What That ‘Criminal Minds’ Finale Bombshell Means for the Final Season

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Spoiler Alert
Eddy Chen/CBS

[Warning: The following post contains spoilers from the Season 14 finale of Criminal Minds.]

The Season 14 finale of Criminal Minds, titled “Truth or Dare,” left fans experiencing mixed emotions. They were equally jumping up and down with joy and scratching their heads in confusion.

The moment in question is when JJ (A.J. Cook) made a jaw-dropping confession. She revealed — while being held at gun point by an unsub, we should add — that she’s “always” been in love with her BAU colleague Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) but was “too scared to say it before.”

What?! We know.

JJ is supposedly happily married to Will (Josh Stewart) and has two kids, so what’s going to happen? Criminal Minds is heading into its 15th and final season, which means storylines need to wrap up.

CM showrunner Erica Messer told ET that JJ’s bombshell will “definitely be explored.”

She added, “Ultimately, it goes down to the relationships that people have been watching and seeing how they’ve grown over the years. There’s something real in people who have worked together for a super long time — certainly in law enforcement, where it’s life and death.

“Some people would say it’s like going to war together. You have a bond with people that can’t be defined. It’s one in times of incredible stress. We wanted to be able to acknowledge that but also be completely aware that this is going to be a bomb for a lot of people.”

Messer also wasn’t entirely convinced the relationship was a good idea when first pitched.

“I was really concerned about it. The writers’ room pitched it to me, and I was like, ‘No, we can’t do that,'” she admitted. “The more we talked about it as a team and the more we talked with Matthew and A.J. about it, it was like, ‘This could work. This makes sense and here’s why.’ It’s something that we wanted to explore in the final 10 [episodes] and allow ourselves insight into our heroes and allow them to grow from this revelation.”

And also don’t expect a typical love triangle, because only Reid and JJ are aware of her confession. Actually, when the series returns it will skip ahead six months, according to Messer, and neither person has addressed it, so things are “muddy.”

“Her confessing that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love the life she has tremendously. Without giving away too much of the actual dialogue that’s coming up, she’s been defined by the love in her life, and the love in her life is Will and the kids, it’s Reid, it’s her friends, it’s the work that she does,” Messer teased.

“There are a lot of things that define people, and [Reid] is one of those things to her. Maybe if she had never met Will in Season 2, things would’ve been different. If in another time and place… There’s heartbreak to that, but you would want to know that in a friendship or relationship. It’s complicated.”

We can’t even imagine what’s ahead.

Criminal Minds, Season 15, Coming soon, CBS