Criminal Minds Revival's Biggest Victim So Far is One Of Its Own
It is heartbreaking to watch Penelope Garcia return to her old office in the BAU headquarters in Quantico.
Criminal Minds: Evolution revived the beloved team of profilers after an almost three-year hiatus. The reboot came with some changes partly due to the transition to Paramount+, partly because the creators wanted to spice things up.
One of the biggest alterations is the introduction of a season's Big Bad instead of the "one episode, one unsub" approach. This helped the creators develop a complex and dangerous villain and make things extremely difficult for the unit.
According to the plot, the unsub Elias Voit is a long-time serial killer who is so proficient in all aspects of his bloody craft that during the COVID-19 pandemic he decided to make life more interesting and created a network of serial killers.
Naturally, the network has killed many people all over the country, but it influenced the lives of the beloved protagonists as well.
One of Evolution's biggest victims is ironically not someone killed by serial killers but the BAU's own tech genius Penelope Garcia.
The character played by Kirsten Vangsness has left the BAU in CBS's Criminal Minds finale. She explained at the time that all the darkness of the job started to consume her and it was time to prioritize self-care over taking down one serial killer after the other in an endless circle.
The revival finds Penelope in a good state of mind. She has taken a job building a secure social network for teenagers and tells Rossi that she was one of the people who thrived during the COVID-19 pandemic break. Indeed, one of the new episodes shows Garcia embracing a healthier and slower lifestyle with daily meditation and physical routine.
This bright, almost frivolous scene makes Garcia's comeback to the BAU even more tragic.
The tech genius has to return to work on Voit's case after her own social network is infiltrated by Voit's group and then a secret informant contacts her and doesn't seem willing to cooperate with anybody else. The scene at the end of Episode 2 featuring Garcia returning to her dusty office through tears and finding a note she left for a new employee three years ago is hard to watch.
The fan-favorite character wants to put herself first but has no other options except embracing the chaos once again.