Criminal Minds: Evolution Boss Breaks Down Finale Death and 'Alias Moment' — and Might Reid Return Next Season?

TVLINE | In retrospect, was it easier or harder to do a season that followed just one UnSub?
Oh, gosh. You know, it was harder. But I think that after 15 years of standalone [UnSubs], it was the change we were looking for. It was also good to challenge the audience to watch Criminal Minds that way. It was good for all of us, in a way.

TVLINE | Beyond that, were there other unforeseen challenges to refashioning Criminal Minds as a streaming series?
No. In fact I think the thing that I loved so much was we didn’t have the time constraints that we used to have. Especially when our cast would direct, they always felt like a director’s cut didn’t matter because we had to cut it down to 42 minutes [for broadcast]. But this time around, everybody felt that freedom. We got to have longer episodes. I think the shortest was 44 [minutes] and the longest was 56?

TVLINE | That must have been great for you after 15 years of snipping and “killing darlings.”
It’s true. And one of the decisions we made early on is that even though we knew we had more time to tell the stories, we didn’t want to add an “extra twist” in the mystery. We thought, “Let’s just let those moments breathe, let’s live in the tension” — all this stuff that we had to cut out of too early before. We got to live in the creepy moments a bit more.

TVLINE | Obviously no one could have been more excited than Paget Brewster was about this season. But was anybody as excited as her?
[Laughs] She led the charge, for sure, but I think that everybody had such an  excitement going into this because we got another shot. We couldn’t have been happier to be all together again. And I think the surprise to them was, “Oh my God, I’m going to get addicted to my show in a way I haven’t been before,” and that was [because of] the serialized storytelling. They were like, “Wait! And then what’s going to happen with this? And then that??” But I do think Paget was the biggest cheerleader.

TVLINE | And Kirsten [Vangsness] had raved to me ahead of the season, without spoiling anything, about how much would be going on with Penelope. And her quote was, “And it is time.”
That was something that was another little bonus for us this season, that we got to really go home with everyone — figuratively if not literally. I’m so happy that we got to see more into Garcia’s world, because she is a layered, layered character and we’ve never been able to play into that before. In fact, that apartment was a standing set for us this year, whereas that might have existed in an episode here or there before. We were like, “No, we’re going to build it!”

TVLINE | Now as a streaming series, you sprinkled in some cuss words here and there. At any point did you choose to pull back on language or sexual themes?
Just the language; I always knew I didn’t want to do Criminal Minds: After Dark and all of a sudden we’re R-rated with nudity and that kind of thing. The language was always going to be the thing that felt more authentic. Initially hearing Joe [Mantegna] say [curse words], people didn’t even notice, in a funny way, because it just sounded right coming out of Rossi’s mouth! But we did pull back. I think everybody got a little cuss word-crazy in the early stages, and in fact when Joe directed, I said, “Can we make sure that we’re getting alts [alternate takes] every time we drop the F-bomb?” And I’m glad we did, because in the editing room we used the alts quite a bit.

TVLINE | And were there any alts or ad libs for the [post-coital] Garcia/Tyler scene on her kitchen counter?
[Laughs] Kirsten does a lot of ad libbing, and it’s always welcomed. But yeah, that scene was such a lovely surprise to all of us, that we even got to do it. And we had never been able to do [a mid-credits scene] before either, have a little “Marvel moment.”

TVLINE | How hard was it to kill off Deputy Director Doug Bailey (played by Nicholas D’Agosto), versus keep him around as a reliable ally? Or is there no fun in having reliable allies?
It was a brutal decision to kill Bailey. We love how he went from BAU foe to friend but felt Voit needed to take one of us off the board — and it wouldn’t have been anyone from the BAU so… our buddy Douglas Bailey literally took the bullet.

TVLINE | Is “Gold Star” going to be an ongoing mystery continuing into next season?
Yep. Yep. It’s sort of like, “We thought we knew everything, we thought we know all about the [Sicarius] network and Voit and all this stuff.” So for Voit to drop that bomb, and to have it mean something to Bailey, it’s our jump-start into the next season, for sure.

TVLINE | Is there any guessing who walked through that door to visit Voit at the end? The AG? Maybe POTUS, even…?
It could be! That was a bit of a page out of the Alias days. [Messer served as story editor and a writer for the ABC spy drama.] In the first season of Alias, we always had on our board that the very end beat would be Sydney saying, “Mom??” — but we didn’t know who Mom would be. This was sort of a nod to that. Let’s have it be somebody unexpected, but we don’t quite know who it’s going to be yet.

TVLINE | So, we have not seen the last of Elias?
You have not.

TVLINE | Will Season 2 follow another singular UnSub, or will you return to Criminal Minds‘ original format?
We’re going to do a hybrid. In the first four episodes so far, two are a little bit serial, and the two are not.

TVLINE | You’re doing another 10 episodes?
[Nods yes]

TVLINE | Are all the BAU agents we saw this season confirmed to be back?
Everybody in the main cast is coming back, they all had a contract to come back. [Paget Brewster tweeted that filming starts as soon as April.]

TVLINE | And I know it’s perhaps early to say, but is there any chance we will see Reid (played by franchise vet Matthew Gray Gubler) and/or Matt (The Wheel of Time‘s Daniel Henney)?
It’d be amazing. I’m not giving up hope on that. But I do know that everybody has these lives outside of our show, and that’s the tricky part. We shoot [10 episodes] in such a short little window, whereas before with a 22 order and nine months of shooting I’d feel confident to say, “We’ll find a way to get them in.” But we don’t have that [larger window], and they’re off doing other things.

TVLINE | Is there an upcoming storyline reason why Paget Brewster solicited from Twitter a “supercut” of every time Emily has been “shot, hit, branded or killed”? Are you planning a “best of” or…?
That’s amazing! I did not know she was asking for that. Maybe it’s [stemming from] that line [in Episode 7] where she says, “I guess that after being assaulted and drugged and killed in the line of duty, what’s the worst that could happen?”

TVLINE | If I had one critical observation, it’s that after spending more time with JJ and Will, with Penelope, and Dave, and Tara… this season was a little Luke-lite. We never dug into what’s going on in his world. Is that something you might get into in Season 17?
We definitely had plans for everyone, but you don’t have as much time as you think, even in our new structure. It ends up being a lot, so Alvez’s role in terms of personal story ended up being [limited to], “How are he and Garcia?,” and this Tyler Green character getting in the way. But both he and Paget didn’t have personal stories outside of the office. Paget actually requested that; she was like, “Prentiss is married to her work, let’s embrace that.”

TVLINE | And as section chief she had so much to deal with, between Bailey and the AG and Rebecca….
And she’s such a great boss that it’s wonderful to see her in that power position. Paget’s right, let’s represent the women who are career women and show that that’s OK. We don’t need to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend on the side, let’s embrace that.

TVLINE | Was there any rhyme or reason why some episodes had the usual Criminal Minds quotes read by a character and some didn’t? And at least one had a quote read by Elias as well?
I wanted to play with the quotes this year because before we were pretty stuck in the way we did them. And just the idea of having Elias do one, I was like, “Oooh, that’s fun,” because we never had an UnSub do the quote. And we played with others — Tara’s in Episode 2 is, “It’s been claimed that Oscar Wilde wrote… except he didn’t.” If I really felt I needed [a quote], we would do it, versus, “You have to have one every week!”

TVLINE | Even though Paget requested no personal storyline for this season, do you have one in mind for next?
Yup. We sure do. Absolutely.

TVLINE | Does it involve a supercut of every time Prentiss got wounded?
[Laughs] It doesn’t right now. But maybe it should!

TVLINE | Is there anything else you would like to say about this season of Evolution?
I just want to thank everybody for supporting the show. It’s always tricky to bring back a show — though we weren’t gone for very long! — and reboot it and give it a bit of new life. So I’m thrilled that people seemed to like what we did.

Did you like what Evolution did? Grade the season below, then chime away in Comments!

var pd_tags = new Array;pd_tags["11565986-src"]="poll-oembed-simple";