Fan Forum - View Single Post - Episodes Discussion, Season Finale 8x23 & 8x24 ~ Brothers Hotchner

Logan · 05-24-2013, 08:23 AM

Thisi s the only place i can post this, Showrunner Erica Messer talks the story behind the finale and what might be in story for Season 9

Quote:

[SPOILER ALERT: The following story contains spoilers about the Season 8 finale of Criminal Minds. Read at your own risk.

So it was Luke Skywalker after all.

Criminal Minds' season-long unsub/stalker The Replicator was finally unmasked on Wednesday's two-hour finale as Mark Hamill's federal agent/biochemistry nut John Curtis. At the end of the first hour, Curtis breaks into Strauss' (Jayne Atkinson) hotel room, after which he forces the recovering alcoholic to drink before drugging her with "Doctor Death," the meth/ecstasy mix at the center of the case the BAU had just solved. He lets Strauss wander the New York streets, where the section chief dies on a bench in the arms of Hotch (Thomas Gibson) — not her BAU-member-with-benefits Rossi (Joe Mantegna).

So who is John Curtis anyway? And why was he targeting the BAU? It turns out Curtis worked in the Department of Justice, which receives the team's case reports, and like Blake (Jeanne Tripplehorn), he was screwed over by Strauss when they had to take the fall for a mishap in the Amerithrax case 12 years ago. Needless to say, he did not take it well that Blake managed to join the BAU all these years later. Strauss had actually been investigating The Replicator rogue after having told the team that the case was dormant in the 16th episode. Believing that The Replicator was on the inside, she doctored the team's case report from last week, listing a fake M.O. that The Replicator used on Strauss.

After kidnapping Blake when the BAU's chopper was forced to crash-land on his property, Curtis planned to kill the whole team via a bomb in his house, but Rossi — whom Curtis had drugged earlier to lead him to believe that Morgan (Shemar Moore) was The Replicator — instead locks Curtis in the booby-trapped room and escapes the room by using Strauss' sobriety chip as a wedge in the lock. The house explodes ... but we never see Curtis' body.

So is The Replicator really dead? And why did Strauss have to die? Showrunner and executive producer Erica Messer answers our burning questions.

Criminal Minds - Season 9 - Erica Messer Interview | Spoilers

Is The Replicator dead? When there's no body...
Erica Messer: I wanted to leave that as our option creatively. My guess is he's gone. But I specifically didn't want to do that in case in Season 9 we say, "Well, you know..." [Laughs] I wanted to leave that up in the air until we decide in the writers' room next month. Even all the actors said, "We don't see his body." By keeping that open-ended, it will keep a beat in the season premiere where we can show photos from the scene or say he's dead. It'll be a nice starting point for us.

Strauss is obviously gone.
Erica Messer: Yeah, I had a hard time with that. I've known Jayne for so long and I had to really separate knowing Jayne and the creative place we were with Strauss. It's hard for the team to have an enemy like The Replicator, and for him to not do any damage just didn't seem right. Strauss seemed like the one who had to go, which makes me sad, but it made sense, story-wise. She was our sacrificial lamb. She was introduced as an enemy of the team and by this year she was so on our side.

read the rest with the link above ..