‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Boss Talks Finale Reveal & Teases BAU and Voit’s New Challenges in Season 19

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 18 finale “The Disciple.”]

Voit’s (Zach Gilford) network is off the board, thanks to the former psychopath himself on Criminal Minds: Evolution.

The Season 18 finale unmasks the disciple who took lead of the network and has been trying to bring out the Sicarius side that may or may not still be inside him, and it’s Tessa (Jordana Spiro), whom Voit’s uncle Cyrus (Silas Weir Mitchell) kidnapped. Now, as she holds him and Ochoa (Aimee Garcia) captive, he makes her think she’s succeeded in bringing out the old Voit, seemingly killing the doctor, only to shoot next to her and also give Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness) what she needs to track down every single member of his previous network. With that, Voit is going back to prison, and on his way there, he imagines himself killing an inmate who recognizes him as Sicarius. But how much is that side part of him?

Below, showrunner Erica Messer breaks down the finale and shares early teases about Season 19, now filming.

Talk about having the disciple be Tessa, someone who was shaped to be Voit 2.0 and who wanted to bring out the psychopath in him.

Erica Messer: We really debated for a while who this disciple could be, and it just felt like there’s these gaps in time with Voit’s story. He left Cyrus, and you knew Cyrus wasn’t happy about it. Well, what did Cyrus do after that? He’s a killer in his own right. The heat was on him with the murder that Silvio Herrera got blamed for. What did he do? What if he’s out one night after Lee Duval leaves his Uncle Cyrus, and he meets Tessa, and he decides, “I’m going to do it different this time, I’m going to have a captive”? And that one sad, horrible existence for Tessa as his victim would probably satisfy his urges to go out and do horrible things to a whole bunch of other people.

So once we landed on that, it was just like, “Well…” and then after a while, “This is the way, right?” I mean, you’re held captive, and she’s crazy smart, but you can get radicalized into thinking this is the way. And so she felt this bond to Lee because he was her predecessor in a lot of ways. He came up in the house of Cyrus, and now she’s coming up in the house of Cyrus. So she didn’t want to feel as alone in the world. So I think reaching out, wanting to reawaken that beast was sort of a go-to for her just because she didn’t want to be alone in the world with this horrible thing that she’s become. And Jordana and Zach are friends, so it was really nice to reunite them as friends and scene partners.

Speaking of the Voit situation, why did you decide to explore a psychopath who’s grown a conscience? What’s the appeal of keeping him around for another season and continuing to do so?

He was supposed to just be in [Season] 16 as our bad guy of the season, and we ended up enjoying him. We enjoyed writing for that character, and we just thought, wait, we get to do 10 episodes a year now. We don’t have to keep this guy around for 22 episodes a year. What if we explored him as a prisoner? And then that was fun. And then when he got the beating at the end of Season 17, here we are in Season 18, we’re like, well, what if he’s forgotten who he is? So it was really just a craving to reinvent Voit over and over so that the team gets to work out muscles they’ve never worked out before. They don’t really think about what happens after they put these guys in prison. Occasionally we’ve gone down the road of like, oh, Rossi [Joe Mantegna] will go talk to people and they’ve interviewed people in the past and all that.

But to have somebody so ingrained in their world, it’s not normal. It’s not normal that the BAU has to consult with a psychopath. So we just thought, if not now, when, and making him a killer with a conscience was really just how else can we explore this character and this actor? It gave Zach a lot to do, and how does it change the team and how they think about that. I mean, you wouldn’t imagine Garcia would really want to sit in a room with somebody who’s killed 60-some people, but there she is doing aromatherapy with him. So it just allowed characters to sort of try things that they never would’ve done in the 17 years prior to that moment.

What does this mean though for him next season? At the end of the finale, we see the Sicarius side of him is still in him, but he’s fighting it.

Right, exactly. And it could have ended there honestly, because it felt like, ooh, what’s going to happen? Is he going to wake up or not? But again, we just felt like there was a little bit more to explore. He was still kind of their secret, right? Season 16, he had gotten away with it for all those years. He buried his victims in shipping containers. If you didn’t know everything about him, you weren’t going to find out in Season 17 because the Gold Star investigation made him become even more of, now he’s our secret. So he was a secret to the world. Then he becomes our secret. And Season 18, he’s a patient for most of the season, and he is kind of an anonymous patient. Ochoa knows what he’s been accused of, but she’s like, “I don’t think he’s that person anymore.”

And so this Season 19 that we’re shooting now, Voit is a household name. He’s as famous as Ted Bundy. So what do we do with that character? And again, always reflected in, how are our heroes dealing with this new challenge? And now they’re dealing with a guy who’s essentially got celebrity status as a killer. He doesn’t like the spotlight. I think even old Voit wouldn’t have necessarily liked the spotlight, but the new Voit who’s struggling with these instincts that he has to kill, but he’s also got this conscience that’s louder than the instincts right now, it felt like we had another 10 episodes to explore that.

There was a lot of loss this season for the BAU with the UnSubs and victims, Voit in a way because they had to work with him, and also Will’s death. What does that mean for them going into Season 19? Are you going to lighten up on them a bit?

Yeah, there’s going to be a year between the seasons story-wise. So in that year there’s been healing, there’s things to celebrate. There’s always having to learn how to navigate something new. We’re all challenged every year with something we haven’t done before. So those things will happen. But I think it’s more like stepping a little bit into the unknown. JJ [A.J. Cook] is now a year into being a widow. She’s got her two boys. One is going to be heading off to college. This is the year to sort of a get ready for that, which would happen at the end of Season 19. That’s all happening in my world, too. My oldest is already in college, but my youngest is about to go. And so I told A.J. I plan on writing what I’m going through right now because it’s new, you have to prepare yourself for an unknown chapter in your life. And she didn’t have a chance to prepare when losing Will because that was sudden. But now what does that look like when you do know to cherish every moment?

With that year jump, are we going to see Tara (Aisha Tyler) and Rebecca’s (Nicole Pacent) wedding, or is that going to have happened?

I think Aisha’s keeping this a little bit in the dark, too, so I don’t want to put it out there in the open, but there is a reason to celebrate, meaning we’re not going to put them through the drama that they got put through in the seasons prior, certainly in Episode 8 when she was shot. But we took a page from something that happened to one of our writers who shared something with us in the writers’ room when we started on Season 19. So we’re like, I think that’s how we’re going to handle that. And that’s a little bit of a tease, but you’ll get to see when we get there.

Rossi’s in therapy and taking an antidepressant. What led to him taking Tara’s advice at this point? Did having to deal with Voit in the way that he had to the season play a role?

I think it just speaks so much to Rossi’s willingness to learn and grow and change. I mean, his ways weren’t working, right? And I think to actually be able to acknowledge that from that character who, he likes it his way or the highway, and to be like, you know what? I need help. And there shouldn’t be any stigma associated with that. So I think it was a really great way to show how he’s evolved as a character and just the greater good out there in the world that if you’re struggling, you can ask for help, and it’s out there.

You brought back Matthew Gray Gubler this season, which, great to see him. What are the chances of seeing him again next season or seeing Shemar Moore or Daniel Henney or any other past cast members?

Oh, I know. We were so lucky to get him, that the stars aligned for him to be there and for such an important episode and such an emotional time. And I feel like that’s what friends do for one another and both onscreen and off, right? It’s like, can you be here for this? And it just worked out that he could, which was a dream.

And so Season 19, we got going in the writers’ room in February of this year, and we’re now shooting. So when we’re figuring out our season, we don’t know. We can’t really count on those guest stars because they can’t tell us if they’d be available or not, six months from then or whatever. So we don’t have any plans right now, but you never know.

Who’s the focus of Season 19 going to be? You had said last season that you’re working your way down the call sheet.

Alvez [Adam Rodriguez] has a lot going on this season, and it really kicks off in the second episode of the season, which we’ve already shot. I think it’s his year to sort of grow and shine a little bit more. And Adam’s so good. I think there wasn’t a dry eye when we screened the second episode. And that’s all I’ll say.

The network is off the board because of what Voit did. What can you say about next season’s season-long arc? Are you looking at something that’s contained into one season? The network went on for three seasons.

I know.  It was pretty brutal, that network, and it did have the tentacles that it was going to be hard to stop in a 10-episode run. So this season, it’s sort of, what can go wrong when a serial killer gains celebrity and he doesn’t want it? Voit would be happy if he wasn’t even breathing anymore, honestly. But in between Seasons 18 and 19, he had confessed to the crimes and he was sentenced to life in prison, not the death penalty. And so it’s that realization that, “I’m here, I’m stuck. I’m a prisoner for the next however many years the rest of my life basically. And so what do I do with this time?” The BAU wants to get inside his brain and dissect it a little bit and do these interviews with him, which is what the BAU actually does with convicted killers.

But I think for us with Voit, there was just more to explore with somebody who is more comfortable in the shadows and now they’re a celebrity. And I think that gets reflected in our society. And so because of that sort of unwanted attention that he has, there’s darkness that sort of lurks in and becomes a part of this season. And our plan right now is that that darkness that sort of comes in that’s not network related but is sort of, Voit is a celebrity now, that would be finished by the end of this 10-episode run.

Prentiss (Paget Brewster) had some really great speeches this season — the one about loss, then about being tired. She was really dealing with boss stuff this season. What’s coming up for her?

Prentiss is the fearless leader of this group, and I loved her speech about, “Who’s tired? Really nobody? Okay, well, I am.” It just felt kind of where we all were at that time of the season, too, because in that 2024 calendar year, we were shooting the second season that year. So while it was Season 18 Episode 8, it was the 18th episode that we were in production on that year. So I don’t think there was anybody on that crew and cast that wasn’t tired. I think that’s one of the things that’s so great. I mean, Paget’s incredible, but I think always giving her the unfiltered version of your friend and your boss and somebody who’s going to tell it like it is, it’s just refreshing. And so she continues to shine like that in Season 19.

What about Prentiss’ sister? Are we ever going to meet her? She brought her up in Season 17…

I know. Back with Doug Bailey, right? She talked about it. We talked about it, and we just haven’t explored it enough to do it for Season 19. But here’s hoping we have more seasons to tell that story.

I feel like you probably will. The streaming format seems to be great for the show.

Thank you so much. Yeah, I mean, even though the history of our show is network, it feels like we’re really getting to shine now.

Criminal Minds: Evolution, Season 19, TBA, Paramount+