he replied. “Don’t leave me, please.”

“I will always be with you, you hear me? Always,” she concluded as Angie and the rest of the team retrieved Will from his icy hiding spot.

In the hospital, Will also got to have a beat of closure with Seth after imagining him in such a haughty and braggadocious way in that dream. After giving Will the all-clear on his physical condition and recognizing the emotional strife Will was still dealing with, Seth related to him on a very personal level, revealing the hopelessness he’d felt after the illness and death of his wife.

Later, after Will sifted through some baby pictures and other mementos Amanda had kept from his infancy, he had another vision of her: picking him up from a crib and cooing, “Where’d you come from, little angel?”

In other news, someone was cutting a lot of onions Tuesday night.

Will Trent, Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC