Will and Rafael’s soap opera comes to a close.

With Will’s undercover work concluding last week, Trent’s fourteenth episode, “A Funeral Fit for a Quartermaine”, stops the momentum from falling by picking up Will and Rafael’s saga again.

Business and The Brains

Over the course of the season, Will and Rafael’s relationship has become increasingly fraught, with Rafael’s aspirations of becoming Atlanta’s chief kingpin constantly coming between their unusual friendship. However, the latest episode finds them coming to a temporary peace agreement as they plan for Grandma’s funeral.

While setting up the arrangements, the story flashes back to when Rafael and Will first met. Layering their relationship and pertinent to the plot, it shows that the two have always had a rough friendship. Taking an instant dislike for each other at first, it was Grandma and episodes of General Hospital that ultimately brought them together.

As their friendship develops, the pieces are put in place towards who they’d become in the future. Together, they make a formidable partnership; a pairing of perfect harmony between brains and business. Where they diverge is in how far they’re willing to go to get what they want. Even from a young age, Rafael didn’t stop at murder to get the life he wanted.

A Funeral Shoot-out

Rafael’s penchant for criminality brings the story back to the present day, and while he and Will have been preparing to say their last goodbyes, the team at the GBI has been preparing a sting operation to finally catch him. With Jeremy’s life on the line and several rival gangs starting to make moves, this particular operation ends up being a nail-biter.

Even when distracted by grief, Rafael still turns out to be smarter than the average criminal the team faces, and it takes everything they’ve got, including a shoot-out at a funeral parlour, to finally get their man.

Ormewood’s Bad Day

With this episode seeing the end of Rafael’s criminal career, there is only one character who ends up having a worse day than him: Ormewood.

Things have been going too well for Ormewood lately. During recent episodes, he’s managed to move on from his ex-wife, and he’s finally started to bond properly with his son. Unfortunately, everything comes crashing down in this episode when he’s diagnosed with a brain tumour. A difficult situation for anyone, it’ll likely have a massive sway on his character as the season creeps towards its conclusion.

A story of complex friendships, “A Funeral Fit for a Quartermaine” brings the series back towards its apex. Primarily focused on the past and present of Will and Rafael’s relationship, this episode layers their dynamics, ultimately completing their fraught saga as Rafael leaves to enter witness protection.

I Give “A Funeral Fit for a Quartermaine”: 9/10