Criminal Minds, since returning for the revival Evolution on Paramount+, has been good about wrapping up season-long storylines in finales before setting up new mysteries. And it sounds like such will be the case again for Season 19.
Criminal Minds: Evolution is currently four episodes into its 18th season, with episodes dropping weekly and the finale set for July 10. The premiere picked up six months after Elias Voit (Zach Gilford) was attacked in prison. His network of serial killers remains active, but now Voit has amnesia, his brain scans have shown that he’s changed and is no longer a psychopath, and the BAU has to figure out how to stop that group and deal with him.
When TV Insider spoke with Kirsten Vangsness (who plays Penelope Garcia) recently, we had to ask how the finale set up Season 19. The Paramount+ drama was renewed for another season on March 5, ahead of this one’s May 8 premiere.
“It’s very finale-ish, but also very satisfying. I’ve got to say that it was a satisfying,” she said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, that makes sense and that makes sense,’ and you’re really putting a lot together. I like that it leads up, so you really feel like you’ve gotten all your puzzle pieces and then get to snap ’em all together in that last episode.”
It’s not just Voit and his network of serial killers that will be a through line of the rest of the season. JJ (A.J. Cook) is grieving the shocking death of her husband, Will (Josh Stewart). As Cook told us after the third episode of the season with Will’s funeral, we’ll continue to see how she deals with that loss.
“That’s her defense mechanism: She shows up and she works and she compartmentalizes and she will try to lose herself in her work. But you can only do that for so long. We definitely touch on a lot of the grief phases. And it is not like we shoot one episode and she’s gone through all of it and it’s tied up neatly with a nice bow. That’s not how grief works,” Cook explained. “So this is going to be something that we’re going to see throughout the whole season. And then beyond that. This never goes away. This now has shaped her into this new single mother, and it will continue shaping her as she now learns to work through life this way. So I’m excited to see what that looks like for her. It’s been a journey already, and it’ll continue to be a journey in Criminal Minds form.”
What are you hoping to see the rest of this season? Let us know in the comments section below.
Criminal Minds: Evolution, Thursdays, Paramount+