Ramón Rodríguez Talks Returning to Puerto Rico, That Eerie Twist, and What’s Next (Exclusive)

Will Trent took fans back to Puerto Rico on Tuesday’s (March 17) newest episode for a heart-stopping adventure indeed.

Directed by Ramón Rodríguez, also a native of the Island of Enchantment, the episode saw Will return to San Juan on a personal mission to find his Uncle Antonio (John Ortiz) after a copycat killing in the style of James Ulster (Greg Germann) targeted a man with his same name back in Atlanta. Warning: Spoilers for Will Trent Season 4 Episode 11, “He Lives!” ahead!

At first, all was well. He found his uncle in the throes of a romantic interlude and healthy as could be. Will was also taking Dr. Roach’s (Margaret Cho) advice on how to deal with ghost Ulster to heart by dressing him down, quite literally, with hilarious results. He also found a saucy new prospect in FBI Agent Elkie (Mallory Jansen), a woman who had him daydreaming… until things turned into a nightmare.

After Antonio suddenly went missing, Will and Elkie raced to track his movements through the jungle and uncovered a very unsettling scene that mirrored what happened to his mother when he was a baby. Then, Will was bitten by a poisonous spider, and Elkie was revealed to be Adelaide, the vengeful daughter of Ulster himself. Though Will was able to trap her in a remote cell, she escaped some time before Faith (Iantha Richardson) and Michael (Jake McLaughlin) could make it to Will — who only caught their attention by letting out one existential scream to survive before collapsing, encouraged by the visage of his late mother, Lucy, herself.

It was an emotional and action-packed episode that left much more to come, so to break down the biggest moments of the segment, TV Insider caught up with Ramón Rodríguez to answer all of our burning questions.

You directed the season premiere as well, but what does it mean for you to get to go back to Puerto Rico, and what did you want to show off about the island and the culture?

Ramón Rodríguez: It was incredible to be able to go back to Puerto Rico. We filmed there in Season 2, it was a quick shoot… For both me and for Will, it’s exhilarating to be able to go to Puerto Rico. We went there for a longer stint, and I definitely wanted to see what other parts of the island we can show, which we were able to. We really went into the jungle and showed that kind of rainforest vibe that we have in Puerto Rico. And of course, we also shot in San Juan, which is always beautiful, so why wouldn’t you? But it was incredibly special to go back.

I think on this episode, which is quite emotionally loaded, where here’s Ulster back again, haunting and tormenting Will, which leads him to go back and check on the security and safety of his uncle… The thing that’s always resonated for me, just knowing Will, is the importance of family and how far he’ll go to try to protect and save his family. When he knows that there’s a potential threat, he picks up and goes. And not only does he go, I mean, even once he realizes that Adelaide — or Elkie, at the time — is not who she says she is, he still plays a game knowing she’s sort of the only connection that could potentially get him to his uncle. So it was a great throughline and thread to be able to hook us back onto the island, and also, obviously, bring back John Ortiz, which is always such a blast, and his uncle.

It was just really special. We got to see crew that we worked with the first time around, and being back on the island, having family visit the set, I’ve got deep roots on the island, so it’s pretty special when I’m able to go there — and this time, as a director, which was a very big deal. I mean, the crew, the AD, when they announced the first day, “Hey, welcome our director from Puerto Rico,” it’s hard not to be filled with pride, and seeing these familiar faces. Anyway, it was very, very special.

You mentioned James Ulster. It’s been really fun this season to see Greg Germann come back in such a unique way. This episode in particular was fun because you got to kind of play with him and dress him up. What was it like for you to pick those costumes and kind of poke at him a little bit?

It’s great because we’re seeing these therapy sessions with Dr. Roach start to kind of take a footing with Will, where she’s shining a light and saying, “Hey, look, this guy’s in your head. You’ve got the ability, you have more power.” She’s empowering him to really take control. And it’s the first time we see Will gaining a bit of an upper hand on this guy. He also has been such a manipulative character, with mind games and just always toying with Will. It was really fun to finally see Will take the reins and toy with him. And so obviously, that elf concept, which I then had the idea while we were in Puerto Rico, I saw this tree stump, and I was like, “Why don’t we just make our own fake tree stump and have him pop out like an actual Keebler elf with the hat on?” And it was hilarious. And Greg is so game and down. He jumped right into it and leaned into all of it and made it all that much better.

So it’s great to just see Will navigating this relationship in a different way, for the first time, where it’s been so tormenting, it’s been so heavy and dark on him, that this time we were able to — again, with Dr. Roach’s help — see Will put into effect some of the lessons she’s trying to tell him and have him have the upper hand for a moment.

And then, with John Ortiz as Antonio, a lot more colors came out of him as far as his playboy status, and Will just kind of goes with the flow about it. How did you feel about all that? 

[Laughs.] Yeah, we wanted to show another side to Antonio. We sort of met him as the teacher slash activist, and we wanted to just see what is it like if you can again pop up in his apartment, what might you see? And so it’s just a fun way. Now we’re in his home, whereas before he came to Atlanta in my home; we got to just sort of get another color of him.

And so John loved it and leaned into it in a really fun way. He’s such a light, this character. He brings such a light in Will’s life that, to be honest, I mean, there aren’t many, and even less family that he has. He’s discovered he’s got a father with Caleb [Yul Vazquez], but his uncle was the first person he’s met, two seasons ago, that he knew as family. And so it was great to just play with John again and have him back on set, and have him play this sort of ladies’ man.

But that character always has such a great heart, and I think that’s something that resonates, obviously, with Will, and so he’ll do anything to try to find his uncle. And so it was a great way to get us to the island but obviously connect us emotionally with what Will’s got going on and what he’s chasing after.

Digging into the deeper parts of it, we see that these killings are mimicking what happened to Will’s mother. It’s really kind of cruel, this scene that Adelaide lays out, with the baby sound in the trash can. And then, that all culminates with mom ghost. Can you just talk about developing that arc and what it does to Will?

Hopefully, the twist and the reveal for the audience, they don’t see it coming. And so we just wanted to lay out this idea of Ulster still haunting him, and even if it’s through his daughter — which we end up realizing who it is — she’s using the same tactics. She’s really poking, manipulating, knowing the vulnerable points that Will has, and it’s very intentionally provoking them and taunting him. We put Will through the wringer. We just do.

Part of it is just kind of this story that we keep telling and showing how resilient he is, what he’s overcome, but it’s also, these are real traumatic things that Will has had to deal with, to survive. And so they become points at times where our villains and our bad guys can poke at and touch at, and that’s exactly what Adelaide does, while he’s just solely in the pursuit of trying to find his uncle.

And obviously having Lucy come back, it’s just always so touching for me… This mother who he never met, never knew, and the importance of that character spiritually, whichever way we want to look at it. I love when we get to have these moments and see Will look into his mother’s eyes because I just imagine the longing that that must be for someone like him, who didn’t have that, and to have her appear and finding moments of where she can help motivate him or inspire him, that was a lovely little scene that we got to do towards the end there with her.

And, yeah, this is going to be a big catalyst in terms of just the rest of the season and the stories we’ll get into, with trying to find his uncle, with Adelaide. This will be an ongoing thing, which is a very exciting thing for me. When we first were talking to creative about this episode, and we realized this is going to be a springboard for what’s to come, that’s a really fun thing for us.

That moment when he thinks he’s dying, there’s this existentialist comment that he makes about he wanted more and he wanted family. It seemed almost like he was just realizing it in that moment. Can you talk about just playing to that, where he’s realizing what he really wants out of life?

I mean, I think he’s known that. And I just think when he’s in that moment of potentially really facing his death, it just — I mean, maybe that becomes the real moment he realizes that it’s not going to happen, and that’s devastating. That’s just so devastating for, again, someone who didn’t have family, who didn’t grow up with any semblance of that. It’s all he’s ever longed for. It’s all he’s ever wanted and desired. And he almost had it with Angie [Erika Christensen]. That didn’t happen. I mean, he’s created his own version of it, obviously, with Betty and Nico [Cora Lu Tran] and his work, his colleagues, and now he has a father, which is great. But even that’s still not become fully whole.

I think, creatively, we’ve always talked about those ideas and concepts of family often came from what he saw on television. That’s what he would see because, in his own personal life, he had really bad examples of that; some of the foster parents were abusive. It’s just been a lot of heavy, heavy, impactful images and experiences that he’s had. And so I think that was a pretty big moment for Will in that, when he’s facing death, to realize that that truly never happened, at least not in the way that he imagined it. And what’s nice is, when you potentially come from a real event that is that intense and serious and near-death, maybe it causes you to reflect and look at things. And so that’s something that Will will come out of that looking and thinking about.

Will has had some fun with Ava [Julia Chan] this season, but Adelaide seemed, before the reveal, to have him thinking. He even had that little daydream of having confidence with the perfect Spanish and the swagger. So I just wonder, what did that bring out of him, and what does that mean for his situation with Ava that he was feeling that way?

Ava has been a pretty fun character, where she sort of drops these gems on him, like, “Hey, not everything has to be so serious.” And I think that’s big. Will is someone that takes so much of his life and so many things seriously. She seems to be someone that’s just very flowing and free, and so I think he tries to take away some of that stuff when he can. And, I mean, Adelaide, yeah, I think there really was potential there. There was definitely some chemistry. There were some sparks. We will get into a bit more of that later on, as the season goes on. And so I can’t say too much about it, but we will talk about what that means. So your question is really on point, and we get to talk a little bit about that concept that this little quick chemistry flash that happens between them, and then obviously he realizes she’s the cause of his uncle and everything that’s happening, and so what does that mean? That’s a kind of a big question for him.

Will Trent, Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC