Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 2 Ending Explained: Does Emily Prentiss Survive?
The Gold Star storyline comes to an unexpected conclusion in the Criminal Minds season 17 finale.
This article contains spoilers for Criminal Minds: Evolution season 2 episode 10.
Criminal Minds: Evolution season 2 (also known as Criminal Minds season 17) has taken fans on a wild journey as TV’s favorite profilers try to figure out and eradicate the threat of “Gold Star.”
Throughout most of season two, the storyline focused on the characters Jade (Liana Liberato) and Damien (David Garelik) as they attempted to seek revenge on those who had abused them and were connected to Stuart House. This group included Jill Gideon (Felicity Huffman), the wife of Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), who Damien abducted in episode eight before he surrendered and signaled for Jade to kill him so he wouldn’t be locked up again.
The penultimate episode of Criminal Minds: Evolution season 2 was even more of a rollercoaster of unexpected plot twists. We discovered that neither Jade nor Damien were the actual threats. They were just members of a training camp for assassins run by Frank Church (Tuc Watkins), who had tricked them into believing he was getting rid of places like Stuart House and saving them but was actually doing the opposite. When Church realized his plan was failing, he got a new cohort, including a young girl called Mila, who helps Jade realize that Frank is not helping anyone at all. This leads Jade to set up an explosion in Aida House that could have changed the fate of the BAU forever.
Who Is The Last Gold Star?
The finale picks up right after the explosion that had us fearing for the BAU’s profilers. Fortunately, everyone survives. However, the tension doesn’t dissipate as Church and Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster) are kidnapped by Jade and the last remaining “Gold Star.”
Jade decides to try Prentiss and Church for their crimes. Jade charges Frank with the crime of pedophilia and asks him how he pleads. He attempts to argue that all he ever wanted was to save the children, and it was all Emily and her team, but before he can finish his defense, Jade executes him stating “guilty.”
Jade then turns to Emily and charges her with conspiracy to commit murder. Jade tries to get into Emily’s head, listing all the people Emily has been abducted and interrogated by: Benjamin Cyrus, Ian Doyle, and Peter Lewis, a.k.a. “Mr. Scratch.” However, Emily is a profiler and has studied Jade’s weak spots and reminds her that she has a right to see the evidence against her. If Jade doesn’t provide her with evidence, then Jade is just like the institutions she claims to hate so much.
While all this is happening, David Rossi (Joe Mantegna) visits Elias Voit (Zach Gilford) again, who has been moved to solitary confinement in a low-security prison under his birth name, Lee Duval. It’s here that Rossi pieces together the vital information the team needs to save Emily.
Since the beginning of season two, Emily has had a rough ride. She’s been arrested, released, suspended, reinstated, and now kidnapped. Rossi concludes that the common thread in all these events is that Prentiss has been stalked since Elias mentioned the words “Gold Star” to Doug Bailey. The puzzling part Rossi couldn’t understand until now is why Bailey went in alone to see Voit and why Voit killed him. Rossi reveals to Voit that he knows that “Pete B,” the last Gold Star, stands for Pete Bailey, the deceased deputy director of the FBI Doug Bailey’s younger brother. Rossi’s theory is confirmed as Prentiss watches videos Doug sent to his younger brother, and Pete accuses Prentiss of having Doug killed because he was a liability.
Penelope (Kirsten Vangsness) revealed that unlike many of the other Gold Stars, Pete could visit his family on the weekends. But when he did, he would often fall out with his family over his job “to separate child trafficking rings, especially among the elite.” When Doug pressed Pete on who the elite is, he would get cagey. This led to Doug never telling anyone about his brother, as having a conspiracy theorist for a brother was not a good look. However, he did tell the director of the FBI Ray Madison (Clark Gregg), which explains why the director was so determined to work with Elias to figure out this whole Gold Star case.
So why did Doug go to see Voit? Doug wanted to know if his brother was alive, and felt like Voit might get him some answers, but he was wrong.
Does Emily Prentiss Survive?
Voit’s lawyer, Vincent Orlov (Brian White) returns to Quantico with a deal for the FBI. He states that Voit will help them in exchange for being allowed to go into general population and an immunity deal for himself, so that he can’t be charged for any extra activities he had to participate in while being Voit’s lawyer.
The FBI director agrees to Voit’s terms and has him return to Quantico. There, Voit reveals that the reason Pete never responded to his brother’s videos was that some of the videos were deep fakes. This suggests that someone, probably Church, was editing out any messages they disapproved of. To help Pete know which videos were genuine, Voit created a special app called Silver Bullet for Pete which would uncover even the best deep fakes and tell you where the videos were being watched.
Jade finds Emily guilty but delays her sentence until the FBI arrive, as she and Pete have rigged the room with explosives. Luckily, when they arrive, Luke gets a gut feeling not to open the door. Rossi comes up with a backup plan to have Penelope use Pete’s projector to show the video of the Director interviewing Voit, where he plans out his excuse to tell everyone he was standing his ground when he killed Doug Bailey. Pete has Jade run the video through Silver Bullet and finds the footage is authentic. The video is enough to get Pete and Jade to surrender as Pete realizes Emily has been telling the truth all along and Voit is the real killer. Prentiss even convinces Jade not to shoot herself, stating that they need her to tell them about Damien and Stuart House.
What Happened to Gold Star?
It seems like the Gold Star operation has come to an end. All individuals involved with Stuart/Aida House have been either killed or captured and are awaiting sentencing.
Despite the FBI director pushing for life sentences for the pair, Emily argues that they’re also victims. Prentiss convinces the Director to allow Jade to see Mila, whom Jade rescued from going through an ordeal similar to her. Pete also gets to reunite with his family. The more hopeful conclusion suggests the potential for Pete and Jade to reappear in season three, aiding the FBI like Voit.
What Happens to Elias Voit?
The season closes with Tyler Green (Ryan-James Hatanaka) applying to Quantico, Rebecca (Nicole Pacent) and Tara (Aisha Tyler) getting back together, and Gold Star exiting their lives, although Rossi still hallucinates Voit.
Voit’s ending hints that this may not be the last we see of Voit, as he’s attacked by two other prisoners in the laundry room, who have discovered he’s the serial killer Elias Voit. Maybe he will be making another deal to go back into solitary confinement in the already confirmed season three.
All episodes of Criminal Minds: Evolution season 2 are available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S. and Disney+ in the U.K.
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Liv Facey is a freelance multimedia journalist and producer. She enjoys watching different genres of TV and has bylines in a range of publications including The…