Will Trent season 2 review: Broadcast procedural finds its groove

Will Trent is back on the case. After a nine-month hiatus, one of television’s most underrated crime dramas is finally back for its sophomore season on ABC on February 20. And the show, much like its eccentric protagonist, seems to have finally found its groove.

The last time viewers saw Will Trent (played by an outstanding Ramón Rodríguez), the Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent was badly shaken. After all, he’d just come face-to-face with James Ulster (Greg Germann), the serial killer responsible for kidnapping and potentially paralyzing his childhood love Angie (Erika Christensen) and killing his biological mother. In the final moments of the season-one finale, Will also learned that his boss, Amanda (Sonja Sohn), had found him in a trash can as a newborn. She attempted to raise him like her own child, only to be denied the opportunity to adopt him as a single woman.

Even though Will Trent’s criminal cases were a mixed bag, this intricate web of relationships established and developed in the first 13 episodes elevated the show to an above-average broadcast drama. This aspect further aids the second season. A few months after learning more about his mother’s identity, including the fact that she was of Puerto Rican descent, Will has very sweetly taken it upon himself to learn Spanish so he can feel closer to her. So what if he hasn’t mustered up the courage to reveal his extra-curricular activities to the rest of the members of his inner circle (other than his pup, Betty, of course, who accompanies him to every lesson)? It’s still an underrated skill for a native Spanish speaker to suddenly sound like a beginner with a completely different accent, but Rodríguez nails it here in an undeniably charming way.

When Rodríguez was first announced as the titular detective in 2021, many longtime readers of Karin Slaughter’s original novels, which serve as the source material for the live-action series, complained the actor didn’t match the physical description of the character (tall, lanky, short sandy/dirty-blond hair, large hands). But one could argue that Rodríguez’s casting has ultimately opened new avenues for storytelling in this iteration.

The writers have wisely chosen to lean into the actor’s Puerto Rican heritage this season. But rather than telling a story about a young man caught between two cultures, Will Trent is choosing to explore what would happen if a person deeply entrenched in one culture with an understanding of who he is is suddenly introduced to—and keeps discovering—a part of himself he never knew existed. The internal conflict between who Will thinks he is and who he thinks he should be is a compelling driver for his arc. Rodriguez’s innate likability makes it difficult to not root for Will and hope he comes to terms with his tortured past. (The season-two premiere alone has Will seeing visions of his younger self being trapped in one of his foster homes.)

Despite being called Will Trent, the show only stands to benefit from a strong supporting cast filled with rich, well-developed characters. Sohn, playing the steely, self-assured voice of reason at the GBI, delivered an astounding performance at a hospital vending machine in the final minutes of last season, and the continued development of her surrogate parent-child relationship with Will remains one of the series’ focal points. Will and Angie’s relationship, meanwhile, forms the show’s battered, beating heart.

Their love is both born out of—and likely hampered by—their traumatic pasts, but they can’t seem to resist being drawn to each other. That being said, Will and Angie agree they should try dating other people, and Will begins to feel a spark with Cricket Dawson (the always delightful Susan Kelechi Watson), the woman tasked with defusing car bombs from an elusive bomber throughout the premiere. In her first on-screen appearance since This Is Us, Watson is given quite a bit to work with in the episode screened for review, but part of us wishes she could stick around longer as a series regular rather than a guest star.

Will Trent began with a two-episode mystery last season before reverting to more of a case-of-the-week format, which paid varying dividends. Although the standalone episodes are a tried-and-tested formula of this genre, it’s still the kind of series that will benefit from a serialized approach to storytelling that involves all the characters working on the same cases, as evidenced in the premiere. With an endearingly quirky protagonist who uses a special kind of visual language to solve and read crime scenes, Will Trent remains a breezy and entertaining take on the classic procedural format. Thankfully, the writers have found a way to create a show that complements Slaughter’s novels but can easily stand on its own. It’s no mystery why Will Trent is so good after all.

Will Trent premieres February 20 on ABC, and you can catch up on season one over at Hulu.