‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Boss Erica Messer reveals the Season 2 finale twist.
In an awesome Season 2 Criminal Minds: Evolution finale, the Gold Star saga came to a resolution, Prentiss (Paget Brewster) was kidnapped yet again but was able to talk her way out of it, Dr. Jill Gideon (Felicity Huffman) kissed Rossi (Joe Mantegna) but it turned out just to be a way to get him to leave her alone, and Voit (Zach Gilford) was attacked and allegedly killed in the prison laundry, while the BAU team celebrated at Garcia’s (Kirsten Vangsness) home.
“We had a heck of a season and, speaking in gymnastics terms, we really needed to stick the landing,” Criminal Minds: Evolution showrunner Erica Messer told Parade. “I felt like leaning on Paget to make sure we got that done was incredible because she’s so great. They’re all so great but it was really the season of Prentiss in terms of when you look at how it started with her investigating Gold Star without letting the team know about it and the guilt that she had over Bailey’s (Nicholas D’Agosto) death. It all felt very much a season of Prentiss, so we knew we had to end with her in captivity. Sadly, but we knew that’s where we were headed.”
It was also a season of Rossi, in that the veteran BAU supervisory special agent was hallucinating visions of Voit as he tried to function both at work and at home, and against his wishes, he was confronted by a woman from his past – Dr. Jill Gideon, Jason’s ex-wife, which was traumatic due to their history.
“It felt like in seasons 16 and 17—or seasons 1 and 2—Joe and Paget had a lot of heavy lifting to do with what their characters were going through,” Messer continued. “This [coming] season, we’re spreading that road out among the team a little bit more, but there will be obviously more trials and tribulations.”
For Season 3, Criminal Minds: Evolution will be getting back to the business of catching serial killers, which was interrupted by the Gold Star case. The network of killers that Voit organized prior to his imprisonment is still out there and needs to be captured, but the BAU also needs to find proof that Voit is Sicarios so he can be imprisoned for life, not just five years.
And one of the best—and shocking—parts of that is that Voit will be a part of the story. It will turn out that he actually didn’t die from his attack in prison.
In our chat with Messer, she talks about Voit being a part of Season 3, the possibility of Huffman and Matthew Gray Gubler returning, if Tyler (Ryan-James Hatanaka) and Garcia become a couple, and more.
You totally faked me out because I thought Voit was dead but he’s not. So why did Voit want to move into Gen Pop? Did he really think no one would know who he was? Did he have an escape plan? Was it Rossi that outed him?
All of these questions you just asked will be what our profilers are asking at the top of the next season, so you’re asking all the right things and I think there’s more than one answer to pretty much all of those questions because Voit never does anything without thinking it through. Of course, he wanted to be in Club Fed for a reason and it wasn’t just the fresh air and sunshine. But there are things when you put yourself in an environment like that that are out of your control and, I think, Rossi planted that seed that Voit could be like a lot of other famous killers who went to prison and never got out because others find out who you are, right? I would just say all of your questions are exactly what the team will be asking.
There was a little bit of a loose thread with Voit’s lawyer. He seemed to walk away clean. Is he going to be back in Season 3 and get some kind of justice for the horrible things he did?
Again, you’re asking all this that our team is asking so we will want to follow up with him. Let’s just put it that way.
Any confirmation on whether Felicity comes back or not and if she does, can there possibly be a relationship with Rossi?
We love Felicity and we thought she just brought such an incredible presence to the set. I completely believed that she was one of them back in the day. I can never say never but we’re still breaking the season, so I don’t know if she’ll be back or not but we definitely like her and we also love that the three episodes where we were able to have her were ones that we could really give her a satisfying beginning, middle and end if we never did see her again. Even if we don’t see her maybe Rossi could allude to Jill and I are having dinner or something like that so we can all feel like that story is continuing even if we don’t get to see it.
Speaking of returns, any chance that Matthew Gray Gubler could come back?
There’s always room for him. We went from shooting the show 10 months a year to four months out of the year so it’s trickier than you think to be able to get into somebody’s window when we don’t have basically the whole year to do it. Last season was tricky, too, because the writers’ strike and actors strike had happened, so we didn’t know when we were going to shoot so there was no way to really plan on it. Then this year, similarly, we didn’t exactly know when we were going to be able to shoot.
I will always remain hopeful, and I think he will always remain hopeful that the stars will align, and we’ll get to do this again. But like I said, I can’t fully speak to the season because we haven’t broken the whole season, but I do know that he’s busy doing other projects and that’s amazing. We want that for him but he’s always a part of our family.
JJ also had a little bit of a rough season with BAUgate. Once that stuff is out there it never goes away, so is it coming back for Season 3 or put on simmer for later on?
It’s like you said, it’s out there and it’ll never go away. The fear of it resurfacing is never going to go away for her and we touch on that a little bit in the second episode of this season. So, it’s almost like that thing that it’s always going to haunt her, but in terms of it resurfacing in a bigger way, no, but in an impactful way that’s her fear.
Tyler is applying for the FBI. It seems a little straight for him to do with his clandestine background and what would that mean for him and Penelope?
That’s what we’re trying to figure out right now. We enjoy them as a couple, but we also feel like he has to really earn her trust again. This feels like that constant conversation of Garcia set a boundary, and she wants to stick to that boundary, but also, she really does enjoy his company. So, the line was very blurry in this last season, and it will probably still remain a little blurry, but I think we’re ready to tackle that a little bit more. As you know, our BAU team members historically do not date. You could always wish that they were, but we never have actually had that before this. So, it would be new territory for us to have team members who are a couple. If we go that far with it, it would be baby step.
We talked a little bit about asking all the right questions for Season 3, so that gives a clue to subject matter. But is the season going to be individual cases like when it was on the network or are we going to have another arc for the whole season?
Three will feel a little bit more hybrid than Season 2 felt, but there will still be the through line of the Sicarios network and the other serialized arcs would be more character-driven emotional stuff. Voit will be around, so we’re following up on him, but there will be some more satisfying unsubs of the week. By satisfying meaning the team will have closure at the end of an episode versus this past season where we meet Gold Star and see Gold Star is capable of horrific things and we don’t really stop him truly until Jill Gideon helped in Episode 8. It just kept building on to this guy and we didn’t have him. There was no satisfying conclusion to him … and even then it was a complicated conclusion because you actually feel sorry for him by the time he’s gone.
So, this will have a more classic Criminal Minds catching unsubs every week for a while, and then there’s still an overarching thing for all 10 episodes.
What I was so surprised about was the mention that the BAU is such a small part of the FBI budget because when we think of the FBI, we always think about profilers. Are they really not an important aspect of the FBI?
They are but I think when you look at the grand scheme of everything that the FBI is in charge of, we are a branch on the tree but we’re not the trunk. In our world we are. In our world there’s a big strong BAU tree and other things grow from us, but in reality, we are just a branch on the on the tree of the FBI well
I don’t know how you come up with all these twists and turns, like we all thought Gold Star was one person and then it turns out it’s multiple people and it’s something that originated in the BAU. It all intricately came together.
Thank you. We always want to bring it back to us in some way and that just felt like such a neat way to do it. This paper that you wrote a gazillion years ago that you forgot about because you’ve learned so much since then that got co-opted by Jill and she didn’t think there would be any evil that could come from that and look what happened in the wrong hands. That’s sort of what happens in the world. Everybody was, “The Internet is going to be a great thing,” and then you think, “Well it is,” but then there’s always the dark side.
As much as it can connect, it also disconnects people and does damage. They had no intention of their paper being turned into a recipe for creating killers and victimizing kids who already had a rough go. But then for that horrible Frank Church to do that. We had a real interesting season. We had a lot of interesting conversations in the writers room.
