‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Boss on Rossi’s Possible Involvement in Voit Cliffhanger

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 17 finale “Save the Children.”]

Criminal Minds: Evolution ends its 17th season with a question mark about a villain’s future, but thanks to a chat with showrunner Erica Messer, we do have some answers about that.

In the finale, Prentiss (Paget Brewster) is abducted (again), but Gold Stars Jade (Liana Liberto) and Pete (Alex Saxon); the latter is Doug Bailey’s (Nicholas D’Agosto) brother, and he thinks the BAU killed him. But once they can prove it was Voit (Zach Gilford), he surrenders. In the end, the team celebrates (with a “Hooray, you’re alive” cake) at Garcia’s (Kirsten Vangsness). Meanwhile, in prison, Voit is attacked.

Below, Messer breaks down that finale and teases what’s to come in Season 18.

Voit wanted to be part of gen pop, and it seems like he could have set that whole thing up at the end to orchestrate something, whether it’s an escape or something else. Or Rossi (Joe Mantegna) could have let slip who Voit is. What can you say about what could be going on and how much we’ll see Voit going forward?

Erica Messer: I think you nailed it, Meredith, have you been spying on our writers’ room? We have so many fun options at the end of that finale and questions of, who are these people? Is it just a random attack on a guy in the laundry room? No. And what was Voit’s hand in any of that? So we’re still writing the next season, so I can’t really make any promises to what’s going to happen, but I can promise you that we will see Voit all season.

Can you say whether or not Rossi could have let slip who he really is? Can you rule that out or rule that in?

That is definitely a working theory.

Michael Yarish / Paramount+

You really put Prentiss through it this season, to the point that she was ready to quit before she could be fired. What did you want to do with her this season and what can you tease about what that means for her next season? How has this changed her?

Yeah, I feel like we’ve kind of gone down our call sheet. Season 16 was really an introduction to Rossi’s grief-induced trauma. And then with Prentiss this season, she has been carrying so much on her shoulders and to be under attack the way she was under attack this year and from outside forces as we know from Gold Star and all of that, to feeling the guilt of Doug Bailey’s death, she couldn’t escape the attacks because so much of it was happening from inside as well. And then of course Rossi’s panic attacks kept happening this year. So we’ve really had both of our leaders in it this year. And as with everyone, you learn from those hard years. You learn from maybe what feels like a, “I can’t go on, rock bottom,” to “Okay, I’m picking myself up. What did I learn? How can I not make that mistake again? Or how can I be a little kinder to myself moving forward?” And I think we’ll find Prentiss in that space.

BAU Gate for JJ (A.J. Cook) might be the most disturbing storyline of 17 seasons just because of how personal it was. Talk about coming up with that. Is that something that will continue because yeah, Prentiss and JJ clear the air, but it seems like it’s an ongoing problem that they have to deal with, right?

Well, it is. Thank you for recognizing that is so disturbing because it is, and I think it’s something that we couldn’t have done 17 years ago because the technology wasn’t even there 17 years ago, right? So it’s part of the ways of, we don’t rob from the headlines in terms of our scary stories as much as we do what’s going on in the world. And all of that kind of fake porn stuff has hit celebrities, it’s hit college campuses, it’s hit younger than that, and it’s so disturbing and so upsetting. So we felt like, who would it be most disturbing for? And it’s JJ.

It will be alive in the same way that a horrible attack like that is always there. It’s always something that happened to you and it’s always something you’re afraid of. She told Prentiss, “I’m afraid that one of my kids’ friends is going to see it.” And so that fear is still a part of her this season because that happened to her. And even though we hope it’s been stopped, as this show has said over and over, once it’s out there, it’s hard to rein it in.

We talked to A.J. about it initially to say, this is disturbing, it’s upsetting to us, which is doing something because our writing staff comes up with a lot of stuff that’s disturbing and I was like, I need to call A.J. first. I don’t know if she’s going to be okay with it. And she was like, it’s out there. I think it’s important to talk about it. So she supported it.

Michael Yarish / Paramount+

Rossi was still seeing Voit at the end there, but also the door closed on him, so that could be him moving past that. What can you say about Rossi’s frame of mind at the end of this season?

We wanted him to have some kind of closure to these visions that he’s having and it felt like that was the cleanest way to do it. It’s like, okay, I need to get you out of my head and move on. And he does in that sense. But it really does open the door for a whole ‘nother Voit-Rossi relationship in the next season.

Rossi and Jill’s (Felicity Huffman) relationship seems to be up in the air a bit. So could they have a future? Talk about building that really complicated dynamic, which you really feel just in a couple of scenes between the first two episodes with them.

I know. Well first of all you’ve got Joe and Felicity who are incredible just to watch. You could just watch them eat a bag of popcorn. They’re incredible. We always saw Felicity’s role as that three-episode beginning, middle, end of that story. So she comes in with a lot of answers that we need about Gold Star, a lot of guilt about that when she realizes what’s happened with it, and then the complicated relationship with Rossi and their history of having Jason Gideon as their common denominator. And then by the end, once she talks down Damian and again makes a promise to him, no one’s going to hurt you anymore, then they walk outside and she didn’t know that he had made a pact with Jade, and so the guilt she feels over that, and it just felt like the next episode kind of lets her get her sea legs and then we’re off guns a blazing. And it just felt like the work part was done because as you know, by the end of the season the Gold Star case is done, but she’s part of our world and it doesn’t mean we can’t bring her back in the personal setting, but she was so incredible. We love her so much.

We talked about Season 16 was really Rossi going through it. This season is really Prentiss with some trauma for Rossi and JJ as well. So whose turn is it for Season 18?

It’s everybody, I would say right now. We’ve not fully broken this season yet, but JJ and Lewis (Aisha Tyler) have really big stories this season. So yeah, I would say working our way down the call sheet.

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So you set Lewis up with some happiness with her and Rebecca (Nicole Pacent) back together only to put her through it?

Yeah, there’ll be some surprises this season in that world.

Will all the series regulars be back?

Yeah.

You’ve been doing these networks and groups of serial killers between Voit in Season 16 and then you had Gold Star this season. Are you looking to do something similar next season or do something completely different? Streaming allows you to explore something like that in many different ways.

Yeah, you’re right. And we’ve decided to lean in because we do have Zach with us again this year and it feels like he is the creator of so much chaos that it felt like we don’t need to reinvent that wheel. He set a lot of things into motion and so we’re still in his orbit of evil.

Yeah, because there’s so much that was left unexplored about Voit’s network after Season 16 alone.

Exactly.

Could we see Prentiss’ sister that you brought up next season?

Maybe. Like I said, we don’t finish breaking this season until October or something, so it’s on our list.

Have you talked about how much you want to lean into the original run in Season 18? You even went before that with the paper from BAU’s very early days, you brought back Brian Garrity (Paul F. Tompkins)…  Can you say if you’re looking at any returns, whether it’s a major character, a minor character, or delving into that history more?

We always love to talk about what got us here and who got us here and that kind of thing. But I mean specifically going as deep as we did last season, probably not. Although it was really fun to trace the Gold Star program all the way back to the BAU. That was pretty great.

Criminal Minds: Evolution, Season 18 Premiere, TBA, Paramount+