Penelope love triangle! Gold Star! Hannibal Lecter! Criminal Minds: Evolution boss previews season 2
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WARNING: This post contains spoilers for the Criminal Minds: Evolution season 1 finale.
Good news: Rossi is alive, Elias Voit has been apprehended, and the BAU has not been disbanded. But also… bad news: Penelope and Tyler (and possibly Rebecca and Tara) are no more, Bailey is dead, and we still have no idea what Gold Star is.
The BAU might have at long last identified Voit (series newcomer Zach Gilford) as the mastermind behind this season's network of COVID pandemic serial killers in Thursday's finale of Criminal Minds: Evolution, but several questions remain unanswered.
Below, showrunner and executive producer Erica Messer discusses that explosive finale and teases season 2. Spoiler alert: this isn't the last we've seen of Voit — or Tyler. Yes, Penelope and Luke fans: a possible love triangle is on the horizon.
Michael Yarish/Paramount+ Joe Mantegna as Rossi on 'Criminal Minds: Evolution'
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Rossi had a close call in the penultimate episode. We're in the age of TV where showrunners have no problem killing off major characters. Was his demise ever seriously considered in the writers room?
ERICA MESSER: In that way that you just said it, like, "You know what'd be insane, if we actually did that?" We said it because we had to say it. But we love Joe [Mantegna] way too much to ever do that. But if Joe had said to us, "Look, I want to come back and I just want to do a year and I want to leave," I'm sure he would've been all good with going out like that. But yeah, we only mentioned it, we didn't actually consider it.
We have a hard time ever killing any of our heroes. I mean, with Gideon [played by Mandy Patinkin], it was season 10 that we did that and people were upset. It was like, he's long gone, he's never coming back, and they were still very upset about it. So it's not a path we like to take very often because these are our friends at this point. This team is really like family, so we don't want to do anything unnecessarily to hurt them.
Elias Voit has at last been found out, but there are still a lot of lingering questions. What can you tease about Gold Star?
So Gold Star obviously has a power behind it because it was something that got Bailey's attention and then ultimately got Bailey killed. And Voit is going to use it to negotiate his way to a lesser sentence. The plan is to have Voit back next season almost as our Hannibal Lecter. And when things come up regarding Gold Star is when we have to go get his help. We don't want to because we did just fine without that guy, but he holds answers to something unique and we have to talk to him every once in a while. So he is involved in a way that we weren't expecting when we first created Voit.
When Zach became Voit, we absolutely fell in love with his portrayal of this guy — this complicated creature. By the time the season ended we were like, "Can we keep playing with him? Is there a world where he's in the next season? What does that look like?" So we have plans to do that. That's a testament to who Zach is and what he brought to this role, because this could have had a really neat ending [where] he's caught and we're moving on to something else, but instead we're moving on with him involved.
Bill Inoshita/Paramount+ Zach Gilford as Elias Voit on 'Criminal Minds: Evolution'
It's clear Rebecca [played by Nicole Pacent] knows a great deal about what Gold Star is. What can you tease about how that will impact her relationship with Tara moving forward?
We love Tara and Rebecca and we are rooting for them even in the writers room. It's a little twist that Tara knew some stuff that ultimately hurt Rebecca and their trust got broken, and now Rebecca knows something that we want to know. And Rebecca, when she says, "I didn't want any of this!" I totally believe her. "I was fine just going along living my life over here and now I know something that got somebody killed and I don't want to know any of this." So we really want Nicole to be able to come back next year and keep on this path with us of not only being the voice and representing the AG's office, but exploring that relationship between Rebecca and Tara and how complicated and messy things have gotten. Is there a way out of that? Is there a way forward for them? We want to believe there is. We would love nothing more than for that to work out, but it won't be easy.
Speaking of relationships, Penelope and Tyler [Ryan-James Hatanaka] develop an unexpected but delightful one, but they don't get their happy ending. Is this the last we'll see of Tyler?
You will get to see more of Tyler at some point in the season. I can't say too much about it right now, but it was one of those things that we really consulted with Kirsten [Vangsness] about because it was a big betrayal to Garcia. And Garcia's done so much work on herself since 2020, that we said to Kirsten, "Look, we love RJ. We want to keep Tyler Green around. But it feels a little not like Garcia anymore, to go visit him in the hospital and be like, "It's okay, we're fine. Let's keep dating." That didn't feel true to who she is now.
And so Kirsten was happy that we didn't go that route and was a huge collaborator on what that scene would sound like. But we all hoped it wasn't goodbye forever, it was goodbye for now. That's what we're counting on for next season: that it was just a goodbye for now and he'll be back. And then that will bring a complication to — we didn't really get to play [with it] a lot — the triangle because Alvez, [who] didn't even find out about [the relationship]. He might have suspected, he suspected for sure in episode eight, but in episode nine when he and Garcia had that scene and he knows for sure, it's like, "No way!"
So now if Tyler Green's around a lot more, we'll get to play more of the triangle on the screen.
Michael Yarish/Paramount+ Kirsten Vangsness as Penelope and Ryan-James Hatanaka as Tyler on 'Criminal Minds: Evolution'
Yes, the fanbase is devoted to Penelope and Luke, but we get that flashback date scene where they determine they're better as friends. Tell me more about the decision to introduce that Penelope and Tyler dynamic.
I think everybody wondered what happened on that date that was promised in the CBS finale; and we didn't give you that date until episode nine. But, there's something so incredible about their dynamic. It's not who Garcia was with Morgan [Shemar Moore], it's its own thing. And it's such an important ingredient to the show. They bring levity and just a breath of fresh air when they're together. So we didn't want to lose that by messing it up with a relationship. But, we've always loved when Garcia's in a relationship. It's been a long time. And we felt like, let's make it with the person who's least likely to be in a relationship with Penelope Garcia. And the whole introduction of Tyler was, oh, these two are never going to get together. They can't even be in a room together, let alone anything romantic happening. So to earn that and to see those tiny little things that changed how they thought about one another, it was rewarding for us. I think Kirsten and RJ both really loved that they had this arc that started as enemies. It's sort of like they even skipped the friend part and went to lovers, which was fast in some ways, but also believable.
There are some theories that the introduction of Will's health scare could possibly pave the way for a Spencer Reid [Matthew Gray Gubler] return. I'm sure you're tired of this question, but what can you tease about any cast returns?
I wish that there was some promise that I could make to everybody, but it's not my promise to keep. Everybody has other projects and other things they're doing, and because we are only doing 10 episodes again, it's such a short window that we shoot, if they're off doing something else....
But in terms of Will, we really wanted to play this in real time . . . we've talked about it in the writers room, and it's playing the health scare. At a certain age these things can just — well, they can happen at any age, but — you're going along with your life, you're thinking, "I'm in my 40s, everything's fine," [but then your] blood work comes back funky, that's not good. . . we wanted to present that as, "These things can happen." Thankfully right now, Will's going to be okay. He's got to go to the doctor every six months, but for now, he's okay, but it doesn't mean you're forever okay. It's that introduction to, "I'm not invincible and I feel invincible."
Michael Yarish/Paramount + Aisha Tyler as Dr. Tara Lewis, A.J. Cook as Jennifer 'JJ' Jareau, Kirsten Vangsness as Penelope Garcia, Adam Rodriguez as Luke Alvez, Paget Brewster as Emily Prentiss and Joe Mantegna as David Rossi
Where are we with season 2 right now?
We're just early days in the writers room. And then hopefully we'll be shooting in the spring, but we don't have an exact date yet.
What are you most excited to explore in the new season?
We're just loving the serialized storytelling, because it's something we really got to do for the first time last year. To know that we can play with all of our same heroes really makes us excited.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. The first season of Criminal Minds: Evolution is now streaming on Paramount+.
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