Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 4 Episode 3.Criminal Minds: Evolution knows exactly why we are drawn to the mind-bending character of Elias Voit (Zach Gilford), and Season 4, Episode 3 proves it. The episode is 50 tense minutes of watching the two warring sides of Elias battle it out, as Gilford’s face twitches with his character’s ingrained homicidal urges and survivalist instincts, but is also constantly warped by a sickening guilt and self-loathing of the amnesiac. It’s brilliant. This week, a missing persons case from 2022 rears its tragic head and comes to a grisly conclusion, all while the BAU is forced to keep up with Elias’ mind games and ulterior motivations, where the idea of the evolution of a serial killer and their impact on the public remains at the forefront.
‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Season 4, Episode 3 Adds More Twists to Voit’s Character
In 2022, a mother and daughter disappeared in South Carolina, and the daughter’s decomposed body was finally found in the present timeline in the trunk of a car in the marshlands. While searching for the mother’s body in the same area, the police found an empty case that was similar to the kill kits of the Sicarius network, implicating Elias. However, Tara Lewis (Aisha Tyler) firmly believes that Elias has disclosed his entire body count, but the DA (Rob Yang) has a personal grudge against Elias and his uncle, so he insists on speaking to him himself. Further complications arise because if Elias is truly responsible for this murder, then he is up for the death penalty, thanks to South Carolina’s jurisdiction.
Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
Rambo
James Bond
Indiana Jones
John McClane
Ethan Hunt
01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
When the DA speaks to Elias, he doesn’t deny that he killed the victim, nor does he explicitly confirm it. Instead, he simply agrees to show them where her body is buried in person. Theories float around among the BAU members, including a suspicion that Elias may be being vague about his body count so he can avoid the death penalty — how do you kill someone when they could potentially give closure to another family? It complicates Elias’ character study even more while heightening the suspense of the show, but then David Rossi’s (Joe Mantegna) theory sends chills up our spines: what if Elias’ serial killer instincts are returning in full force, and he is using this as an opportunity to escape? He has been documenting the details of the prison more attentively than before, after all.
A Chilling Case is at The Center of ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Season 4, Episode 3
Throughout the investigation, the BAU speaks to several family members, including the victim’s narcissistic and philandering husband, her grief-stricken father, and her sister, who can’t move past her death. Pairing this with the scenes of Elias receiving mail from the loved ones of his victims, Criminal Minds paints a haunting portrait of the ripple effects of murder, ones that are sometimes overlooked. And then it adds the disturbing element of Elias receiving fan mail, further hammering in the twisted public perception of killers in true crime.
When the team escorts Elias to the marshlands, we’re all on edge as we anticipate his next move, waiting for the clever trick that would buy him his freedom. So, when Elias suddenly bolts into the trees after seeing a flashback of himself as a child, we’re holding our breaths to see if he succeeds, only for Elias to stop at a patch of dirt deliberately. He indicates that spot as where the victim is buried, and he is right, vindicating the DA’s assumption that Elias is responsible. But the mystery deepens when none of Elias’ DNA is on the body or boxes; instead, it is her husband’s. Turns out, Elias was really just playing a game that early Criminal Minds fans will remember, when Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin) would put himself in the mindset of a killer to predict their moves. As Rossi says, serial killers make the best profilers.
However, turns out the husband is also not the perpetrator. The truth is far more chilling. Upon reviewing the case files, Rossi and Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster) realize that the sister doesn’t follow the typical patterns of a mourning loved one: instead of preserving her sister’s memory, she tries to erase every detail in the house she takes over, suggesting guilt. After their mother left the house to the victim, the sister acted out of jealousy and had motivations of taking the house, forcing her husband to commit the crime for her, and framing the victim’s husband, then Elias, in the process. We watch the case wind down to a close and are left with the horrified expression on the father’s face, who realizes he has just lost two daughters, not just the one.
‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Season 4, Episode 3 Ends on a Truly Disturbing Note
Joe Mantegna as Rossi and Ryan-James Hatanaka as Green in Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 4, Episode 3.Image via Paramount
As the team settles down after resolving yet another dark case, there are moments of comforting hope in the closing scenes. We watch J.J. (A.J. Cook) move into Penelope Garcia’s (Kirsten Vangsness) bright and inviting apartment with her two sons, as she tries to navigate motherhood as a widow. Fortunately, Penelope and Luke Alvez (Adam Rodriguez) refuse to let her struggle alone, and they re-create one of their family camping trips in the living room, reminding us that the BAU is a close-knit family. Meanwhile, Tyler Green (Ryan-James Hatanaka) has a humorous and sweet moment with Rossi on the jet, where he seeks advice about compartmentalizing from the experienced agent. Considering Green’s role in this episode wasn’t as major as this scene makes it out to be, it was a slightly incongruous and sudden conversation, yet still funny.
‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Is Finally Going Back to Its Psychological Thriller Roots With Season 4 | Review
After nearly two decades, the show still has the ability to surprise us.
So, after all of that, what were Elias’ true motivations? Alarmingly enough, Elias actually wanted the death penalty. His instincts have been slowly clawing away at him, and the part of him that feels guilt, empathy, and self-loathing wanted to escape his own head, including the taunting Rossi hallucination. However, the truly eerie part arrives in the closing scene, where he miserably accepts his new load of “fan mail” and angrily tosses it onto his prison bed. Then he finds a stack of papers there, all spelling out “I am not pathetic” in a typewriter font and arranged in chaotic but decisive patterns, echoing what Elias called the listeners of the podcast in the last episode. Instinctively, we know it is the handiwork of the Fan, the elusive antagonist of this season, whom we have yet to come face-to-face with. Criminal Minds manages to ratchet up the anticipation for this character only through a collection of words and the visceral twitches on Gilford’s face as he reads them.
Release Date
September 22, 2005
Showrunner
Erica Messer
Pros & Cons
The central case played out like a psychological thriller with plenty of clever twists and dark scenes.
Zach Gilford is a scene-stealer, commanding the room with his duality in every scene.
The exploration into Elias Voit reaches an alarming peak in this episode.
