Same would apply to a blood relative he hasn't seen or contacted in a decade, why run back now? The blood or not blood argument is moot. Willi's actions show that he'd made a break with his past.
- We don't currently know the connection other than Helen being a form of caregiver. When we patched it so she's a blood relative it doesn't make sense that he'd do a 180 either.
- After prison and the lessons learnt, going from young bully to slightly more sensitive meathead (with viable tearducts at least) was part of that. After surviving maybe shame kept him from wanting anyone to know he'd been in prison, all of the past was boxed up in the too hard to process basket? Plausible. The script talks about how he's afraid how Helen will react to him, how he's afraid she'll hit him. So it's a combination of some sort of shame/guilt/fear that's kept him away. It's too hard, and Miru distracts him with almost endless sex to cheer him up, so nothing gets done.
- The news about Helen hits him hard. Leia doesn't say if Helen's in hospital, only there's been an accident. William could be fearing it's his last chance to fix things up with Helen. Then he gets back and everyone is acting mostly like nothing's happened, because Leia gave him the impression it was an emergency. His emotions spiked, broke his reserve, and we know he's impulsive.
This is how I always understood it. Leia creates a sense of emergency (despite there not being one) so William decides to get over himself in case it's his only chance to reconcile with Helen. Especially seeing he was her favourite. Leia is busy piling on the guilt trip for her hidden motive, and she gives him the task of talking to Monica, when she already has. Most of the holes are because we don't know Leia's motive, because we don't know who the antagonists are. Essentially though, the relations or lack would be in response to Willi assuming the worst from Leia's phone call.
On that whole thing: the assumption is that Noji is working to keep Nika away from the Zanes. We don't know that, there might be other reasons, and she might dislike Katie for other reasons. The Zanes know exactly where NIka was if Coach Hill is keeping tabs on Nika in highschool. NIka's not hidden from the Zanes, maybe the Zanes are keeping their distance on purpose?
Well, Nika also started writing after prison, and because a more balanced individual than we see in the current flashbacks. We don't know enough about prison, how he survived it etc in the new version.
Ch4 will (presumably) pretty much start with William talking to Leia, so I'm going to assume there will be a lot of expositional details which will outline what the changes are, and give us a framework to understand how the new interactions will work. I guess from that we'll know if the story'll make sense.
Regarding what
RNasc4444 and
Maviarab point out about the dynamic of blood relationships having a wildcard effect on people's emotions, I guess that is the nature vs nurture angle. It's the only thing that can't be replaced. by naming the relationships something else. It's lost. That doesn't mean there won't be plausible dynamics of another kind, but they won't be the same dynamic. Totally fair. Even if the interactions look the same, it changes from inherent response to learned response in a way, even if adopted from birth. But until we see ch4, wh don't know how Ocean will tweak the previous chapter's scripts, or what will be revealed, and whether or not the story is internally consistent with its own logic.
