TV Recap: "Will Trent" and Rafael Go Their Separate Ways

Will Trent seems to close the door on Rafael Wexford in the 14th episode of Season 3. At the end of last season, Will seemed to have destroyed his life in Atlanta beyond repair. However, like some strange modern version of Mary Poppins, Rafael’s demand to have his old friend handle his case seems to have brought Will back to his center in many ways. So it feels a little sad to think that Rafael may be out of his life forever now, but hopefully we will see him again someday. Here’s a recap.

Season 3, Episode 14 - “A Funeral Fit for a Quartermaine" - Written by Daniel Thomsen

2004 Flashback

Through flashbacks to 2004, we see how Will Trent (Andres Velez) came to know Rafael Wexford (Yannick Haynes). A young adult living on his own, Will responded to a room rental at Rafael’s grandmother’s house, Ms. Pearl (Roxzane T. Mims). Rafael was against his grandma taking Will on as a boarder, in part because he smelled and hadn’t been able to hold a steady job. But Ms. Pearl was impressed by Will’s ability to fix her cuckoo clock. Right off the bat, Will and Rafael had a brotherly, quarrelsome dynamic.

When Will’s dyslexia cost him his fast food job, Rafael let him in on a secret side hustle - stolen rugs. Will recognized the value of the rugs, having once had a foster parent who forced him to work in their home goods warehouse. With Will’s knowledge of Turkish handmade rugs, Rafael saw potential for Will as a salesman, revealing that he always wanted to own a money bin like Scrooge McDuck.

We see Will make his first sale to a man named Henry (Benjamin Spruger). Shortly after, the original owner of the stolen rugs, Eddie (James Choi), found Will and Rafael. He demanded the money they made, but also saw their potential and wanted to hire them. Will and Rafael fought over whether to do it or not. In the end, Will approached Eddie with the money and refused to join his gang. When that plan went south, Will was almost killed. Rafael stepped in at the last minute, saving Will by killing one of Eddie’s goons. “I never want to see you again," Rafael told Will Trent.

Present Day

It’s late at night when Rafael Wexford (Antwayn Hopper) knocks on the door of his old housemate, Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez). “Grandma’s dead," he tells Will, still in shock at how suddenly she went after a stroke. Will invites him in, having Betty calm Rafael as he asks Will for help with the funeral arrangements. Rafael hasn’t told his daughter, Sunny, yet.

The next day, Will and Faith Mitchell (Iantha Richardson) fill in their boss, Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn), about how Faith’s son, Jeremy (Deion Smith), is an informant on Rafael’s RICO case. Amanda is angry that this was kept from her, but she does seem pleased with the information Jeremy has procured. The Piedmont Kings are disguising drug sales as sales of music and merchandise for artists whose sales have been bad. Jeremy was able to retrieve a box of t-shirts from a dumpster that had been written off as “sold" for evidence.

Will accompanied Rafael to the funeral home for both personal and professional reasons. While meeting with a mortician, Ivy (Gigi Zumbado), the “brothers" express their desire to give Ms. Pearl a farewell like the matriarchs on her favorite soap opera, General Hospital. Rafael keeps getting phone calls about his business, and Will pretends to be frustrated by it, putting Rafael’s phone under one of Ivy’s catalogues so that he leaves it with Will while Rafael shops for coffins.

Faith acts as a liaison. With Will on Rafael’s phone and Jeremy at his office, she distracts Rafael’s assistant, Tanya (Camryn Jade), by pretending to be a lost delivery driver so she will go outside. Jeremy sneaks into Rafael’s office while Will gives Faith the Two-Factor Authentication key so that Jeremy can get into Rafael’s computer. He pulls up the accounting files they needed, but before he can download them, Rafael returns to Will, and Tanya goes back to her desk. He seems to suspect something, asking Tanya to check his desk. Thankfully, Jeremy was able to hide. When he got up to leave, he noticed a TV screen showing a live feed to a stash of Rafael’s money. He pulled out his phone to record a video of it.

Back in the GBI Conference Room, Jeremy’s video is reviewed by Faith, Will, and Amanda. They speculate that there is around $4 million in the video, as hands move the piles of money around, preparing it for something. Will thinks they won't even need Rafael's accounting records if they can get to the cash before it’s laundered.

When Will returns to Rafael at the funeral home, he’s asked if the GBI ever breaks into computers. Will explains that they do it with a warrant, the same as the FBI and other legal entities. Will offers to place Rafael in protective custody, sharing that he knows people are trying to get his money. That’s what Rafael’s right-hand man, Emil (Chadwick Farley), arrives to speak privately with his boss, but Will overhears the message: “The money’s been moved, all of it."

Faith brings Peanut (Josue Charles) back in for questioning about the Piedmont Kings, learning that the other gang leaders are upset with Rafael and trying to dethrone him by stealing his fortune. Peanut heard that Rafael hired a fixer who specializes in money laundering. “Things are about to go down," he shared, telling Faith that Rafael has become more secretive within his circle. Faith learns the name of Rafael’s money launderer and assigns a team to his hotel. Unfortunately, the rival gangs get to him, torturing and murdering him.

Amanda attends Ms. Pearl’s funeral to support Sunny (Kyrie McAlpin), who gives an emotional eulogy to her grandmother. Rafael gets up to console his daughter, leading the attendees in prayer. When Will’s phone rings, he steps into a private room to answer, getting an update from Faith. As she tells him about Rafael’s fixer’s death, Will watches a new casket get wheeled into the room. Left alone with it, he cracks open the hood to find the coffin full of Rafael’s money.

Will brings Rafael to the room, announcing that he’s putting him under arrest. Rafael realizes that it was Will who messed with his phone and computer. When Rafael tells Will how wrong it is to do this at Ms. Pearl’s funeral, Will points out how wrong it was for Rafael to hand off drug money there. He informs Rafael that his fixer is dead and asks him to think about Sunny. Rafael surrenders to Will’s protective custody. Emil walks in to see Will putting handcuffs on Rafael, and Will realizes that Rafael’s right-hand man was the only other person who knew about Rafael’s fixer. Two other men enter the room, and Will, sensing trouble, dives behind the casket with Rafael just in time to avoid being shot. Emil has staged a coup. Unfortunately, he didn’t count on Will Trent coming to Rafael’s rescue. Will takes out one of the goons just as the GBI swarms in.

That night at Will’s house, Amanda and Sunny share a tearful goodbye. Rafael and Sunny are being placed in witness protection, and they don’t know where they’re going. While Rafael had to give up everything he possessed, he brought Will something Ms. Pearl would’ve wanted him to have - a scrapbook she’d been keeping full of newspaper clippings of all of his accomplishments. In the same way that Rafael considers Will to be his brother, Ms. Pearl may have considered Will to be one of her kids.

Meanwhile, something is up with Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin), and Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen) is worried about him. After arriving late to work with his son, Max (Owen Trumbly), Angie learned that Ormewood nearly got in a car accident. Their boss, Captain Heller (Todd Allen Durkin), couldn’t understand Ormewood’s handwritten notes, which he said he had taken while attending his daughter’s basketball game. Later, Ormewood walks into Angie as if he didn’t even see her there. As he rushed to the elevator to get to Max’s play, he collapsed, falling face-first onto the floor in front of Angie.

Ormewood came to in the hospital, with Angie’s boyfriend, Seth McDale (Scott Foley), tending to her partner. Ormewood says he needs to get to his son’s play, but Seth insists on running a CT scan of his head. It meant a lot to Ormewood that Max wanted his help practicing his lines, and he was looking forward to seeing his son’s hard work pay off. But it turns out that this hospital visit wasn’t for nothing - Ormewood’s CT scans revealed a brain tumor that is likely impacting his visual processing and spatial awareness, hence his recent issues. He will need to have the tumor removed so it can be assessed. Ormewood gets upset, sharing that his father died young while he was deployed overseas.

That night, Ormewood watches a nature documentary about giraffes with his daughter, Cooper (Jophielle Love). When Max comes home, still in costume, Ormewood is delighted when Max performs for him, giving him the opportunity to see his son play Mercutio.

Next Episode: “The Most Beautiful, Fierce, Smart, Powerful Creature in the Whole World" - Airing Tuesday, April 22nd, at 8/7c on ABC

Amanda and Evelyn Mitchell’s idyllic getaway takes a dark turn when a shocking murder is discovered at their luxury resort. Meanwhile, back home, Angie faces the emotional strain of a family member’s unstable health conditions.