Showrunner and executive producer Erica Messer speaks to EW about that explosive finale and plans for season 2.
WARNING: This post contains spoilers for theCriminal Minds: Evolutionseason 1 finale.
Below, showrunner and executive producer Erica Messer discusses that explosive finale and teases season 2.
Joe Mantegna as Rossi on ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’.Michael Yarish/Paramount+
Spoiler alert: this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Voit or Tyler.
Yes, Penelope and Luke fans: a possible love triangle is on the horizon.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Rossi had a close call in the penultimate episode.
Zach Gilford as Elias Voit on ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’.Bill Inoshita/Paramount+
We’re in the age of TV where showrunners have no problem killing off major characters.
Was his demise ever seriously considered in the writers room?
We said it because we had to say it.
Kirsten Vangsness as Penelope and Ryan-James Hatanaka as Tyler on ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’.Michael Yarish/Paramount+
But we love Joe [Mantegna] way too much to ever do that.
But yeah, we only mentioned it, we didn’t actually consider it.
We have a hard time ever killing any of our heroes.
Aisha Tyler as Dr. Tara Lewis, A.J. Cook as Jennifer ‘JJ’ Jareau, Kirsten Vangsness as Penelope Garcia, Adam Rodriguez as Luke Alvez, Paget Brewster as Emily Prentiss and Joe Mantegna as David Rossi.Michael Yarish/Paramount +
This team is really like family, so we don’t want to do anything unnecessarily to hurt them.
Elias Voit has at last been found out, but there are still a lot of lingering questions.
What can you tease about Gold Star?
And Voit is going to use it to negotiate his way to a lesser sentence.
The plan is to have Voit back next season almost as our Hannibal Lecter.
And when things come up regarding Gold Star is when we have to go get his help.
So he is involved in a way that we weren’t expecting when we first created Voit.
When Zach became Voit, we absolutely fell in love with his portrayal of this guy this complicated creature.
By the time the season ended we were like, “Can we keep playing with him?
Is there a world where he’s in the next season?
What does that look like?”
So we have plans to do that.
It’s clear Rebecca [played by Nicole Pacent] knows a great deal about what Gold Star is.
What can you tease about how that will impact her relationship with Tara moving forward?
We love Tara and Rebecca and we are rooting for them even in the writers room.
And Rebecca, when she says, “I didn’t want any of this!”
I totally believe her.
Is there a way out of that?
Is there a way forward for them?
We want to believe there is.
We would love nothing more than for that to work out, but it won’t be easy.
Is this the last we’ll see of Tyler?
You will get to see more of Tyler at some point in the season.
We want to keep Tyler Green around.
Let’s keep dating."
That didn’t feel true to who she is now.
But we all hoped it wasn’t goodbye forever, it was goodbye for now.
Tell me more about the decision to introduce that Penelope and Tyler dynamic.
But, there’s something so incredible about their dynamic.
It’s not who Garcia was with Morgan [Shemar Moore], it’s its own thing.
And it’s such an important ingredient to the show.
They bring levity and just a breath of fresh air when they’re together.
So we didn’t want to lose that by messing it up with a relationship.
But, we’ve always loved when Garcia’s in a relationship.
It’s been a long time.
And the whole introduction of Tyler was, oh, these two are never going to get together.
They can’t even be in a room together, let alone anything romantic happening.
I think Kirsten and RJ both really loved that they had this arc that started as enemies.
I’m sure you’re tired of this question, but what can you tease about any cast returns?
But in terms of Will, we really wanted to play this in real time .
we’ve talked about it in the writers room, and it’s playing the health scare.
we wanted to present that as, “These things can happen.”
Thankfully right now, Will’s going to be okay.
It’s that introduction to, “I’m not invincible and I feel invincible.”
Where are we with season 2 right now?
We’re just early days in the writers room.
What are you most excited to explore in the new season?
To know that we can play with all of our same heroes really makes us excited.
