CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION Post-Mortem: Kirsten Vangsness and Paget Brewster Reflect on the Show’s Big Loss

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Thursday, May 15 episode of CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION.]

“He’s gone. Will’s dead.”

After the Thursday, May 15 episode of CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION delivered one heck of a creepy UnSub, the drama was far from over once JJ (A.J. Cook) got home.

JJ and her husband, Will (Josh Stewart), were chatting in the kitchen and he noted he felt “weird.” At first, she thought it was a migraine and offered him some caffeine, but she quickly realized something else was going on.

“Will, are you okay?” she asked.

He tried replying and collapsed and she placed a call for help. The whole BAU team was informed and went to support their friend at the hospital. But JJ came out to inform them that Will—who experienced a rare aneurysm—didn’t make it. 

“I think that the way that JJ processes feelings…obviously, they’re very, very close,”  Kirsten Vangsness tells Give Me My Remote of how Garcia will support JJ going forward. “The way Garcia expresses it’s almost like a sign of love to be like, ‘I am not going to come and wrap my arms around you and pet your head, because that is gonna make you crumble and you are not going to be, for the foreseeable future, in any position where you can do that. At all.’” 

“So I think that there’s almost—out of total love and totally like ‘I’ve got you. I love you.’—a distance,” she continues. “Like, ‘I need to give you space and let the people who are a little more guarded like you are love on you.’ I feel like the show has set that up really beautifully in the way that happens and how things unfold.”

Off-screen, it’s another loss for the cast, too. “We’ve had a lot of sadness in terms of team people that come in and that leave,” Vangsness notes. “And, from a show standpoint, I’m heartened that there is such a thing as reruns. [But] I think it’s super sad. And [JJ] is a flawed character. So she can compartmentalize like nobody’s business. And they’re all workaholics. And I think that that’s how they all handle their trauma, for better, for worse. We wouldn’t have a show if they didn’t. So that’s good.”

While acknowledging the loss will be very difficult on JJ, Paget Brewster (who plays Prentiss) also gushes about how well the writers handled the tough subject matter. “That storyline, though, is about how we support JJ when she doesn’t want our support,” she says. “She thinks she’s got it. She knows what she’s doing. She wants to stay tough. She has to report to work. And she won’t let herself crack and grieve and suffer. But it’s required in order to get better. So wait ‘til you see what happens. I can’t even tell you; it’s so good. Episodes that are coming up, I couldn’t be more proud. I can’t tell you what’s coming, but I think our fans are gonna love it.”

CRIMINAL MINDS: EVOLUTION, Thursdays, Paramount+

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