Criminal Minds Evolution Recap: Episode 1 – Garcia/Luke Update

The following contains spoilers from the first episode of Criminal Thoughts: EvolutionStream now exclusively on Paramount+.

Criminal Thoughts: Evolution made its debut this Thanksgiving with a double dose of episodesfollowed by weekly releases.

The first episode began with a flashback to 2005, when an unknown man dragged the youngest of many victims into a partially buried shipping container in Washington state – where he tortured/killed the man. We then jumped to 2022, where an intruder kidnapped a teenage daughter after killing her parents in her sleep.

dr Tara Lewis gets a call when some kids discover the shipping container, and she takes stock of its grisly contents. Prentiss, as department head, isn’t too keen on Tara’s discovery, given FBI Assistant Director Bailey’s tendency to dismiss it as a cartel matter. When Emily brings up the revised BAU — especially given Reid and Simmons’ absences — Bailey remarks, “Sorry, I’m not authorized to discuss your duties. Whether and when they return is entirely up to them. Unfortunately, we have no say.”

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Rossi was head of the BAU unit, though for the past year he’s been “obsessed” with an unknown man dubbed a “family killer,” handling cases in Virginia and now Maryland. Amid some tight talks between him and Luke, and then him and Garcia, it’s Rossi who’s been dealing with (or not) a big loss for “almost a year.” And while it’s never said outright in Episode 1, memories he flashes back late into the episode strongly suggest that his wife, Krystall, has died.

As for the rest of the Agents we know of, Luke is basically holding the remains of the actual BAU Fortress, where Prentiss’ old office now doubles as a training room. JJ comes home late (bringing work) although she finds time to wonder/annoy that son Henry has his first girlfriend. And Penelope Garcia…? Spring….

She, of course, announced her decision to leave the BAU in the CBS series finale, and has since banned “24-hour news” and “doomsday scrolling.” Four people were hired and didn’t get their jobs done, but the latest twist in Rossi’s investigation requires her to be computer literate, especially as the social media site at hand is one that Garcia has hack-proofed. So Luke is sent to beg/beg her to take a look “behind the curtain” and see what she can find to connect the two teenage victims.

And with Luke’s arrival at Garcia’s doorstep, a thread dangles from it criminal thoughts‘ The CBS finale is addressed lightly.

If the pandemic may have clouded your memory of leaving the show in February 2020, Luke invited Penelope over for dinner, and she happily accepted. So… how did that play out?

One of Garcia’s friends was also apparently curious and whispered something in her ear after Hunky Luke crashed their Anglophile baking party.

“It was one Dinner, three years ago,” Penelope told her friend. “We thrive as enemies, however.”

But is that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Or could there be more to the story?

“How do I explain this…?” said Kirsten Vangsness when TVLine inquired about the Garcia/Alvez update. “Guys, it’s going to take a minute to explain the ‘A date, three years ago.’ You will get some satisfaction.

“But in between That satisfaction,” she explained excitedly, “there’s something else entirely—there’s a lot Miscellaneous Satisfaction – that nobody, including myself, would have called.

“And it is time‘ Vangsness claimed cryptically. “Thanks TV, that’s it time for this to happen. Nobody will be sad. They’ll be like, “Aww, man…” and then, “Wait, What?’ And that’s the best I can tell you about it.”

what were you thinking about evolution‘s premiere, Reid and Simmons’ mysterious assignment, and the “satisfaction” promised by Vangsness?