Justin Kirk Is The Fan

After glimpses of him — and reading and hearing his words (including through Connor Storrie’s Lance) throughout the season, Criminal Minds: Evolution finally brings The Fan face-to-face with serial killer Elias Voit (Zach Gilford), and the casting? Well, we love it. Those two actors together are so good. Plus, “The Furies” deals with the fallout of Garcia’s (Kirsten Vangsness) confession that she, due to a closed-door testimony about how his brain trauma did change him, is the reason that Voit got a life sentence and not the death penalty. Warning: Spoilers for Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 19 Episode 7 ahead!

Justin Kirk‘s character goes to see Voit as Joshua Ryan, cousin of one of his victims, Deena, from her father’s side (her mother already visited the killer), or so he says. But all it takes is him saying, “I came here to understand you,” and Voit watching the way he’s moving his hands, seemingly signaling something, for it to become very clear that he is The Fan. “Joshua” confesses that after Deena disappeared, he became engrossed in the details of the investigation, and when the case ran cold, he looked at other unsolved crimes, enrolled in night school, took classes in criminal justice, forensics, and sociology, and got his PhD in criminology. Voit invites him to return the next day, “because I said so.”

Voit then “talks” it through with the Rossi he’s hallucinating in his cell. Voit plans to get Joshua to trust him enough to tell him/her he’s keeping the “souvenirs” of his kills. He can tell the other man is like him — deep down, lonely, and wants to share.

He’s right, because Joshua does return. Their conversation soon turns to the BAU and Rossi, with Voit bringing up the agent’s poker theory. He posits that serial killers are the worst poker players because when they’re in high-stakes, all-in pressure situations and forced to bluff, they can’t; they have a tell, because they can’t accept that they don’t hold all the cards. Joshua likens it to the fact that there’s no such thing as a perfect crime, that as soon as a criminal thinks he’s gotten away with it, he has to tell somebody. (Gilford and Kirk together? Good.) Voit remarks that he doesn’t strike him as the kind of reckless person who would come in under his real name (Kirk’s character is named James Crowley, though it’s not yet said in the show). “You must call me God,” the other man (finally) says. Voit tells him he can help make him a god.

And so Joshua comes back a third time, but this time, Voit’s not the one in control. Joshua tells him that since he was a child, he was able to resist his urges — until Deena vanished. He knew she’d been murdered and was jealous that someone else did what he had fantasized about. And so he began to study real killers and stalk real victims, breaking into homes while the young women were away, then standing over them while they slept.

Voit thinks he can’t help but show off and can’t accept that he doesn’t hold all the cards. Joshua realizes he does think he’s pathetic, and Voit explains he needs to walk before he can run, meaning he needs to stop being a reflection of him and be himself. Joshua then shows him a photo that startles Voit and remarks he’s a better poker player than he thought and does hold all the cards. Voit warns him that he’ll kill him, but, “now who’s pathetic?” Joshua asks and walks away. Does anyone else think that photo is of Voit’s family?

Elsewhere in the episode, Garcia tries to talk to Rossi, who argues about justice for the families of Voit’s victims. She then says the two words she later admits she knows she shouldn’t have: Donnie Mallick (Arye Gross). As she and Prentiss (Paget Brewster) explain to Tyler (RJ Hatanaka), he’s the man who murdered Rossi’s old partner, Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), and whom the agent shot and killed; Donnie died with a gun in his hand, but it looked like he had put it down and been ordered to pick it back up. Prentiss stresses that Rossi was cleared.

During the case of the week, Prentiss forces Garcia and Rossi to work together. Rossi argues that if he didn’t shoot Donnie, he’d be dead, so what he did and what she did are categorically different. But as Garcia sees it, Donnie killed girls and Gideon, and in Rossi’s mind, if he went to prison, he’d become a legend, so he was better dead than incarcerated — even though that meant that Gideon’s family didn’t get justice, just like he says her testimony prevented Voit’s victims’ families from getting.

Michael Yarish / Paramount+

The right kind of justice is brought up again in relation to the case, with Garcia the one to talk down the UnSubs, two women who had been raped by The Furies, a group of dirty deputies, and take the sheriff hostage because they want the recording. Shooting everyone won’t make what happened to them go away, Garcia says, but they can hold them accountable. It works and they find the hard drive with the recording.

On the way back on the jet, Rossi assures Garcia that they weren’t fighting, just figuring things out, like people who love each other do. He makes sure that she doesn’t think anyone could ever come between them. She also apologizes for keeping it a secret and not telling him from the start.

What did you think of The Fan reveal? Let us know in the comments section below.

Criminal Minds: Evolution, Thursdays, Paramount+