Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 2 Is Wicked, Gruesome, and Plagued by Familiar Issues
Photo Courtesy of Paramount+
At long last, Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 2 (or Criminal Minds Season 17, depending who you ask) is upon us. After fighting hard to identify and put the world’s most notorious and elusive serial killer, Elias Voit (Zach Gilford), behind bars throughout the entire previous season, our beloved BAU team—Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster), Jennifer “JJ” Jareau (A.J. Cook), Tara Lewis (Aisha Tyler), Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness), Luke Alvez (Adam Rodriguez), and David Rossi (Joe Mantegna)—has their work cut out for them as they dig into the mysterious “Gold Star” and why it elicited such a strong reaction from some of the bureau’s top brass. Having viewed the first two episodes of the season, this will be a wild ride, promising many unforeseen consequences for the team moving forward.
Picking up just two weeks after Voit was escorted into an empty floor and greeted by a mystery figure, the team is haunted by what they went through to capture Voit, especially Prentiss and Rossi. Prentiss is desperate to uncover the truth about what led to Deputy Director Bailey (Nicholas D’Agosto) being killed, uncovering a grand secret that the government is keeping. Meanwhile, after nearly dying at Voit’s hands himself, Rossi is rather literally haunted by visions of Voit that are disturbing his everyday life. And, for the whole team, things begin to come into play early on that heighten their already volatile emotions about the situation at hand.
It’s hard to judge the entire season based on two episodes alone, but quite a bit happens that tees up a season with the potential to be even more wicked and gruesome than the first season (which already saw things become substantially more twisted and dark than the series was on CBS). The case that starts the season off is horrific in the classic Criminal Minds way, while making full use of the freedoms that accompany moving from network television to a streaming service.
Plus, the season begins with some much-needed team bonding as they gather to celebrate Garcia’s birthday (minus one team member), which is always a delight to watch—and fingers crossed there will be more moments like this to provide some levity due to the extremely heavy story in play.
As difficult as many of their cases have been throughout the series’ 16-season run, this “Gold Star” story might even prove to be the team’s toughest challenge ever, particularly as they find themselves forced to work with Voit to uncover the truth and save lives. This path with Voit is testing our profilers in a slightly interesting way, showcasing their savvy and clever mental skills in a new light. But, it’s clear Voit has overstayed his welcome.
As talented as Gilford is, keeping him around feels somewhat forced. Voit’s story fully played out and, let’s face it, became quite burdensome well before the end of last season. There’s nothing new to do with Voit—except allow him to continue taunting the team—nor is he a character interesting enough to be the serial killer that this show breaks all of the established rules for. This show was never intended to focus so heavily on a single serial killer, which has become painfully obvious. (As if we didn’t already know this fact from the season-long killers that popped up sporadically over the 22-episode seasons to torment and evade the team).
It was interesting for maybe four episodes last season, as it allowed the show to go somewhere it never had before with a serial killer and explore his life as thoroughly as the team’s respective lives. But the realization quickly set in that it’s not as much fun to watch someone so utterly terrible escape their crimes, elude the team, and continue hurting people (when that’s happening quite enough in the real world) in every single episode. Ultimately, Voit’s continued presence and prominence prevents the show from fully exploring the “Gold Star” mystery and taking that to the next level.