When Special Agent Trent unlocks more of his childhood trauma involving Sleeveless Jack in Season 2, Episode 7, it’s Detective Polaski who’s there to pick up the pieces and console her on-again/off-again boyfriend with a kiss. As a fellow foster care survivor, no one has a better grasp of his pain.

Yet Will and Angie are feeling “optimistic” about the state of their relationship in Episode 8. “It’s feeling hopeful,” the actor says. “Maybe there is a way to work this, and maybe there is a way that we can commit to this. I think there is trepidation on both parts, and I think for anything to really work in a healthy manner, both need to be fully committed. They find themselves in a place where they’d at least like to attempt that commitment and… make it work.”

Just three episodes remain in Will Trent’s strikes-shortened Season 2 – and as Rodríguez tells it, things are about to get “really intense” and “really emotional.”

“In [Episode] eight, we get to see the culmination of this childhood trauma that Will has blocked from his memory,” he reveals. “[It] get put together – what that meant and signified – and it’s intense. And we do get a reprieve, we do get a moment to sort of come up for air, but very quickly [we] get pulled down under water again with a really intense twist and turn. I don’t know how much I can talk about it, but I will say it’s a really intense ending [to the season] that I don’t think people will see coming, and it’s a case that pays off in a really tough way.

together the whole idea of what happened through this childhood trauma – this flashback, this memory that he’d blocked out – there’s some things that [Will] gains, which is great, and there are some things that he loses, which is not great.”

Will Trent airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on ABC (and streams next day on Hulu). Watch Part 2 of our in-studio Q&A with Ramón Rodríguez above, then drop a comment with your thoughts below.