Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 3 Episode 10The apple does not fall far from that tree, especially when that tree is a murderous trauma factory of a human being. The Criminal Minds Season 18 finale brings Cyrus’ (Silas Weir Mitchell) disciple into the light, and it turns out the BAU guessed right. The Disciple is Cyrus’s attempt to create a new protégé after Elias Voit (Zach Gilford) left him and is chasing Voit so they can have a trauma-bonded family reunion. Flashbacks reveal that Tessa Merrick (Jordana Spiro) is a mechanical engineer PhD student who had the misfortune of running into Cyrus after being sexually assaulted by her advisor. She takes the disgruntled man at the bar where she’s trying to process what’s happened to her as a kind stranger. Unfortunately, Cyrus abducts her from the bar parking lot and keeps her trapped in his basement for twenty years. It’s not until Voit returns to kill Cyrus that Tessa is able to leave the cabin of horrors. She sets out to find her trauma-brother-in-arms, using her own time in Cyrus’ murder school to hone her skills and eventually join Voit’s network. The problem is that when Tessa finally joins the network, Voit has been apprehended by the police, attacked in prison, and suffers a traumatic brain injury that has gifted him empathy. He’s soft and helping the cops rather than someone who she can take over the world with. Thus, desperate lengths must be taken to return Voit to being Sicarius, and sacrifices must be made before the BAU can intervene.
Tessa Is Obsessed With Awakening the Sicarius Killer

Image via Paramount+

Tessa believes that the ruthless killer who saved her from Cyrus is still inside Voit’s troubled head. It just needs to be free from all of this empathy and guilt that his recent sessions at the BAU have saddled him with. So it’s kind of great that Tessa kidnaps Julia Ocohoa (Aimee Garcia) when she grabs Voit from Melgren. She’s not a witness to get rid of, but actually the potential key to unlocking Sicarius. Voit just needs to see his favorite doctor die, and Sicarius should come right back to the surface. The Disciple underestimates Voit’s attachment to Julia, though. When The Engineer (they are working together after all!) is about to fill Julia with Voit’s trademark Sicarius spiders, Voit explodes and beats The Engineer to death. It saves Julia’s life, but it also leads Voit to his first kill since the prison fight that gave him his new personality. When Tessa asks how he feels after the death, Voit says, “like a fucking god,” and it seems that Tessa’s dreams are coming true. Those who have been watching Voit’s evolution over the course of the season and were hoping he could become the BAU’s permanent Hannibal Lecter consultant don’t need to feel defeated just yet. Yes, Voit killed The Engineer, but it was to save Julia, and he’s still working with the good guys. He’s pretending to be Sicarius again to convince Tessa to work with him. He regains her trust and access to the network. He tells Tessa that she’s exposed everyone by taking the network public and allowing so many of her killers to be arrested and talk to the feds. They must dismantle the network and go underground, then start from scratch when the BAU is distracted with other cases. The first step before they can run away is to tell the network to go underground and send a “red herring” to Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness) to get the BAU off their trail. Tessa eats all of it up. That’s to her detriment. Voit sends the message to the remaining killers on the network to lay low, but embeds a tagging section in the code that allows Garcia to see all of their locations when she hacks the message. She assumes it was a mistake on Tessa’s part, only to realize it was a present from Voit to make sure the network is permanently taken down. The BAU moves in on Voit and Tessa, having worked out her backstory and using her profile to determine she’s holding Voit at a place of major significance to her. Cyrus’ cabin was leveled to the ground the year before, so they conclude she must be at the site where her PhD adviser assaulted her. Winner, winner, chicken dinner for the team! To keep Tessa at his side, Voit pretends to shoot Julia and tells her to play dead. Then he takes Tessa on the run and leads her straight to the FBI. She does manage to get away, leaving Voit to face off against J.J. (A.J. Cook) and Rossi (Joe Mantegna). He’s still holding the gun and threatens to use it in hopes that J.J. and Rossi will just kill him instead of sending him back to prison. After seeing how Voit helped Garcia and didn’t kill Julia, she’s sure that the empathy center in his brain is still working, and he won’t shoot her. She gambles correctly, and he allows her to put him in cuffs. Meanwhile, Tessa runs right into Prentiss (Paget Brewster). She also thinks dying would be better than whatever maximum security prison the feds want to send her to, but Prentiss is able to disarm her and arrest her before Tessa can kill herself. The network is dead, and both Voit and Tessa are in police custody. A job well done.
The Lingering Questions Remain Even With the Sicarius Network Gone

Tessa is probably going to prison for the rest of her life, even though Cyrus traumatized her into being a killer. The big questions at the end of the season are still about Voit, though. With the network dismantled, he’s no longer an asset to the FBI, and that means it’s time for an orange jumpsuit and prison life for the serial killer. J.J. stands in for the audience when she reveals she can’t believe she feels sorry for the guy after everything he put the team through. Even Rossi seems to be on Voit’s side when they have their final chat of the season. Voit knows he’s a killer and must pay for his crimes, but Rossi points out that Voit went above and beyond to keep Lainey Torres (Alicia Urizar McCallum) and Ava Mackey (Audrina Miranda) safe. He could have killed Julia, but he didn’t. Something has changed about Voit, and it might be permanent. Hold your breath on that thought. The final scenes of the season see Voit sitting at the back of his prison transfer bus. One of the other inmates announces that they know who he is, and the others start getting agitated. When Voit realizes there’s no escape, he starts to strangle the inmate closest to him with his handcuffs…and enjoys it. Then he blinks, and it’s clear Voit imagined the whole scenario. He may have done good by dismantling the network, but the Sicarius Killer is still alive and well, fighting his way to the dominant position of Elias Voit’s consciousness. It’s safe to say we probably haven’t seen the last of him. Criminal Minds has been renewed for Season 19, which is currently filming. All previous episodes can be streamed on Paramount+ in the U.S.

Criminal Minds

Criminal Minds finally takes down Voit’s network in lore-heavy finale

Release Date

September 22, 2005

Network

CBS, Paramount+

Showrunner

Erica Messer

Directors

Félix Enríquez Alcalá, Rob Bailey, Matthew Gray Gubler, Joe Mantegna, John Gallagher, Douglas Aarniokoski, Guy Norman Bee, Larry Teng, Nelson McCormick, Alec Smight, Charles S. Carroll, Rob Spera, Charles Haid, Diana Valentine, Rob Hardy, Tawnia McKiernan, Bethany Rooney, Karen Gaviola, Sharat Raju, Thomas Gibson, Aisha Tyler, Anna Foerster, Gloria Muzio, John Terlesky

Pros & Cons

Sicarius rises in the final moments
The flow of this episode felt like a movie and kept you on your toes
The BAU can finally move on from the network and tackle new cases

It was a lot of lore about a character we didn’t REALLY care about until this episode
Justice for Tessa’s victims, but will there be justice for what Tessa suffered?
We’re not sure where Criminal Minds: Evolution goes without the network