'Will Trent' Season 3 Episode 2 Recap & Ending Explained: Is Captain Cromwell Dead?

Season 3 of ABC’s police procedural show, Will Trent, introduced us to a sinister conspiracy in episode 1, where the GBI detectives suspected that high-ranking officials in the APB were connected with a stolen cars racket. As Will was brought back into service from his temporary leave, he had to de-escalate a situation with the leader of a gang, Rafael Wexford, who also happened to be an old friend of his. But in the end, Rafael falsely confessed to the crime—the murder of a police officer named Chester—only because his daughter, Sunny, had been kidnapped by someone. In Will Trent season 3 episode 2, the case is finally solved, and the perpetrators are put away, although there is a surprise in the end as well.

Spoiler Alert

Who had kidnapped Sunny?

Will Trent season 3 episode 2 begins with Will and Faith rushing to the last known location of Rafael’s daughter, Sunny, which happens to be at the house of her caretaker, Penelope Morton. While the photograph on Rafael’s computer at the end of episode 1 made it obvious that the girl had been kidnapped, the GBI detectives reach the place to find any potential clues about the case, and have to break open the main door to enter the house. Despite not being able to find anything odd right away, Faith eventually spots some drops of blood outside a closet, and they find the dead body of a woman inside it. This is definitely Penelope, the caretaker supposed to have kept Sunny safe, but the fact that she was dead meant that the intruder who had come to abduct the girl had taken her life. 

The detectives enter Sunny’s room next and find the entire place turned upside down. While the messy appearance of the room had to do with the messy habits of the young teenager, it also looked like a real struggle had taken place in there. However, one corner of the room appeared extremely tidy, as if it did not fit with the rest of the scene, and Will figures out that this might have been because it was visible to others. The hunch turns out to be true, as the corner is right in front of Sunny’s computer screen and desk, meaning that she was shooting some kind of video from the desk, with the corner of the room being visible in the background. Based on the position, Will figures out that Sunny must have been recording a video of herself at the desk, and he quickly finds a camera under the bed, which had been knocked off during the tussle. 

A brief glance through the contents of the camera indeed reveals a video of Sunny, which she was shooting for some school project, and the events of her abduction are pretty well documented in it. The girl heard the loud bang of the door and then the gunshot in the house and was immediately alarmed, but before she could do anything to protect herself, a man entered her room and dragged her away. It is only because of a mirror, placed on the opposite side of the camera, that the face of the intruder is visible to the detectives, and it turns out to be that of Lincoln Spelling, the leader of the Grovepark Boys gang. Spelling was already questioned by Faith back in Will Trent season 3, episode 1, when it was suspected that the Grovepark Boys were linked with the stolen cars racket. 

Although it is now clear from the evidence that it was Spelling who had abducted Sunny, the case is nowhere near being solved, as the Grovepark Boys leader is found dead around the very same time by the GBI. Amanda and Michael take a look at the dead body, which has two fatal gunshot wounds on it, and realize that someone powerful enough must have killed Spelling, as taking the life of the leader of the notorious Grovepark Boys gang was no ordinary feat. Amanda reveals that she suspects that a police officer must have been involved, which fits in well with the conspiracy theory about the APD being linked with the stolen cars racket. But they need solid evidence to prove the matter before anyone else can be informed, and so she sends Michael to investigate the matter further. Meanwhile, the assistant DA, Marion Alba, who had gotten involved with the case as she had been secretly contacted by Chester, holds a press conference, answering the questions of the media. She suggests that the case is not really over, despite Rafael Wexford having confessed to the crime, which does not sit well with Mayor Anthony, as she wants the case to be officially closed at the earliest. 

How is a connection between the stolen cars racket and the APB found?

Michael Ormewood goes to interrogate a woman named Dolores Fields, who works at the DMV close to the crime scene and is suspected to be forging the details of the stolen cars to make them look like legitimate vehicles. The woman initially refuses to say anything, stating that she is just a regular employee at the DMV who has not done anything illegal or unlawful in life. However, the fancy Louis Vuitton bag that she uses is a big giveaway about her involvement in some kind of illegal activity, since a normal job at the DMV would not earn her enough money to buy such luxuries. Michael does not have to do much, just mention that Lincoln Spelling, the leader of the gang running the stolen cars racket that she is very much a part of, has been killed. 

He suggests that Dolores could be targeted next, and she immediately starts to sing, revealing that she does indeed get paid for producing fake documents for cars but does not know exactly what happens with them. She just passes them on to a young man named Mac but does not have any more information on either him or the trade that he is a part of. Dolores also gives Michael the exact spot where she and Mac usually make exchanges, and she even arranges for a meeting to bait him out. Will and Faith take over from here, and they really have to do nothing to arrest Mac, as the young man is extremely unintelligent and does not even realize that it is a trap set by the police to catch him. He is brought into the interrogation room next, and although Mac tries to act tough at first, the GBI detectives soon manage to make him talk.

Mac admits to having murdered Officer Chester Flynn, and he had even been carrying the gun with which he had committed the crime in his backpack. There is no way for him to escape the law, having been caught with the murder weapon, and so he agrees to reveal everything to the police. Mac was a low-ranking member of the Grovepark Boys, and he wanted to climb up the ranks quickly, because of which he agreed to murder a police officer when the gang’s boss, Lincoln Spelling, asked him to do so. He did not think of the legal consequences too much because Spelling had guaranteed him that nothing would happen to him because he had some connections with the police department. When asked whether he knew the name of the police officer who was associated with Spelling, Mac says that he had no idea about it but states that he did see the man’s face and can describe it. Will and Faith realize that this information would be enough, and Mac describes the exact features of Captain Cromwell, the current leader of the Atlanta Police Department. 

Can Will and Faith save Sunny?

When evidence from Sunny’s room is gathered and brought to the police station, her father, Rafael, reveals that one item, a handheld gaming device, is missing. Sunny carries the device with her at all times, and since it is missing from her room, it is quite evident that she still has it with her at the moment. This is all the more helpful because Sunny and Rafael often use a particular game to chat with each other when they are away, and so he can actually communicate with her, despite her having been abducted. The GBI arranged for Rafael’s gaming device to be brought to the headquarters, and he used the chat feature in the game to establish communication with her. After some time, Sunny does respond and says that she is extremely scared, despite being temporarily safe. When she is unable to say where exactly she has been brought, Amanda decides to go by her hunch and asks the girl to check if there is a phone hidden under the bed.

Amanda asks for this particular detail because she is almost sure that Sunny is being held at one of the many police safehouses in Atlanta, for she still believes that a police officer is behind the whole fiasco. Sunny does find a phone under the bed and calls Amanda with it, but her captor also comes in at this very time and forces her into a car and drives off. With the GBI Deputy Director’s guidance, Sunny manages to get out of the trunk of the car and run to the nearest shopping mall, where Will and Faith also rush to. By this time, the GBI special agents had found out that it was Captain Cromwell who had ordered Sunny’s abduction, and so they had to save the young girl from the corrupt police captain. An intense chase follows, in which Will is shot at as well, although his bulletproof vest saves him from any trouble. Faith and Michael manage to arrest Cromwell, and Sunny is ultimately saved and reunited with her father.

Who was the main perpetrator behind the stolen cars racket?

After Captain Cromwell is arrested, Will Trent continues to investigate the paper trail behind the stolen cars racket and learns that although Cromwell used funds from a company directly linked to the illegal business, he had no stake in its ownership. Instead, the company was owned by Mayor Anthony, and this was why she had wanted the authorities to shut the case at the earliest. As further proof of her involvement, the very last call made by Cromwell before his arrest was to Mayor Anthony, in which he panicked about the situation. In reality, it was the corrupt mayor who had organized the stolen cars racket for her personal financial benefit, and she got Captain Cromwell to oversee the whole business. The police captain then hired the services of the Grovepark Boys and roped Lincoln Spelling into the plan. 

But things went very wrong when Officer Chester no longer wanted to be a part of the illegal racket and tried turning whistleblower by contacting the assistant DA. This was when Mayor Anthony ordered Cromwell to have Chester killed, and Mac was hired to commit the murder. Then, when the GBI got involved, the mayor panicked and had Sunny kidnapped so that Rafael would confess to the crime and end the case. But Will managed to prevent this, and so Anthony then wanted to get rid of all the people who could link her to the crime, and this was why she told Cromwell to murder Spelling. With all this evidence, Will and Faith confront Mayor Anthony, who is ultimately arrested.

Who kills Captain Cromwell?

However, at the very end of Will Trent season 3 episode 2, Captain Cromwell is shot dead by a sniper while being taken to the courthouse, and the perpetrator is also arrested. In a final confrontation between Will and his old friend, Rafael, who is also actually a convicted criminal, the detective reveals that he knows that the man who killed the police captain was a member of Rafael’s gang, the Piedmont Kings. Rafael does not try to hide his involvement either and suggests that he chose to do so for business purposes. This ending possibly means that Rafael saw the opportunity to make his gang the strongest in town, since his rival leader was now dead, and grabbed it with both hands. It could be that he himself ordered the hit as a sort of vengeful action against him for making his daughter go through so much pain. Or, it is more likely that Mayor Anthony, or someone even higher up than her, ordered the hit on the police captain, so that he could not expose everyone involved in this mess, and Rafael merely carried out the order, knowing well that he would be kept safe by the powers that be.

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