In Season 17 of Criminal Minds: Evolution, which streams on Paramount+, the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) has found itself in the position of having to team up with captured serial killer Elias Voit (Zach Gilford) to track the highly dangerous and deadly Gold Star killers. Pursuing an organized team of traumatized spree killers is an all-hands-on-deck situation that sees Emily Prentiss with a target directly on her back, David Rossi (Joe Mantegna) talking to a Voit that’s a figment of his imagination, Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness) having to work with Tyler Green (Ryan-James Hatanaka), and the rest of the team under heightened stress and pressure.
During this one-on-one interview with Collider, showrunner Erica Messer talked about building on what worked with the first 15 seasons of the series and evolving into its 10-episode per season return, focusing more on serialized storytelling, getting to include more episode drama, the open door policy when it comes to collaborating with the cast, wanting to continue to include Elias Voit and Tyler Green, what fans can continue to expect from this season, and whether Matthew Gray Gubler will return at some point.
‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’s Shorter Season Has Allowed the Series to Push New Boundaries
It’s fun to not only have this show back, but to see what’s being done with it now because it feels like the show and yet different. Last season, you had the job of bringing the series back but evolving it, and having it feel like Criminal Minds but also feel different. What do you feel worked best in that regard, over the course of last season?
ERICA MESSER: It’s been a real challenge. The typical business model is, “If it’s not broken, why fix it?” And certainly, we had 15 years of not being broken, at all. So, we wanted to build on what worked and the tension, the suspense, and the characters who we know and love. We had a great foundation to bring it back to become Evolution with challenges that we thought would be really fun in a 10-episode order. We could have a bad guy that’s eluding the team over 10 episodes. Actually, if you look back on it, since 2005, he’s been killing, but to get on our radar when he did and to not catch him for 10 episodes felt believable. It was also a six or seven week story, even though it was over 10 episodes. I was like, “I believe that the FBI needed some time to catch this guy.” But over 22 episodes, I wouldn’t have believed it took them all season to catch him. The shorter season allows the serialized part to feel a lot more believable. That’s been one of the biggest rewards in doing this show this way.
You’re doing less episodes, but it feels like we’re getting to know the personal sides of the characters even better than we did before. Has it been challenging to find time to add in some of that relationship drama, or has it just been really fun to get to do that stuff?
MESSER: It’s been really fun and I think the cast is really enjoying it, as well. The thing that’s interesting is that our script length is about the same as it was when we had the CBS version. The difference is we’re about 10 minutes longer. So, we’re still roughly a 55-page script, that we used to have to cut down to 42 minutes. Now, a 55-page script can be a 55-minute episode. So, even though it’s only 10 episodes a season, you’re getting 10 more minutes every week than you would have had before, and what got lifted before was usually the personal stuff. We would maybe have a bookend of the characters, but now we can leave it through. It doesn’t have to just be one episode’s worth of stuff. We can carry it through. Anytime you come in deep on a character’s grief or trauma, or whatever they’re going through, like Prentiss having guilt over Doug Bailey’s death, when you have those emotional tentpoles to really hold onto, it makes a big difference in feeling like you know them even more.
With a series that’s had as many seasons as this one has had, what’s it like to work with the cast? Do you have conversations with them about what they would still like to explore or learn with their characters, that they haven’t gotten to do yet?
MESSER: We definitely have an open door where anybody can bring in anything. Joe Mantegna, in the olden times of the show, would come in every year and talk to the writers. That’s how we met every one of his wives and the daughter. All those stories really came from Joe saying, “Hey, I’d love to meet all the wives that I’ve had.” And then, where we go with those is up to us. With the team, everybody’s all in on whatever new journey their characters can take and however they can keep evolving those characters and surprising themselves.
When you have an episode where you have something being whispered and the audience doesn’t know what it is, in that moment, and it affects multiple characters, do the actors know what’s being said when that happens? What were they made aware of?
MESSER: It’s funny because sometimes the last scene of an episode is the first scene that’s shot, and they haven’t read the next script yet. In this case, they didn’t know what it was, and A.J. [Cook], Adam [Rodriguez], and Zach [Gilford] were all like, “What is the secret?” And so, we told them what it was. We said, “It’s this, and you’ll know more when you read the next episode,” just so that they had something to play. And they were like, “Really? Okay, that’s weird.” It was fun to have a little bit of a secret from them, but it was important that they knew.
Elias Voit Was Originally Only Supposed to Stick Around for One Season of ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’
Did you always know that you wanted to carry the character of Elias Voit into another season, or did you just decide that you didn’t want to let that character go?
MESSER: We thought Evolution would basically become a different version of Voit every year, and then we met Zach. He’s so compelling as this character that we just thought, “There’s more story to mine here. He’s very complicated. What he’s done to this team, by taking our beloved Rossi, we’re not done with him yet.” He was so wily, saying “Gold Star” to lure out Bailey. And then, he killed Bailey, so what the hell does Gold Star mean? That gave us the entire season that we have. So, it was definitely not anticipated at the start of Season 16, but maybe halfway through 16, we thought, “I think he’s gotta stay, now that he’s here.
Similarly, did you know that you’d bring Tyler Green back and find a way to keep him involved?
MESSER: No. He was just really charming, too. We thought, “We have two opportunities this season. One is working with this serial killer and consulting with somebody that we would never want to take advice from. And the other is having a BAU member that’s an ex-partner of someone they now have to work with. That just felt like two fun new avenues that we could go down this year – a personal one and a professional one.
These characters were all traumatized by Elias Voit, whether directly or indirectly. Who will have the hardest time working with him and being forced to seek his help?
MESSER: Without thinking too hard, I’d say Rossi because he’s seeing him when he’s not there. There’s unprocessed trauma there, being a victim of Voit’s, so he’s gonna have the hardest time going there.
What made you decide to bring the character back in that way, and to have him not just really be there and locked up, but to also have this version of him speaking to Rossi?
MESSER: Historically, in the series, Rossi has had relationships with UnSubs, so it just felt like we’d done that with him. It’s a cool way to use an actor that otherwise is just sitting in a cell the whole time, and it felt like they could have these conversations. It’s in Rossi’s head. Rossi is putting words in this guy’s mouth, but it really gives you that sense of what Rossi’s really thinking and feeling, having the conversation with somebody who’s not there.
‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Is Still Throwing Curveballs At the BAU After 17 Seasons
What are you most excited about fans getting to see this season?
MESSER: Just stretching our team’s tolerance for things and throwing them curveballs from jump. It feels like they’re behind, and then the minute they get ahead, they find something else out. Their job is hard enough, and now you’ve got Voit in there, meddling things up. You’re gonna learn more about them, as they’re learning more about themselves, all season.
Was it a conscious choice to start off the first episode this season with the balance between this bloody moment, but then also them having a game night for Penelope’s birthday?
MESSER: Yeah, totally. Prentiss is on this dark path of following these Gold Star killings and protecting her team from knowing this is even happening out there. Prentiss is in this dark place protecting all the ones who are in the light right now, until she confides in Tara and they have a smoke on the roof. But the juxtaposition of that was intentional.
Will We Ever See Spencer Reid Return For ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’?
The still most obvious missing piece of this series coming back is Matthew Gray Gubler, who played Spencer Reid. What are the chances that we’ll see him return, at some point?
MESSER: I know. We love him so much. It’s been really tricky because the first season, he couldn’t do it because he had his own projects. Then, we probably could have done it, but the strikes happened, and then we fell back into that same pattern where we just weren’t gonna be able to get him for Season 17. But we love him and we would always welcome him to come back. It’s a matter of all the stars aligning, so that we can make it happen, but we adore him.