Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 3 Episode 3.Anyone who thought that last week’s Criminal Minds: Evolution episode was a gut punch should have known that this week was going to hurt even more. “Time to Say Goodbye” takes the team out of the BAU and sends them to the cemetery to get J.J. (AJ Cook) through Will’s (Josh Stewart) funeral after he unexpectedly died of an aneurysm at the end of the last episode.
J.J. struggles to adapt to her new reality without a husband while trying to keep it together for her two boys. That impossible mission is made even harder by Will’s mom, Connie (Linda Lavin), who seems to find fault in everything that J.J. does when it comes to taking care of the boys in Will’s absence. J.J. has the full support of her team, including Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), who makes a special appearance at the funeral to be there for his best friend and godsons.
While the team is committed to being there for J.J., there is still the Voit (Zach Gilford) business to handle. The team struggles to get more information out of Voit about the remaining fragments of his network due to his amnesia. They are walking a tightrope between needing him to remember, but also fearful that unlocking those memories could bring Voit back to his full serial killer potential. They have to bring in outside help to approach Voit from a new angle, and it comes with surprising results.
J.J. Deals With Her Mother-in-Law’s Problems Before Will’s Funeral

Criminal Minds often requires fans to avoid eating before watching an episode or emotionally prepare for terrifying unsubs, but it’s not often you need a box of tissues for an episode of the crime drama. “Time to Say Goodbye” came with multiple crying alerts as the team rallies around J.J. in her time of need.
The first obstacle to burying Will is his mother, Connie, who comes to stay with J.J. to help prepare for the funeral. Everyone at the LaMontagne household is looking for the birthday gift Will got for their youngest son Michael, to no avail, and Connie wastes no time in making J.J. feel like crap for not knowing what her husband got their son, so they’d at least know what they were looking for. Connie also doesn’t like how J.J. doesn’t force the boys to eat the breakfast that Connie had made them. Then Connie really loses it when she discovers that Will had a cancer scare, but he never told his mother about it before he died.
The tension boils over when Connie has the nerve to tell J.J. that losing her husband wasn’t the same as losing a child, and J.J. couldn’t truly understand unless one of the boys had an aneurysm and didn’t wake up. J.J. is shocked that Connie would say such a distasteful statement, but when J.J. calls her out for her shocking rudeness, Connie slaps her daughter-in-law across the face. Prentiss (Paget Brewster) and Penelope (Kirsten Vangsness) were definitely not prepared for that level of drama.
The fight leads to Connie refusing to go to the funeral until Rossi (Joe Mantegna) steps in and urges her not to add another loss – J.J. and the boys – to the loss of her son. She will regret it for the rest of her days if she misses this opportunity to be there for her family. She comes around just in time to hear J.J. give a tearful speech to everyone at the service about how she should have known that something was off with Will the morning he died. She apologizes through sobs to her boys that she couldn’t save their father and had the entire church in tears.
The BAU Welcomes Back Spencer Reid for Will’s Funeral

Image via Paramount+

Luckily, J.J. had her pal Spencer Reid to lean on during the rough ceremony (Hotch and Derek also scored mentions because they sent flowers). Spencer’s supervisor used to work with J.J. at the State Department and gave him the morning off so that he could be there for his friend. Gubler is featured in multiple scenes, but he only has one line of dialogue throughout the entire episode: “I’ll always be there for you guys.” He hugs the team and stands with J.J. at Will’s graveside, but he never sets foot in the BAU office, let alone looks at the Voit unsub board to offer his expert opinion. If this was truly the only bit of Spencer Reid fans get for the rest of the season, it was a disappointing flash in the pan.
Don’t get me wrong, it is essential for Spencer to be there for J.J. at this moment. Those two have always had an intensely close bond, and it would have been incredibly out of character for Spencer to be absent from this life-changing moment in J.J.’s life. However, as a fan of the show, not getting to see Spencer solve even a piece of the crime felt like being a vegan at a steakhouse. We missed out, man!
On the bright side, Connie calms down and offers to come visit more to help J.J. with the boys. Rossi tells J.J. to continue feeling her feelings so that the boys will know it was okay to feel theirs (and there’s tear-up trigger number two). Henry also ends up finding Michael’s gift. It was a handmade LaMontagne guide to life with instructions on how to fish and make Will’s famous frittata with hash browns. Will left his boys a huge piece of himself as a parting gift so they could carry a piece of him going forward (yet another sob trigger).

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There was no case of the week in the episode because of the funeral, but there is still Voit business to attend to. The BAU hit a wall when it comes to tracking down more of the unsub network, and they need to trigger more of Voit’s memories. Rossi has stepped in to play dad, and it is effective in getting Voit to open up, but they aren’t getting any new information. So, they turn to Ramona (Kerry Knuppe), the lone survivor of Voit’s serial killing. They believe that if she faces Voit without telling him who she is, it might trigger memories or details that can help the BAU get another piece of the puzzle. Ramona obviously has some intense reservations about the plan because she is normal, but Alvez (Adam Rodriguez) manages to convince her to help out.
She comes to Melgren as a “friend” of Lewis (Aisha Tyler) who just wants to observe Voit. He recognizes her but doesn’t know from where. The recognition freaks Ramona out, and she has to take a second before she is willing to face him again. The second attempt leads to a longer sit-down where Ramona triggers memories of his wife, because Voit forced Ramona to roleplay as his wife when he kidnapped her so he could figure out how to tell his wife about the serial killer network.
The trigger of the memories is enough for the team. It puts Voit in a very vulnerable position, though, because he is confused about why his wife and daughters haven’t come to visit him. He wants to see them, and Rossi tells him in no uncertain terms that that would never happen. Voit originally thought they were dead, but then he realizes that he is handcuffed to his bed, not because Lewis and Rossi are trying to protect him, but because they are trying to protect everyone else from him.
Gilford laid down an incredible performance as Voit collapses into sobs while grasping Rossi’s hand over the revelation. If all of this is fake, Voit should have considered going to Juilliard instead of building a serial killer tech network. We’ll have to see how Voit continues to process the realization that he’s a dangerous man and how the team can manipulate that into tracking down the rest of the killers from the network.
Criminal Minds: Evolution continues with new episodes on Thursdays on Paramount+.

Criminal Minds

Spencer Reid returns for an emotional goodbye to Will LaMontagne

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

Kirsten Vangsness

Penelope Garcia

A.J. Cook

Jennifer Jareau

Pros & Cons

Absolutely incredible performance by A.J. Cook
Gilford was also on his A-game in this episode
Okay, at least we got to SEE Spencer

Only one line of dialogue from Reid???
It’s not clear what Voit’s triggered memories actually give the team