Will Trent showrunners Liz Heldens and Daniel Thomsen discussed the future impact of Ormewood’s collapse in the season 3 finale. After nearly getting gunned down by the Founders Front and subsequently rescued by Will, it looked like Ormewood was out of the woods. However, in the final minutes of the Will Trent season 3 ending, Ormewood’s vision grows blurry, and he collapses, likely due to his tumor. Faith calls an ambulance, and Ormewood’s fate is left hanging in the balance.
ScreenRant’s Rachel Foertsch and Grant Hermanns sat down to interview Heldens and Thomsen about the many shocking events of the Will Trent season 3 finale, including the Ormewood cliffhanger. The showrunners revealed that, while they’re still trying to fully figure out his storyline, they wanted to make the crisis very real for Ormewood. Being a relatively new single dad and now dealing with a serious health problem has completely shifted Ormewood’s sense of self, which Heldens and Thomsen are excited to explore. Check out the exchange below:
ScreenRant: …we got Ormewood collapsing on the floor, and we don’t know if he’s going to be okay. If he does survive, how is this event going to make this tumor, and what’s happening to him feel more real going into the next season?
Liz Heldens: We’re still creatively figuring things out. He is a character whose strength and physicality are a big part of his identity. So, it’s interesting to think about him trying to recover, trying to get back to a version of himself that he recognizes. But yeah, we started this notion of a brain tumor in an episode that Dan wrote, and then we wanted to bring it to a real crisis.
Daniel Thomsen: I think, for me, what I’m excited about with Ormewood is in losing some things about himself that he thought were core to himself, he’s going to discover some new parts of himself. And the other thing that I’m really excited about is all this season, and going back to last season, he’s had to adjust to being a single dad, and he’s kind of taken that on as a soldier would. It’s a duty, and he’s not going to drop the ball, and he’s really been doing his best, but he’s had some emotional intimacy game with his kids a little bit.
But I think this is going to be a seismic change for how he’s going to have to deal with his kids, and can’t just be super dad. I think that’s a really interesting way to take a cop who kind of started his journey with us as a very closed-off, almost performative masculine dude, and now, he can’t do that anymore. He’s got to be somebody different. I like exploring that.
What This Means For Ormewood In Will Trent Season 4
The hits just keep coming for Ormewood. After splitting up with his wife and enduring a lengthy custody battle, Ormewood was diagnosed with a brain tumor in Will Trent season 3, episode 14, which causes him to collapse in the finale. However, while he very well may not survive season 4, Liz Heldens and Dan Thomsen’s comments point to him living, as they seem eager to explore new aspects of his character.
Ormewood has already contained a substantial arc. He’s a far cry from the philandering, corrupt infinite cop we saw in season 1, and he is now anly better father to his kids since becoming a single parent. Season 4 will likely see Ormewood’s surgery getting pushed up due to his collapse, which will further rock his identity, leaving him more physically vulnerable than he has ever been before.
Our Take On How This Will Change Ormewood’s Character
Assuming he gets the surgery early in Will Trent season 4, Ormewood will be dealing with a lot of physical and mental trauma — he also almost got shot to death, on top of everything else. His instinct may be to retreat and put up walls around himself like he had before, but given that he and Faith have bonded as roommates and single parents, we think Ormewood’s new vulnerability will bring them even closer. Hardship has set Ormewood on the path to becoming a better man, and it’s likely that’ll continue in future Will Trent episodes.
