Will Trent Had Its Most Shocking Moment Yet Yesterday

And The Question Is Can Will Survive It

(Spoilers for Season 4 of Will Trent as well as Slaughter’s novels ahead)

I had thought that I was long past the point in my long career of watching TV of being surprised by character deaths. So it says something that the murder of Deputy Director Amanda Wagner — which I’ll confess I was hoping against hope hadn’t happened until the opening of last night’s episode — ranks for me as the most stunning death since Howard Hamlin was fatally in the wrong place at the wrong time in the final season of Better Call Saul.

It’s not that there have been more than their share of tragic deaths in that interim but in Will Trent it had a sting that I really didn’t think the show would do and few TV shows that are based on source material have. Joel’s death on The Last of Us was shocking but fans of the video game franchise had an idea it was coming and considering that Slow Horses is based on the books of Mick Herron, the readers had to know that every death is planned to an extent. And as anyone who is a fan of Slaughter’s novels (and I’m one of them) Amanda Wagner is still very much alive after ten books.

To be fair the series has deviated quite a bit from the source material in its adaptation of ABC, not the least in Wagner’s character. Not only is…