Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 3 Episode 8A lot has happened in the past week, so it’s fine if you don’t remember the terrifying cliffhanger from last week’s Criminal Minds: Evolution, but it’s time to get back in the game. Tara (Aisha Tyler) was shot by the new henchmen of Voit’s (Zach Gilford) network after she, Rebecca (Nicole Pacent), and Evan (Geoff Stults) were ambushed in a parking garage on their way to meet with Voit’s new lawyer. Rest easy, the opening of this week’s episode confirms that Tara is still alive – for now. She’s in a coma and trying to work her way to the surface while doctors work on her. Meanwhile, Rossi (Joe Mantegna) has a theory that the new head of Voit’s network, whom we are calling “The Disciple”, must have access to Voit at the hospital. How else would he know that Voit needs face-to-face contact to remember his past crimes? He hatches a plan with Prentiss (Paget Brewster) to draw The Disciple to them and place a trap rather than trying to move Voit out from under them. However, that plan is interrupted when the team finds out that Tara has been shot, and all the attention goes to finding out why The Disciple is changing his MO while one of their own fights for her life.
Tara’s Coma Dream Reveals Everything in ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’

There is no better time for a crash therapy session reviewing all of your biggest life traumas than when you are in a near-death situation. That’s why the TV coma dream trope was invented, and Tara Lewis could not go through this near-fatal shooting without sorting out her emotional priorities. While doctors worked to retrieve the bullets from her abdomen, Tara’s subconscious did an emotional battle with her dead mom (LaTayna Richardson), who died of cancer when Tara was still in college. Tara’s parents’ toxic marriage caused her to build a lot of walls around her heart, which were only cemented when Tara’s mother died just as Tara was entering adulthood. Our forensic psychologist has never fully given up her heart because of the trauma she faced as a child, and this apparition of her mother is determined to change that while Tara physically fights for her life. Tara makes it through surgery, but the doctors tell Rebecca that her ability to make it out of a coma depends entirely on how strong Tara is. Well, okay, you can say the prognosis isn’t good doctor dude, but that just says Tara is going to be awake within the hour. Still, hearing that Tara may never wake up is enough to shake Rebecca. She goes to sit vigil next to her girlfriend’s bedside and promises that she’s going to stay there until she wakes up just as coma-dream Tara is telling her mom she wants to know that someone is always going to stick beside her. Thankfully, we can confirm that Tara makes it out of the situation and opens her eyes before the night is over. She grabs Rebecca’s hand to confirm their bond. Just having Tara wake up was the happy ending we needed, but Criminal Minds clearly wants to make up for the trauma they’ve put us through this season because we also get a two-week time jump. Tara returns to the office – for a visit – and proposes to Rebecca in front of the entire team. They’re engaged and will be extending that month-to-month lease of theirs. We love to see the team incorporate some true sunshine and happiness into their day-to-day lives.

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Image via Paramount+

​​​​​​​Everything went as well as you could hope for, considering that Tara was shot twice, but the investigation of the shooting was a very twisty one with a few dead ends. The team is alerted shortly into the episode that Tara is being rushed to the hospital, and they immediately jump back into action to figure out why the network is now targeting the team specifically rather than continuing on the mission to bring Voit back to his killer identity. The first guess the team makes is that the garage shooting wasn’t actually the work of the network. J.J. (A.J. Cook) and Voit review the security footage and watch the shooter hesitate when he shoots Evan and then does not attempt to shoot Rebecca at all. This pivots the team to thinking that Evan actually arranged the shooting so that he could get Tara out of the way and have Rebecca for himself. That theory solidifies when Voit identifies the bullets used in the shooting as a calling card of “The Lonely Hearts Man,” an incel that he kicked off the network for jeopardizing Voit’s digital footprint. He carves hearts in the bullets he uses to shoot his victims, just like the bullets found at the crime scene. To make matters worse, Evan was the prosecutor who tried The Lonely Hearts Man, Bob Kinney, for his recent assault charge. Alvez (Adam Rodriguez) takes point on confronting Evan with the evidence, but the DOJ lawyer is hip to what the BAU is trying to do and immediately lawyers up. Prentiss then goes to Evan’s fiancée to ask if she’s ever encountered Bob Kinney before, and she reveals that the suspected shooter came by their house a couple of days prior. He went into their laundry room, and the team suspects that’s how he found Evan’s DNA to plant in the office of Voit’s lawyer, who the local police found executed in his office. Kinney’s arrival at Evan’s house takes the suspicion off the DOJ lawyer, but makes the team question what Voit’s lawyer must have found to connect Rebecca, Tara, and The Disciple. Voit theorizes that it must have something to do with his uncle Cyrus’s (Silas Weir Mitchell) last victim. Rebecca prosecuted the wrong man for that crime, and Voit believes something in those specific case files must indicate who The Disciple is, which is why he went through such lengths to kill Tara and make it seem like Evan was behind all of it. Unfortunately, Bob Kinney also turns up dead by the end of the episode, so the team can’t question him about who truly hired him for the shooting. They also can’t figure out what the connection is between the old case and Rebecca, despite Voit insisting that the connection has to be there. There are still a lot of burning questions going into next week’s episode, and the team does not seem to be any closer to catching Voit’s self-appointed replacement. Criminal Minds: Evolution continues with new episodes every Thursday on Paramount+.

Criminal Minds

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

Writers

Bruce Zimmerman, Virgil Williams, Edward Allen Bernero, Janine Sherman Barrois, Chris Mundy, Simon Mirren, Debra J. Fisher, Kimberly A. Harrison, Jay Beattie, Dan Dworkin, Karen Maser, Oanh Ly, Stephanie Sengupta, Aaron Zelman, Kirsten Vangsness, Erica Meredith, Andi Bushell, Holly Harold, Alicia Kirk, Jeff Davis, Randy Huggins, Edward Napier, Jayne A. Archer, Chikodili Agwuna

Pros & Cons

We spend some quality time with Tara and get to know her on a deeper level
One of the twistiest investigations we’ve had in a minute
We love the team getting a reason to celebrate milestones!

Why is no one listening to Voit when he’s been right about so much so far?
We should not have moved on from the idea The Disciple works at Melgren as quickly as we did