Will Trent Season 1 Episode 13: A Bad Temper and a Hard Heart

Police process the crime scene at Will's house where Angie was kidnapped; Ormewood worries about Will, and Paul arrives to take him to stay at his house. Will remembers his tape recorder and, by recreating Angie's attack, finds it in the bathroom drawer — Angie used it to leave a description of the killer. Will demands to be back on the case, and Amanda agrees. The 1986 file revises the horror: the killer did not kill Lucy — he kept her until she died in childbirth; she was his favorite, and she never revealed the father's name.

Flashbacks show rookie Amanda and Evelyn trying in vain to be heard by the lead detectives. Evidence is thin — neighbors saw a dark Jaguar at the time of the abduction — and the killer calls Will while tailing him, trying to run him down and taunting him with his childhood nickname, “trash can.”

Will works with Paul, who can identify the killer's scent from the earlier attack; Will believes the killer is targeting him for attention, blaming Will for Lucy's death — in truth, the killer made a mistake at the crime scene and is cleaning it up. Will interrogates Butch, one of the 1986 lead detectives, whom Amanda dismisses as a coward without the guts to kill; Faith finds Kitty, the killer's first victim, who escaped in 1986 and is too terrified to say much; and James's case file gives Ormewood and Faith a Butch lead.

At the club, James tells Amanda and Evelyn that Butch used to rape and choke sex workers and believes Butch is the killer. The stakeout on Butch ends with him spotting them, opening fire, and being shot in the arm and arrested.

It comes apart: while Butch is in surgery, news arrives that Kitty's body was discovered — she had a panic attack, left the safe house, and fell into the killer's hands — and the killer calls Will to taunt him about killing her. Butch is not the culprit, and Will starts having hallucinations of his mom. Going through the files, Will notices what looks like a footprint and, checking James's notes, realizes something is off about the dates — the killer is James.

Paul, meanwhile, recognizes the soap and lotion on James's hands and cracks the scent mystery; the team independently reaches the same conclusion. Angie, held captive and repeatedly choked, listens keenly and makes it far enough to call Will — unable to say anything.

Will makes a deal — surrender in exchange for Angie's safety — and goes to James's house alone. James welcomes him, offers a drink Will declines, talks about Lucy, and says he is not Will's father. He takes Will to the basement where Angie lies unconscious and wants Will to watch her die; they fight, Will overpowers him and for a moment thinks about killing him — a briefly conscious Angie stops him — and Will arrests James. It is too late: the drink James took had poison in it, and he is rushed to the hospital dying. Angie is stabilized.

Amanda's full story comes out through Evelyn: she rescued baby Will after James threw him in a trash can, was not considered a fit parent as a single woman in the 1980s, gave him up but named him after her dad, and found him again nearly two decades later when he was arrested. Will finds Amanda, thanks her, and accepts Lucy's necklace from her — the season's closing image.

The season's mystery resolves. The killer is James Ulster — Juice's 1986 lawyer, the man who kept Lucy until she died in childbirth and built the children's-home killings around Will. Will identifies him through a footprint and a date error in James's notes, confirmed by Paul's scent recognition; James's false lead — Butch — costs Kitty Treadwell her life. Will trades himself for Angie, and in the basement fight overpowers him: at the moment he could kill James, a briefly conscious Angie stops him, and Will makes the arrest instead. It saves neither fully — the drink James took was poisoned, and he is rushed to the hospital dying, with the sources differing only on where his death completes (hospital or prison). Angie survives and is stabilized.

The finale closes on family rather than a cliffhanger. Amanda's full story comes out: she rescued baby Will after James threw him in a trash can, was forced by 1980s adoption rules to give him up, named him after her father, and found him again when he was arrested as a young man. Will thanks her and accepts Lucy's necklace. Open threads, not cliffhangers: Angie's recovery and career status, how Will and Amanda's relationship changes, and James's dying state — which leaves the door open on further family reveals, since James is not Will's father.