Will Trent Is 'A Little Unraveled, A Little Bit Undone' When Season 4 Begins — Will Therapy Heal Him? (Exclusive First Look)

At the start of "Will Trent" Season 4, our title character is still reeling from last season's seismic developments — gaining a father in Caleb, nearly losing a maternal figure in Amanda, and learning that Angie, with whom he'll always share a profound, complicated love, is now expecting her first child with Seth.

TVLine has an exclusive first look at the Tuesday, Jan. 6 premiere (ABC, 8/7c) — and while we can't disclose much about what's going on in the following photo featuring Will and his beloved canine companion Betty, we can say that Will finds himself back on familiar, deeply unsettling ground.

Lynsey Weatherspoon/Disney

The season opener picks up five months later — by which point Angie is well into her second trimester, and both Ormewood and Amanda are on the mend (though each still carries "visible signs" of what they've endured). According to executive producer Daniel Thomsen, the time jump allowed the writers to "skip over the non-fun parts of gunshot recovery" and drop viewers straight into the emotional aftershocks of last season's high-octane finale. 

"We always talk about doing a jump," fellow EP Liz Heldens tells TVLine. "It allows us to catch up with [our characters] after they've been through something. [We] find them in motion... and then fill in the blanks along the way."

But of all the changes the jump allows us to glimpse, perhaps the most profound belongs to Will, who's been doing "a little bit of therapy" with Dr. Roach (played by returning guest star Margaret Cho). 

"We talk about Will being a little unraveled or a little bit undone — and if you've seen the key art, that's reflected in that, too," Heldens points out. "He had this terrible childhood, and he emerged as this deeply good man — and I think he did that by not examining anything. Not asking 'what if,' not dealing with his dyslexia, just moving forward and trying to appear in the world as an adult. And when you start therapy — Dr. Roach says it in the premiere — it's natural for a lot of emotion to come up, and that's where we're catching Will."

"I think if there's a thematic that touches a bunch of the characters, it's that family is something you're always adjusting to," Thomsen says of Season 4 — the families you're born into, and the ones you build.

"Will and Angie are family, and early this season I've been moved by these scenes where they have to figure out their new relationship," he continues. "Whenever they've felt a need for each other, they've come back to each other. Now they can't. And it's sweet and emotional watching them still share space and figure out new boundaries."

That idea of boundaries runs through several storylines this year — as Will and Caleb learn how to communicate as father and son (and Amanda decides how much to pry); as Angie and Seth figure out how to communicate not just as partners, but as parents; and as Ormewood debates how much his kids should know about his illness and the toll it's taking.

"And a lot of characters are having to reckon with: 'Who have I always been, and who am I now?'" Heldens adds. "Amanda has always been strong and together, and at the top of the season she is physically diminished. She doesn't have the same confidence. Same with Ormewood — his identity is made up of masculine provider energy, and he's just not as strong. He's reckoning with: 'Who am I?' And Faith will have a big romance later in the season that causes her to question some things. So yes — lots of reckoning with choices, and with identity."

Coming out of Season 3, we'd asked the showrunners if Season 4 would represent a season of healing — and while Heldens maintains that you'll see some of these characters "physically healing" in the new year, "the unraveling and the questioning and the examination [all] emerged as a bigger theme for us."

Adds fellow EP Karine Rosenthal: "Healing is still a part of [Season 4]. But healing — like a bruise or a wound — gets uglier before it gets better. Will's in therapy, emotions come up, you feel out of control, and that's part of healing. For Angie, the terror and excitement of having a baby, her past — there's something healing in that identity shift, too. All our characters are going through growth that might look like they're falling apart, but ultimately they're getting to a place of healing."

"Will Trent" Season 4 premieres Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026 at 8 p.m. on ABC (and streams next day on Hulu).