What Did Will Want to Tell Alicia?

I hope you had a big box of tissues next to you during last night’s episode of The Good Wife , “The Last Call,” because it was basically just a series of tear-jerking moments strung together, each one more profoundly heartbreaking than the last. I’ve finally accepted it: Will Gardner is dead and he’s not coming back. Damn. I had no idea how much I liked the character until creators Michelle and Robert King so cruelly ripped him from my life! Well, as they say, “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

“The Last Call” was packed with powerful emotional moments from start to finish. How about when Diane revealed that Will still loved Alicia? Or Alicia’s tense conversation about the existence of God with her daughter Grace? What about Kalinda’s vengeful visit to see Will’s shooter in jail? Whew, that scene was chilling! But the big mystery of the episode still remains: before he was so rudely interrupted, what was Will going to tell Alicia during his final voicemail?

While sitting in the Lockhart/Gardner offices, Alicia discovers that Will called her and left a voicemail just before the shooting — but he was interrupted before he could say what was really on his mind. Alicia spends the majority of the episode trying to figure out what Will was going to say. She talks to the judge in the Grant case, the prosecutor’s assistant, and eventually, the prosecutor, but still comes up empty-handed. She imagines a couple of different possibilities for what was on Will’s mind: was he going to say that he missed her company and wanted to be friends again? Or was he upset that Florrick/Agos had just poached another one of his clients?

In the episode’s final scene, Peter gives Alicia his condolences and they embrace— but Alicia’s mind is a million miles away. She fantasizes one last possibility for what Will might have been trying to say during his voicemail: “Alicia, I’m sorry. I want what we had. I want to be with you, and only you, forever. Call me back please.” Well, that ought to keep Alicia up at night! Is it really possible that Will was calling to confess his love? It’s a nice thought, but if I’m being entirely honest, it would have been a fairly bold move on Will’s part.

After all, the two had just had their first regular, non-awkward conversation since Alicia’s departure from Lockhart/Gardner that morning. (Remember? Alicia joked that Will was the “better lawyer” and they shared a little chuckle.) But it’s possible. Diane did say that Will was “moving fast on a lot of fronts.” Maybe Will was tired of playing the field. Maybe his conversation with Kalinda the day before he died (the one where he said he would miss her too much if she left the firm) had inspired him to share his true feelings with the important people in his life, a "live every moment as if it were his last" kind of thing. But if that were the case, wouldn’t he have just told Alicia what he had to say, interruptions be damned? Yeah, I know the judge was ready to proceed, but Will could’ve taken another 10 seconds to at least give Alicia the highlights of what he wanted to tell her and then say that he’d call her back! (I realize that that scenario doesn’t exactly make for good television, but still.)

The fact of the matter is, Alicia may never find out what Will was going to tell her. And the "not knowing," if you will, has the potential to be devastating. My take on the situation? Things were never really "over" between Alicia and Will — not emotionally. Even after their falling out, they still cared for one another deeply. But pride got in the way. I think Alicia and Will were both waiting for the other person to make a move — to apologize, to admit that living apart was impossible and silly. Maybe when Will was interrupted during his final voicemail to Alicia, he just assumed that there would always be another opportunity to tell her how he felt. Or maybe he really was calling to yell at her for stealing one of his clients. We may never know.

What do you think Will wanted to tell Alicia?

Next Week: Peter tells Alicia, “How many times do I have to tell you? When I cheated, it didn’t mean anything!” Her response? “When I cheated, it did.”

Images: CBS