Criminal Minds Boss Talks Finale's Chilling Tease, Reveals Season 19 Time Jump And 'Overdue' [Spoiler] Arc
The following contains spoilers from the July 10 Criminal Minds: Evolution finale, now streaming on Paramount+.
Paramount+'s Criminal Minds closed out Season 18 with the reveal of the Disciple, and her sinister plan for Lee Duval aka Elias Voit aka Sicarius.
Abducted from the hospital along with Dr. Ochoa (Aimee Garcia), Voit (Zach Gilford) was warmly greeted in an abandoned substation by the Disciple — aka Tessa (The Mob Doctor's Jordana Spiro). Copious flashbacks revealed that after Lee nearly killed, but instead peaced out on, his uncle, Cyrus was at a local watering hole when he met Constance/"Tessa," a grad student who'd just been harassed by a professor. Cyrus wound up grabbing Tessa that night and holding her prisoner in his cellar for years. It wasn't until Voit returned home to poison his ailing uncle — oblivious to anyone chained in the cellar — that Tessa later slipped away.
Tessa's intention in the present day was to switch Voit back into Sicarius mode by killing Dr. Ochoa and using her death as a trigger. Voit thwarted the first attempt (via spiders!) by tackling and pummeling to death that squirrelly hospital intern who was under the Disciple's sway, though Tessa was pleased by the "God"-like rush he felt in doing so. Later, with the BAU closing in (because Voit quietly alerted them to his and Julia's location), Voit suggested he shoot Dr. Ochoa dead and leave her behind as a patsy. Voit, though, faked the shooting, and when the BAU arrived, Julia was rescued and Tessa captured.
When Voit and JJ (A.J. Cook) found themselves staring down the barrel of each other's guns, he begged her to shoot him, but she refused. As Rossi later explained to Voit back at HQ, his psychopathy and profile has changed, and he no longer kills for pleasure. But as teased in a closing scene aboard a prison transfer bus, Voit entertained a vivid fantasy of choking to death a fellow inmate.
TVLine spoke with showrunner Erica Messer about the finale's big reveals and guest casting, and her Season 19 plans for, yes, Voit (again), but also a BAU member who's overdue for the spotlight.
TVLINE | Did you take a certain pleasure this season in wanting us to wonder if Voit was faking this whole thing?
You know, it's funny — I don't take pleasure in that, but it was a conversation that every guest director had when they came in. "So, is he faking it...?" It's a natural question to have, and one we did explore, when we first discussed it. "Is there going to be a Primal Fear/Ed Norton moment?"
I felt strongly that we needed to reinvent the character, and this was the way we did it, which was giving him amnesia and having to relearn who he was as a man, and then discovering he was also a killer, and not really knowing what that meant. And then when all the memories come back, it's like, "I now have a conscience," and that was something that was lacking when he was a killer. That felt more important than a "Gotcha! I've been faking the whole time!" I felt like it gave us this opportunity to continue to tell stories, for the team to be able to explore things that they've never had come their way before. They've never spent this much time with a killer—
TVLINE | Right, and you had these fun pairings — evolving the relationship between Voit and his "dad" Rossi (Joe Mantegna), Voit and JJ.... Even Voit with Penelope (Kirsten Vangsness), which was random but very fun.
Very fun. I mean, she's doing aromatherapy with him! There were unexpected moments between the team and this new version of Voit, and I didn't want to take that away. I didn't want to be like, "Just kidding!" I wanted those to feel real because they felt real when we were shooting it, and I also didn't want the team to get fooled by him.
TVLINE | In your mind, anytime Voit recovered a piece of a memory, was that you thinking to yourself, "See, this is proof. He's not faking it"?
It was that and also having somebody as believable as Dr. Ochoa saying, "Looking at the science...," and for Tara (Aisha Tyler) to say, "I know nobody wants to hear this, but she's right...," that kind of thing. We wanted to try to put [the question] to rest by like the fourth or fifth episode, after he shaved his head because he didn't like what he saw in the mirror.
TVLINE | Was that a real-time, actual head-shaving by Zach Gilford?
It sure was! Yeah.
TVLINE | If the first Evolution season was about Voit the UnSub, the second was about him as prisoner, and the third was about the "frenemy" we work with, in what capacity does he return in Criminal Minds Season 19?
In Season 19, he has gone from being invisible, living in the shadows, being a killer for 20 years that we never knew about, to now being a household name. There's been a year between Seasons 18 and 19. He has confessed to all these crimes, he gets sentenced to life in prison — not the death penalty — and he now has to deal with unwanted celebrity. Some might say he was a "celebrity" within his network because he was the leader of it, but it's very different than being a celebrity for, now, the most shameful thing you've ever done, and now you have a conscience and you're aware of that. There's a new threat and a new darkness that comes out of him being in the light now.
TVLINE | Ah, so that closing scene on the prison bus was almost planting the seed, "If you poke this guy too much about being the infamous Sicarius, he might snap."
Right.
TVLINE | With Voit neither being on the loose nor any sort of asset for the team, will the BAU be tackling more traditional weekly cases next season?
The BAU will return to tackling their normal workload of weekly serial offenders. But now that Voit is a household name, he has a newfound celebrity that brings an unexpected set of challenges for all.
TVLINE | Talk about casting Jordana Spiro as Tessa aka the Disciple. What did you need from that role, from that actor?
We needed that believability that she was vulnerable enough to fall into Cyrus' net. We really wanted that history to line up, that when Lee Duval left his Uncle Cyrus back in the day, what did Cyrus do? He didn't just turn off his desire to hurt people. He was a terrible killer, so when Lee left, what if Cyrus went out to his local watering hole? And what if this stranger from out of town shows up and she's got a bit of an edge to her and she's real smart and she's real pretty, and what if she just gets taken off the map? So, we needed so many things. We needed a strength about her. She's crazy-smart, but also she's going to be raised in "the house of Cyrus," just like Voit was, and we know how powerful that is and how that can change a person.
The bonus was that Zach and Jordana [who both starred in The Mob Doctor] are friends. They were scene partners for so much of that finale, so it was a nice reunion for them.
TVLINE | Because as I watched this, I found myself thinking, "Hmm, I wonder if Jordana Spiro auditioned for JJ back in the day?"
Ohhhh, like Zach did for [Spencer] Reid? No, not that I know of. I would have to ask [longtime casting director] April Webster, but no, I don't think so. But I love that those two knew one another.
TVLINE | I talked to Aimee Garcia about this: Were you ever tempted to go the Joker/Harley Quinn route with Voit and Dr. Ochoa? When she was cast in this role, I was like, "Ohhh, I know what they're doing. He's charming, she'll fall for him, he'll manipulate her...."
That was again a road we didn't take, but discussed, in the writers room. People were expecting, even on our crew, "Is she gonna be bad? Is she gonna be bad?" And Aimee was like, "I'm up for whatever!" But it felt important to ground him in this reality that he was this unbelievable killer, and now he's like any other patient, and that leaves you powerless. He was this guy that was in so much control, in Season 16 and Season 17, and in Season 18 he has nothing and taking him down that way was exciting for us.
TVLINE | Did Matthew Gray Gubler get paid by the syllable?
[Laughs]
TVLINE | I'm watching that episode and I'm like, "OK, he hasn't spoken yet.... He still hasn't spoken yet...." And then he finally said a couple of words.
Less is more, though. I mean, isn't just him being there saying everything?
TVLINE | Yeah. Yeah. And the things he did say were perfect.
"I'll always be here for you guys." That's a more powerful line than having a whole scene of words.
TVLINE | "Hey, everyone, so yeah, I've been working on this case in Saint Louis and it involves a kidnapper and a babysitter and...." We don't need that.
We don't need it.
TVLINE | In Season 19, are there any personal runners for Luke (Adam Rodriguez) and/or Penelope?
Yeah, Luke has a lot going on this season.
TVLINE | Oh, good. He's overdue.
He's overdue. He has a lot going on. You're wondering in Episode 1, but it really kicks off in Episode 2, and he has a great, great season ahead for him. Adam's directing the episode that we're shooting today, so he's both behind the scenes and in front of the camera. He has a great, great season.
TVLINE | Can we count on seeing the Tara/Rebecca wedding in Season 19?
You can't count on that, but we won't blow things up between them. So don't worry about that.
TVLINE | In early June, the Criminal Minds socials played up the whole #Jemily thing, with photos of A.J. and Paget [Brewster] wearing #Jemily shirts.... Is that something that you as showrunner get to sanction? And how tempted are you to lean into that on-screen but not too much?
[Laughs] Yeah, I didn't know about it. I see a lot of these things when everybody else sees them, but I just, like.... those two are such good pals. Like, it will always be Jemily, right? It will always be Jemily. But in that [Season 17] episode where they were getting high, everybody was like, "Just kiss!!!" But, you know....
TVLINE | Lastly, did you take my comments to heart at all about last season's visually dark scenes? Did you find yourself brightening things up a bit in Season 18?
We definitely did. It was certainly a conversation that we had after hearing back from anybody who said they couldn't see it. It looks.... I mean, it's a dark show, but you can see it.
Want scoop on Criminal Minds, or for any other TV show? Shoot an email to InsideLine@tvline.com, and your question may be answered via Matt's Inside Line!