Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 3 Episode 1.
The BAU is back in a new season of Criminal Minds: Evolution that picks up six months after the events of the last, with the team still forced to work with Elias Voit’s (Zach Gilford) to track down the rest of his serial killer network.
Things start with a new unsub (Sam O’Byrne), who trolls a bar parking lot for his new victim. He hits his newest target with a disorienting spray, but is interrupted when a patrolling police car comes through. The unsub knocks out his victim with his boot and then tells the police officer it’s his junkie brother that he just wants to get home before their parents find out they’re missing. The cop helps the unsub get his victim into the car, and the unlucky guy becomes the newest serial killer’s fifth victim.
His MO involves stabbing his victims up and down their ribcage and then dumping them in the ocean so their bodies will fill up with salt water and then sink. Unfortunately, a group of teens partying at the beach finds the latest victim. The BAU – with official trainee Tyler Green (RJ Hatanaka) in tow – arrives and confirms who the body belongs to, and the games officially begin.
An Unsub Treads Water in the ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Season 3 Premiere

Image via Paramount+

The coroner’s report from the intro victim reveals that the unsub is actually drowning his victims in a pool before taking them to the ocean. The unsub needs complete control over the death, and the coroner’s report implies that the victims are kept in that pool for hours. That signals to the team that the unsub is using a pool in his own backyard, custom-made to be deep enough on all sides to force his victims to tread water for an extended period of time. Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness) also comes in with the helpful tip that the unsub is finding his victims through a beach rental site. The team rounds up temp rental lobbyists and pleaded for help in finding their unsub because he likely worked for one of the websites or one of the third parties they sold their data to. Alvez (Adam Rodriguez) and Green spot a former veteran in the crowd of lobbyists and use their own active duty experience to convince him to help them get the information they needed.
The team needs a big break in the case — and fast — because the unsub escalates while the BAU investigates. He moves on to kidnapping a family of three and shoots the dad at close range when they refuse to get in the pool, leaving the mom and daughter at his mercy. The mom must have been some sort of survival coach or swimming instructor because she insists she and her daughter strip down so they aren’t weighed down by their clothes, which will conserve their energy. She understands the game immediately and comes prepared to save her and her daughter.

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“They have a loss, but they’re creating loss.”

The victims miscalculate when the daughter tries to escape from the pool while our unsub takes a drag from his inhaler. He is so pissed off at the escape attempt that he rolls the dad’s corpse into the pool and then closes the cover, forcing mother and daughter to tread water with only six inches of space between the cover and the surface. Luckily, Garcia is able to get into the beach rental website and figure out where the first victims were actually from – Chesapeake. That gives them the unsub’s backyard. She cross-references custom pools with drowning incidents in the area and lands on Franklin Fowler, a young man whose entire family drowned when he was ten years old. The team rushes to Franklin’s address and are able to save the mom and daughter just in time, but not before Franklin kills himself with the ominous warning that it was “part of the plan all along.”
Elias Voit Is Back in Business in ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Season 3 Episode 1

Image via Paramount+

Surprise, surprise, Elias Voit is able to survive his attack in a minimum-security prison despite being stabbed three times. Rossi (Joe Mantegna) is still being subjected to regular OPR (FBI internal affairs) interviews to determine if he arranged the attack. The senior investigator continues his staunch refusal of involvement, but OPR comes into possession of a recording where Rossi told Elias he’d be attacked if he went into gen-pop at the prison. Rossi claims he was just connecting the dots, but OPR is not impressed. Meanwhile, Elias remains in a coma at Melgren Medical Center, where Garcia visits him regularly. Prentiss (Paget Brewster) also makes an appearance in the premiere and reveals that the latest imaging of Elias’ brain shows significant scarring going back decades. He should have been showing signs of concussion syndrome like a retired football player instead of running a network of serial killers.
Prentiss convinces Rossi to go over the incident report of Elias’ attack one more time to see if they can figure out anything together that would help clear him with OPR. They run through the report and come up with a hypothesis that Elias had another weapon stored in the laundry room where he was attacked, which implies that he knew the attack was coming all along. Rossi goes back to the laundry room and is able to find the weapon that Elias used, which gives him some goodwill with OPR. However, Prentiss has to reveal what the latest unsub said at the scene. She and Rossi both conclude that somehow, Elias is behind a new ring of serial killers. They figure it out just in time for Elias to wake up from his coma and start strangling his night nurse for the premiere cliffhanger. Elias is back in business, and the team needs to once again figure out how he’s been playing maestro this entire time.
Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 3 continues with new episodes every Thursday on Paramount+.

Criminal Minds

A water-phobic unsub kicks off the new season of Criminal Minds: Evolution.

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

This killer is on the more ruthless side of things.
Garcia and Alvez flirting is always a thrill.
We love when victims get a chance to survive.

Elias is in a coma for 99% of the episode.
Are we not going to see Tyler anymore now that he’s been assigned?