The Criminal Minds: Evolution season 19 premiere dropped on Thursday, May 28, and quickly brought us directly into the newest case for the BAU to solve. It has been a year since the events of the Season 18 finale in the timeline, in which the team worked to stop a disciple of Elias Voit from committing further violence. How is Voit still connected to the BAU?
While at this time Agent Dave Rossi is ready to never hear about Voit again, Tara has been going to see the former killer in an effort to study his crimes. Voit is reluctant to get into all of it, especially since apparently some of the families of his victims want to talk to him.Â
Criminal Minds: Evolution season 19 starts off one year later with new criminals to catch
While he doesn’t think closure will do anything, he still agrees to at least figure out who would be easier to talk to, for lack of a better word, although we agree with Rossi that no matter how you slice it, it’s still terrible.
As Tara is working with Voit, JJ Jareau is preparing a move with her boys, Henry and Michael. She told friend and colleague Penelope Garcia that while it was weird to leave the home she shared with her husband and sons, it would be weirder to stay. After taking one last look at her home, JJ quietly said goodbye and began to move forward after her loss.
Meanwhile, the new case involved three friends, Laurie, Mark, and Griffin, who had been abducted after their car was boxed in by two men in a truck. They gaslit them about bothering them at a rest stop before shooting Griffin when they discovered he was in the backseat filming the exchange.
After abducting them, the two men took them to a dilapidated cabin, where they had also abducted another couple that had last been seen at a gas station a month prior. When Griffin’s body was eventually discovered, his manner of death and how he was posed raised similarities to a 30-year-old case.
A man named John had been found dead, and the woman he was with, Susan (Geri Ryan), managed to survive. Susan came to the BAU to talk with JJ about what happened all those years ago. Now married with a son, Susan thought she had gotten past what happened but was clearly haunted as she recalled being assaulted daily and ending up pregnant with twins.
The team realized that their original unsub must have kept the boys and raised them to be killers as well. If he were getting older, the boys were likely abducting the women so they could get them pregnant and continue the lineage.
Since their births would not have been recorded, they tried to go off of information about the area and details that Susan gave them about where she had been kept. Tyler Green began to ponder if her sense of smell could have been heightened, and sure enough, she recalled the strong scent of tobacco.
Garcia found that there was a tobacco farm near a campground owned by the Warner family, with Frank Warner being a potential suspect. Susan confirmed that it was her abductor, and they discovered Warner in the hospital, who, by now, was old and dying of a terminal illness.Â
As Prentiss and Rossi made their arrest, Luke and the rest of the team rescued the four remaining victims. With three killers now caught, Susan was ready to keep moving on with her life.
The episode ended with Tara and Voit talking again, where they discuss how his need to kill was addicting and that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop what he was doing. Now the concern was that even though they were talking about this, someone else was committing crimes. Sure enough, there was an unknown killer out there who broke into a college student’s dorm and strangled her.
For the first episode of season 19, Criminal Minds did well in establishing where everyone was in the present. While we do not know how Voit will fit in while he is behind bars, we’re looking forward to seeing how the season turns out for everyone involved.
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