‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Boss Explains That Major Exit Ahead of Season 20

Criminal Minds: Evolution just said goodbye to a character that has been a major part of the show’s fabric since it returned on Paramount+. TV Insider spoke with showrunner Erica Messer about that major exit in the Season 19 finale and more. Warning: Spoilers for the Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 19 finale ahead!

James Crowley, a.k.a. The Fan (Justin Kirk), lures Voit (Zach Gilford) — whom Rossi (Joe Mantegna) tries to talk into letting them help him — to right where he wants him by kidnapping his daughter, Holly (Alison Nordahl). The team is split between going after them and tracking down Laura (Jessi Case), whom The Fan is holding captive in another location and forcing to read his words to the BAU. The agents are able to rescue her, then move in on Voit and James, but by the time they’ve gotten there, Voit and James have faced off, Voit has tried to just cuff the other killer, and Holly has come to her dad’s aid — and killed The Fan herself. Voit covers for her and is put away in an undisclosed high-security federal penitentiary, and with that, he’s out of their lives.

JJ (A.J. Cook), with help from her teammates, helps her oldest son, Henry (Mekhai Allan Andersen), move across the country to college, while Rossi closes the book on Voit with another book (and a hallucination of the serial killer known as Sicarius). Then, just as Prentiss (Paget Brewster) and Tara (Aisha Tyler) are having a drink and thinking about actually having a break, Director Ray Madison (Clark Gregg) alerts them to unidentified body parts anonymously delivered to FBI field offices in New York, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami.

Below, Erica Messer breaks down the Season 19 finale and teases what’s coming next.

It seems like you’re closing the chapter and that Rossi’s closing the book on Voit, at least for now, sending him off somewhere that the BAU won’t be interacting with him on its regular basis. Why do that at this point?

Erica Messer: We felt like we had told so many stories with Voit and the fact that we kind of went to his worst nightmare as a character, which is you think it’s being locked away and never seeing your family again and basically living out the rest of your days alone, but we just made it worse for him in making Holly a killer — and a justified one basically to save her dad’s life — but it still just felt so right in a weird way. I mean, it’s such a wrong thing to do, but it felt like to elevate Voit’s journey, we had to do something as drastic as that. And it just felt like that’s not someone that we need to talk to right now. His network is done. His disciple is caught. His Fan just played a major role in this season. And so I think everybody feels like the best thing is to not have him in the spotlight anymore.

It’s not to say we would never call on Voit again, but he won’t be in our lives in Season 20 the way he had been in our lives as he was before. So this season that we’re currently writing, we have our own journeys going on that don’t involve Voit.

So, he’s not going to be in Season 20?

No.

Speaking of Voit covering for his daughter, which is unsurprising to see him do as a father because of who we know Voit to be, especially now that the BAU knows that he’s covering for her. So are any of them at all concerned about who Holly could become?

Yes, absolutely. And I feel like there was a conversation in Season 17 between Alvez [Adam Rodriguez] and Voit when Voit was locked up, saying something like, “If she kills, we’ll hunt her down and find her just like we did you.” And so we’re sort of on that promise of that conversation. And JJ and Prentiss are for sure worried and saying, “Yeah, you need help. You need to talk to someone. You need to be a part of a community that could help you heal and not go hide in the dark.” And so it feels like there is a potential there for somewhere down the line to revisit Holly.

With James at the beginning of this episode, you brought up past killers from the show — Benjamin Cyrus (Luke Perry), Benjamin Merva (Michael Hogan), whom he then gave the lecture on, Lawrence Coleman (Darrell Hammond), and Jackson Cally (Chad Allen). Why those ones?

We were really looking at the cult leader personality, and, instead of naming real people in the world, we thought, “Why not talk about the ones that we’ve covered on the show?”

Why did James have to die? Was there ever a world in which he survived or the fan story carried over into Season 20?

It felt like it was going to be a one-season [story], especially by the time we got to Episode 9 where it all comes to a head and Garrity [Paul F. Tompkins] almost dies, and his wife [Yvette Nicole Brown] almost dies, and the innocent in Laura and in Lance [Connor Storrie]. It just felt like we’re not going to get bigger than that moment. And then by the time the showdown happens between Voit, The Fan, and Holly, we’re like, “It’s not going to get better than that.  And it felt like, again, for Rossi really to be able to close the book on Voit, that includes The Fan. It just felt like if we locked up Justin Kirk, then I think you’re waiting for him to escape or something like that. And I think he always felt like this could be an endgame for him. “If I either turn him into a killer again or turn his daughter into a killer, I’ve won.” It’s a little bit of that psychological game he’s playing.

Yeah. And then it’s almost repeating what you already did with Voit if you go that route with him.

Right.

Speaking of the Rossi of it, because Voit has been part of Rossi’s life for so long at this point and such a major part of it. But with the book closing, is he leaving it behind? Are we seeing a Rossi with a bit of a weight off of his shoulders going forward now?

Yeah, that’s the intention. And then by the time you come into Season 20, it’s been a year. And so I think everybody’s sort of shed the stress of that guy, having Voit in their lives, but it’s still a part of the fabric of the BAU. We dealt with this for a long time. So there’s references to him on what they’ve been through with him. But yeah, I think it feels more like Rossi can let that go. He is now closing the book on that guy.

So it’s kind of like there’s a bit of a reset, almost, for Season 20 then?

Yeah.

Speaking of Season 20, because you set up quite the intriguing case at the end of the finale with the unidentified body parts delivered to multiple FBI field offices.

I know!

That’s something I’d love to see. But last time we talked, you told me, “We want to believe that between Seasons 19 and 20, they solved the case that was introduced.” So are we not going to see that case? Are we going to hear about that case?

Not really, because while it is a really fascinating case, what ended up taking precedent was the time between seasons, and that’s for a lot of emotional arcs. We really wanted everybody to be a year farther along in their development as people. And so the sacrifice to that was that that case got solved offscreen.

JJ has had to deal with a lot of change over the past couple of seasons — Will dying and now Henry going off to college — and we’ve really seen just how strong she is. But now with Henry out of the house, how is she doing?

Yeah, it’s so many adjustments to your point of being widowed and now having to take on this journey as a single mother, taking your child to school across the country. And now, the adjustment of just having Michael [Phoenix Andersen] at home, there’s a new flow that she’s finding as a roomier nest. It’s not a totally empty nest. And I feel like that’s one of the characters that I wanted to pick up a year later, that the bittersweetness of sending your kid to college still exists and also changes you in a lot of ways. But I didn’t want her living in the newness of it for too long into Season 20. It’s like by the time the audience sees it, it’ll be a year that’s passed, I’m sure. And so let everybody live in that same headspace.

And I had just gone through that. I mean, in Season 16, I sent my son to college. He was one when the show started. And then in Season 19, as we were shooting that JJ scene, I had just come back from taking my daughter to college. So it was definitely life imitating art in that way. My son stayed in the Pacific Northwest, but my daughter went across the country. So I was feeling all of those things.

You put Garcia and Rossi at odds this season, and she knew exactly where to hit him where it hurt with the Donnie Mallick [Arye Gross] mention. As painful as it was to watch, it’s also great TV to see characters who are as close as this team is in conflict. So are we going to see more of that among the team going forward?

Yeah, absolutely. And you’ll definitely feel it with those two again in Season 20. They’re both right in a lot of ways, and they know which buttons to push. And I just feel like that’s family. You end up being with people, and everything’s fine, everything’s fine. Then there’s a blowup, and the blowup is usually about something from the past, but there’s a trigger in that moment that makes you explode. And so that’s a perfect example with Donnie Mallick. And then again in Season 20, when the pressure is on in a lot of ways, things are said, and tempers flare, I should say. And it makes for believable TV.

So, everyone besides Zach is coming back, right?

Yes.

What else can you tease about Season 20? Who can you say is the focus of it?

Probably Rossi. I mean, to your question about, “Can he close the book on this, and will there be a lighter Rossi?” Yeah, for an episode, and then it gets heavy for him again. But I think Rossi is very affected by some stuff that happens early on in Season 20, and the team is rallying to help everybody get through it, but it feels emotionally that Rossi’s hit really hard in Season 20.

As I always ask, will there be any returning characters next season?

No, none of the ones you’re talking about.

How about Brian Garrity again? Will we see Clark Gregg back?

Oh, yes. Hoping we get Clark in our finale again. He’s been busy doing plays. He was in London doing Romeo & Juliet, but I think we’ll be able to grab him in September when we shoot the finale. And no Brian Garrity this year, because we wanted that character to have a break.

I was going to say he needs a break after what happened.

He needs a break. So then if we do have other stories for him beyond Season 20, it’ll feel like, OK, he’s shed that skin and now he can come back to us his normal self.

And so, since we’re closing the book on Voit, when you look back at that arc, is there a part of it that really stands out to you that you’re really glad you were able to put on screen?

I am just so happy that we were able to tackle such a complicated character and to keep him in our orbit longer than we’ve ever done before, to arrest someone and have to keep going back to them because their prying tentacles have reached so far, and they’re the answer. And then also the emotional ask of, if somebody doesn’t remember, are they still a killer at the end of the day? Yes, the answer is yes, but you should feel complicated about it because he ends up being that blank slate in Season 18. And so I’m just really glad that we had Zach with us to come and play and bring that character to life and to bring that conflict to our world.

Criminal Minds: Evolution, Season 20, TBA, Paramount+