‘CSI: Vegas’: Is Josh Guilty? What’s Next for Him & How Catherine’s ‘Great White Whale’ Is Involved

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the CSI: Vegas Season 3 premiere “The Reaper.”]

Is Josh Folsom (Matt Lauria) a murderer? That’s the question CSI: Vegas left fans with between seasons and one that the rest of the Crime Lab must ask in the premiere. Not only do we find out what happened the night Josh learned he had his mother’s killer in front of him, but we also get a tease of a major storyline for Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) for the season.

Allie (Mandeep Dhillon) thinks Josh is covering for Trey (Daniel Di Tomasso), and when the other man ends up in custody as well, after crashing the car of a drug lord, Rafael (Benito Martinez), into his own stash house (in the back of a frozen yogurt shop), the best friends do try to protect one another. The truth is, both left and while Khan’s body shows signs of torture and being bound (twice!), he died of a stroke, brought on by being injected with capsaicin (a.k.a. essentially a liquid made of the world’s hot peppers, Carolina reapers). The CSIs know Josh would never use that, but to clear his name, they need to figure out who did. Fortunately, they happened to have noticed Rafael’s nephew eating hot peppers when they were at his house earlier, and once they search the place with a warrant, they find where he held Khan.

But just because Josh is free doesn’t mean that it’s an easy path forward for him. “Max [Paula Newsome] and the team were emotionally invested to prove Josh’s innocence. Now he faces an even greater challenge to be reinstated, this time he doesn’t have his devoted team advocating on his behalf,” showrunner Jason Tracey tells TV Insider. “The Las Vegas Review Board is scrupulous, they’ll analyze his behavior meticulously and make the final call if he’s fit to continue working as a CSI. Josh’s fate is in external hands, all he and the rest of the team can do is watch from the sidelines.”

Josh also has an uphill battle when it comes to his relationship with Max. She’s not sure if she’s upset when she goes to see him as he’s leaving jail. “I thought I knew you as well as my own blood,” she tells him. She’s disappointed, and she knows what he’s been through, but he crossed lines.

“A relationship like Josh and Max’s took years to build, after Josh’s careless behavior it took seconds to break,” says Tracey. “It’ll be a long road for the two of them to repair that level of trust as Max is wary to ever rely on Josh like we’ve seen in the past.”

As the premiere reveals, Rafael is someone from Catherine’s past; it hasn’t been long enough, she remarks when they first cross paths in the episode. When Rafael hands his nephew over at the end of the episode—with a confession—Catherine lets him know that she’ll see him again real soon.

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Rafael is Catherine’s “great white whale,” according to the showrunner. “There will be secrets revealed about him and her past in our early episodes. We sort of were able to dovetail the Catherine Willows and Folsom stories in a great way, I think.”

“There are so many questions that I had when we were fortunate enough to bring Catherine back to the show about, in the five years of story time that unfolded between CSI‘s final episode, “Immortality,” and our premiere a couple of years ago, what sort of life did Catherine live, what kind of criminals did she bump up against, and could we bring some of that sort of fresh backstory essentially into the present day?” he continues. “And to see Marg go up head to head with the fantastic actor we brought in, Benito Martinez, it’s just really a joy to watch them duke it out.” (Tracey notes it’s not a season-long arc.)

Meanwhile, Allie’s enjoying her role as a supervisor and has decided she’s going to permanently pair people up. As she sees it, she and Josh worked together for years and it’s what made her the CSI she is. She wants people to feel the same support. Max tries to argue that they don’t do permanent partners and it’s best to keep things fluid, but Allie says it’s her shift to run and she has to trust her.

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“Our team loves each other, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to be in agreement all the time, and I think one of the things that’s really most fun about this season is watching Allie’s plan to partner people up unfold,” Tracey notes. “We’re going to be seeing Catherine and Beau [Lex Medlin] in a partnership. We’re going to see Penny [Sarah Gilman] and Chris [Jay Lee] and Allie and Folsom, and it’s all kind of going according to Allie’s plan until it’s not.”

He adds, “Max has an instinct that the most important chemistry in the lab isn’t what they’re doing with beakers and Bunsen burners, but that it’s between the people on her team, and she’s got qualms about Allie’s plan to do permanent partners, but to watch that shake out and kind of evolve over the season is one of the things that I think the writers and I have had the most fun with.”

Plus, there’s the matter of Penny’s surprise engagement, revealed in the Season 2 finale. It’s in the Season 3 premiere that we get the details. As she admits to Chris, she woke up after her fifth date with a man whose identity she hasn’t divulged with the ring on her finger. She doesn’t know if it will stick, but she hasn’t told anyone who it is yet. (Beau thinks it’s Chris.)

Allie is the one to reveal his identity when she asks Penny and Jack (Joel Johnstone) when they’re getting hitched; she can see the vibes, she explains, when Penny asks how she knew. They haven’t set a date yet. We’ll have to see if there is a CSI wedding.

CSI: Vegas, Sundays, 10/9c, CBS