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Criminal Minds Star Shares the Trick to Pulling Off This Week's Cool Twist
The following contains spoilers from the June 5 episode of , now streaming on Paramount+.
The buzzword this week on Criminal Minds: Evolution apparently was 'threesomes' — as in the one that Emily just said no to years ago, and the secret one that JJ and Dr. Ochoa surprised us with as the episode drew to a close.
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This week's episode saw JJ (played by A.J. Cook) sit down for an unorthodox therapy session with Dr. Julia Ochoa (Aimee Garcia), after the veteran agent stepped in front of a fellow LEO's gun at a crime scene. At the close of their episode-long series of talks — which took place in a conference room at Voit's hospital — it was agreed that if JJ at this early point after Will's death is unable to help herself, maybe she can instead help 'someone else.'
'…like you,' JJ said, addressing an unseen figure seated at a table to her right. 'What do you think?'
It was then revealed to viewers that Voit had been observing their sessions the entire time. (And if you go back and rewatch the episode, you'll now clock both JJ and Julia at times glancing at the nearby Voit.)
'I think you might be right,' Voit said. 'From what I can remember, everything I did was selfish. Even trying to take my own life is all about me, me trying to solve my problems. I never even considered I should do something to ease someone else's suffering. Suffering that I caused.'
On that note, Voit agreed to be taken to the BAU to confront one of his disciples, with the hope that, among other things, the 'reunion' might help restore the Artist Formerly Known as Sicarius' missing memories.
The Voit reveal, as Aimee Garcia put it during her Wednesday afternoon chat with TVLine, was a 'great twist.'
'What was so fun about those scenes is we would ask our incredible director, 'How often do we look over at Voit without giving it away?'' recalled Garcia. 'Because this guy' — she jabbed her thumbs toward herself — 'will be going back and looking at it a second time.
'It was really fun to be a character that's 'gazing off, collecting her thoughts' when you watch it the first time,' she added, 'but when you watch it a second, [you realize JJ is] actually looking at someone that you hate but is the key to unpacking the [serial killer] network.'
Garcia said that Zach Gilford was only seated on-set with her and A.J. Cook for the eventual reveal. But for every scene before that, 'We printed out a face of Zach and taped it to a stand, and carved out hollows for his eyes… A.J. and I were taking pictures with it!'
On a more practical level, by using that cut-out, 'We literally had an eyeline that was Zach Gilford's face that we would reference and look at,' Garcia noted.
'That's what the show does so well,' she remarked. 'You think it's blue and it's red, you think it's two people in the scene but it's three… How often would we think that someone who has caused such mass destruction, as Voit has, that we would want to hug him?' — as JJ found herself barely doing, moments later. 'What does that say about us?' asked Garcia. 'Are bad guys all bad? Are good guys all good? Can bad guys turn good, can good guys turn bad?'
On the 'bad guys turn good' front, will Voit now prove to be a useful asset for the BAU, loathe as the Special Agents are to see him navigating their work space?
'Possibly,' Garcia teased. But the lingering question will be: If a brain, like a computer hard drive, has been 'wiped clean,' do any of Voit's killer memories and 'DNA' remain embedded somewhere?
'In Voit's case, his memories are starting to come back,' Garcia previewed, 'but it's that fine balance of, 'Do you awaken a monster? Or do you, like Dr. Lewis says, let sleeping dogs lie? That's the moral quandary. We needed this serial killer to wake from a coma, and quickly before more people die, but Dr. Ochoa sees a patient that could regress if we go too hard.'
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