TV Recap: Will Trent — Ulster's Shadow Reaches Puerto Rico in "He Lives"

Will Trent goes full thriller in its eleventh episode of Season 4, trading the procedural rhythms of Atlanta for a sun-drenched Puerto Rico where the past refuses to stay buried. The episode is anchored by an emotionally devastating performance from Ramón Rodríguez as Will races to protect his only living family member while confronting a new villain — one even more personal than Ulster himself. Let's recap.

Season 4, Episode 11: "He Lives" - Written by Juliet Lashinsky-Revene

Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez) is on a morning walk with Betty and his therapist, Dr. Roach (Margaret Cho), still hearing the voice of James Ulster (Greg Germann) inside his head. Dr. Roach gently reframes it: everyone hears internal voices, she tells him, but they're usually there to help, even when misguided. "He's not Ulster," she says. "He's a part of you that needs to be heard." She encourages Will to rebrand his inner antagonist — new name, new look, new power dynamic. The key insight: "It's your brain, you call the shots. He can't hurt you anymore unless you let him." It's a small but significant therapy breakthrough.

Will arrives at the morgue, where Pete Chin (Kurt Yue) and Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen) are working a fresh case: a 24-year-old male stabbed in his bedroom, lips sewn shut — exactly the signature of James Ulster. But there's a deviation: his nails are painted vermillion, not red. Detective Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin) arrives with the victim's name, and the color drains from the room: Antonio Miranda. The same name as Will's biological uncle, brother to one of Ulster's most prominent victims. Will immediately asks his AI assistant, Eduardo, to call Antonio — and gets voicemail. 

Will takes a flight to Puerto Rico and calls Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn) from the street to give her a heads up. She's not impressed. Island PD could have handled this, she argues. We catch Amanda in Faith Mitchell's (Iantha Richardson) office — Faith is already helping work the case from Atlanta. Their lead: Jebediah Oswald, an ex-con who recently purchased a blade matching the victim's wounds and who habitually buys vintage boots consistent with tread marks found at the scene.

At Antonio's building, Will rings the doorbell but is intercepted by FBI Agent Lana Elkie (Mallory Jansen), who reveals she tailed him from the airport and wants to know what GBI business brings him to Puerto Rico. Will explains that Antonio is family. Lana rings a neighbor's bell, speaks Spanish, and they're buzzed in.

Upstairs, they hear groaning from inside Antonio's apartment. Guns drawn, they enter — and find Antonio Miranda (John Ortiz) very much alive, mid-rendezvous with Sofia (Emily Sanchez), who bolts in a panic thinking the FBI is there for Antonio. After the necessary apologies and introductions, Antonio Miranda (John Ortiz) relaxes, hugs his nephew with genuine warmth, and flirts shamelessly with Lana in the same breath. He tells Will he actually did him a favor: Sofia is married. 

Back in Georgia, Ormewood, Faith, and Angie search Jebediah's trailer, which appears abandoned, with stale food and flies buzzing. Jebediah was hiding inside. He bolts, triggering a chase through the woods. Angie stays behind to search the trailer.

What she finds is chilling: a wall plastered with Ulster's face, newspaper clippings of his crimes, and written behind a window screen in red ink — "He Lives!" Faith and Ormewood return with Jebediah in cuffs.

Back in Puerto Rico, Antonio makes piña coladas for Will and Lana. Will notices Antonio's lock is busted and offers FBI protection, which Antonio declines. Antonio reminds Will of a pact they made two years ago: annual visits. Will sheepishly apologizes — "I had a lot going on." When Antonio steps away to take a call from the returning Sofia, Lana helps Will slice pineapple and playfully feeds him a piece. But the moment is interrupted by a text from Amanda: Jebediah has been apprehended, and his prints match the murder scene.

In Atlanta, Faith and Angie interrogate Jebediah Oswald (Joshua Mikel). He says he was following orders when he killed the other Antonio Miranda. He won't say who gave them. But here's the twist: he received a letter two weeks ago — supposedly from Ulster — despite the fact that Ulster died two months prior. The letter contained instructions, which he burned. And he claims he isn't the only one who received such a letter.

At an oceanside bar, Will watches Lana dance as a waiter (Bryan Lopez) serves him a drink he hesitantly begins to enjoy. He daydreams about dancing with her — about kissing her — before a run-in over a spilled drink jolts him back to reality. Lana defuses it, then laughs when she plucks a spider off Will's shoulder and realizes he's terrified of them. Then Amanda calls again: Oswald wasn't acting alone. Others received letters from "Ulster."

Will and Lana race back to Antonio's apartment. The door is open. The apartment is disheveled. Sofia lies on the living room floor, lips stitched shut — dead. Antonio is gone.

Will rushes the neighborhood, showing Antonio's photo on his phone, asking anyone who will look. His phantom Ulster surfaces. Will tries his therapist's advice, reimagining Ulster as a ridiculous elf instead of a terrifying mirror image. Then Lana cuts in: a warrant to track Antonio's phone places him somewhere in the middle of the jungle.

Will and Lana push into the jungle. The signal cuts out. In an unsteady moment near a cliff's edge, Lana nearly falls — Will grabs her, and they lose the bag containing her phone in the process. The recovery is intimate: Lana lands on top of Will, face to face, lips close. She apologizes for losing the phone. They hear a baby crying and follow the sound to a remote hut.

Inside, Will finds a woman lying unconscious in a bed. "Mom?" he breathes — certain it's a hallucination. But the crying pulls him back. The woman is a dummy. Outside in a dumpster: a tape recorder on a loop. The crying was bait. Lana finds Antonio's phone inside the shack. And on the floor, Will finds a locket that once belonged to his mother.

Will screams into the trees. His inner Ulster appears, wearing the elf hat. Working through the logic, Will asks who else could know about his mother's necklace. Ulster tells him he never shared details about Will or Lucy with anyone. "There's nothing I like more than savoring the details of my own life." Ulster points out that Amanda knew about the necklace. He also casts doubt on Jebediah as a true Ulster-type accomplice. Will asks Eduardo to query Amanda about whether Ulster kept a journal.

Returning to the shack, Will tells Lana why this scene upset him so much, sharing that James Ulster is his biological father, who murdered his mother and threw him away in the trash. She acknowledges that the necklace belonged to Lucy. Lana finds one of Antonio's drink umbrellas under the bed. On it, they find a serpent drawing. Lana recognizes the symbol: an abandoned military base deep in the jungle called the Iron Snake.

In Atlanta, Faith learns that Ulster kept a journal in prison, sharing this with Amanda, who calls Mona Trevens (Ashley LeConte Campbell), Ulster's former secretary. His journal, Amanda learns, was sent to his next of kin — Mona's daughter. Amanda asks if Adelaide is James' daughter. Mona is shaken: Ulster wanted nothing to do with her daughter despite years of letters. "He would never have sent her anything," she insists. But Adelaide is currently visiting an alleged new girlfriend in Puerto Rico.

Will and Lana locate the Iron Snake's entrance — an underground hatch leading through a spider-infested sewer into the abandoned military base. It's harrowing. Will gets bitten. Multiple times. Lana lifts his shirt and finds bites across his back. She warns him that, without antivenom, he has roughly 10 hours. The more he moves, the faster the venom spreads.

Meanwhile, Faith and Ormewood have tracked Adelaide Trevens to her apartment in Puerto Rico and burst in with guns drawn. While Faith searches, Ormewood finds Ulster's journal — full of obsessive details about Will and Lucy. Then Faith opens the freezer. Inside: a body. An ID card hangs around the dead woman's neck. It reads: Lana Elkie, FBI.

Will follows the sound of Antonio groaning to a cell deep inside the base. He tears the bag off the prisoner's head, only to find that instead of Antonio, it’s a Strange Man (Christopher Cedeño) who cackles and lunges, hands around Will's throat. Lana comes to the rescue, slitting the man's throat. "I wasn't gonna let him kill you," she says, pulling her gun on Will. "I wanna do that myself." She has Will slide his weapon over. She is Adelaide Trevens — Ulster's daughter — and she's spent this entire episode playing a long, methodical con. She blames her father for never seeing her the way he saw Will. If she'd been a boy, she says, maybe he would have liked her. 

Adelaide tries to lock Will in the cell, vowing to let him die in jail the way her father did. But Will took the keys when she wasn't looking. He’d known since the shack, when she knew his mother’s name without ever saying it, that “Lana” was the killer. He asks how many pen pals she recruited, and whether any of them knew it was her — not Ulster — they were writing to. She raises the gun to his neck and pulls the trigger. The chamber clicks empty. Will took the bullets, too. He opens the cell, switches places, and locks her inside.

The venom begins to work. Will stumbles down the hallway, calling for Antonio, and collapses outside on the ground. In his fading consciousness, he imagines his mother, Lucy Morales (Raiany Silva), cradling his head in her lap. "I wanted a family," he tells her, voice cracking. "Then scream, Will," she says.

Alone on the ground outside the Iron Snake, Will Trent screams.

Faith and Ormewood are canvassing the jungle when they hear him. They find Will, call for a medevac, and he tells them about the spiders and the venom — and that Ulster's daughter is locked in a cell inside, and she knows where Antonio is. Ormewood rushes in. He returns empty-handed: Adelaide is gone, but she left Antonio's drink umbrella behind as a calling card. Will loses consciousness as the episode ends.

Will Trent returns next Tuesday, March 24th, with “I Hear It Now, I Was Good” at 8/7c on ABC.

Will grows anxious over the whereabouts of his uncle, drawing emotional support from Angie. Meanwhile, the murder of a famed conductor, found with cryptic musical clues, pulls Ormewood, Faith and Franklin into the world of the Atlanta Symphony.