Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 3 Episode 4.The BAU is back in action this week after an emotional Criminal Minds: Evolution last week. The case of the week takes Prentiss (Paget Brewster), Alvez (Adam Rodriguez), and Green (Ryan-James Hanataka) to Arizona when the Tuscon PD reports finding a second unidentified body off a desert road. Both bodies of the victims are beheaded, skinned, and missing organs. The unsubs also add a Scorpion logo to the bodies, but the team is quickly able to deduce that these aren’t cartel killings. The women are targeted by people with medical training – likely EMTs – and then have their organs harvested for profit. Why take our time getting back into the groove after Will’s (Josh Stewart) death when we can go straight to horrific? While that trio is in Arizona, Lewis (Aisha Tyler) and Rossi (Joe Mantegna) continue pressing Voit (Zach Gilford) for answers about his resurging network of serial killers. Unfortunately, he’s on a new drug that triggers migraines when Lewis and Rossi start getting close to answers. They’re even more anxious about discovering Voit’s network when J.J. (A.J. Cook) returns to the office with a video she finds posted on the BAU Gate website of an unsub breaking into an unknown house for a kill. It is absolute nightmare fuel and not what J.J. should be focused on when her husband just died, but she’s having trouble thinking about anything else, so Prentiss allows her to work with Garcia to try and find answers. The answers lead to a shocking conclusion and the start of a scary journey for J.J. as Criminal Minds: Evolution continues.
A Personal Motive Comes With the Unsub of the Week

Image via Paramount+

​​​​​​​Alvez hypothesizes there is a racial component to the Tuscon murders, and he’s kind of correct. The unsub is Dr. Malcolm Ramsey (Derek Webster), who is harvesting skin grafts for his daughter who has third-degree burns over the majority of her body. His partner harvests the organs for money, but the doctor is trying to heal his daughter. The sickening fact is that it takes a third victim for Prentiss and the boys to start piecing together the dual motive. Metal shavings are found on the body that could potentially give the geography of where the unsubs are hiding. The shavings lead to the organ harvesting lab but not directly to the unsubs. The head of the lab gives Green and Alvez the name “Brad,” and Garcia is able to track down a troubled former EMT who was fired from his private emergency services job for stealing supplies. The cops go to Brad’s old apartment, which scares him out of wanting to go for more victims. Dr. Ramsey is too close to finding a match for his daughter and convinces Brad to go for one more kill. Too bad for Brad, Ramsey’s next kill is his partner. He kills the EMT and leaves his body in the rig out in the desert for the team to find. They discover it just as Green comes with a profile for Ramsey, and they discover that his wife died in a car accident that he caused. That’s also how his daughter, Ariel (Tayler Buck), got her third-degree burns and why he is going to such lengths to fix her. Ariel is getting restless from all of the surgeries and being stuck in isolation. Her father convinces her that she’s in a legitimate hospital and she’s being kept alone because of her autoimmune disease. She eventually leaves her bed and goes looking for answers, and discovers her father is about to skin his latest victim. She questions him until the FBI arrives for the arrest, but Dr. Ramsey isn’t about to let the victim go. He’s about to cut into her when Ariel takes a scalpel and stabs him in the jugular. The doctor dies within seconds, and then Ariel collapses because her auto-immune disease takes over. She asks Green to take her outside to see the stars one more time, but it’s yet another case that ends in death rather than arrest or justice.
Voit Has a Big Breakthrough, but It Leads J.J. Down a Dark Path

Back in D.C., Rossi and Lewis show Voit the video that J.J. brought to them, and it triggers nightmares of him being on a hospital table and the masked unsub drilling into his head. Lewis and Rossi are convinced that it is Voit’s subconscious trying to give him the answers they need so they convince his doctor (Aimee Garcia) to let them run a series of Rorschach tests to help bring the memories to the surface. It works on the second attempt. Voit has a legitimate memory of himself drilling into a victim’s head – and liking it. The memory disturbs him, but also confirms that he’s a killer, and that’s why he has to sleep in handcuffs and have armed guards at his door. He’s not being protected; other people are being protected from him. Remembering a kill is a big breakthrough for Voit, but it is also a traumatizing one, and his doctor refuses to let Lewis and Rossi push him further after it. J.J. is not interested in the doctor’s orders, though, once she realizes that it’s Voit in the video. He must have pre-recorded it and then had someone upload it to the website. She rushes to the hospital to ask him about it only to discover that he’s overdosing on the medication his doctor was giving him. He’s revived and J.J. threatens him, which is exactly why Prentiss didn’t want her visiting Voit so soon after Will’s death. J.J. insists that she’s fine, but it’s clear that she’s not and is preparing to embark on a dark path to bring Voit down and shut down his network once and for all. Criminal Minds: Evolution continues with new episodes every Thursday on Paramount+.

Criminal Minds

The team hunts organ harvesters in Arizona while Voit has a breakthrough

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

Dark J.J. is going to be a LOT of fun going forward
Zach Gilford continues to hand in incredible performances
Voit remembering he’s a killer should move the memory storyline along

Finally an unsub outside of Voit’s network and he’s still killed before taken into custody?
This was definitely on the grosser side for unsub MOs
The case overall was a massive bummer