Criminal Minds: Evolution is back for Season 2, and it’s complicating things for the BAU in some very compelling (and dangerous) ways. Building off the events of Season 1, the team finds themselves forced to work with Zach Gilford’s Elias Voit. Although the killer was captured at the end of the previous season, the mysteries surrounding something only known as Gold Star has caught the attention of their superiors.

Now, the team has to juggle active investigations while trying to find a way to ensure Voit doesn’t use the situation to his advantage. During an interview with TVBrittanyF, Criminal Minds: Evolution Executive Producer Erica Messer delved into the driving inspiration for season 2, how Voit’s role in the show expanded, and the biggest surprises she discovered during the course of production.

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Was this always the direction of the second season?

Yeah. It all started at the end of last season, actually. We knew that Voit needed to make a big impact. He’d already made a huge impact on the team, having been this killer that was active for years and years without us ever knowing. But then by the end of the season, when he killed Doug Bailey… that’s where it started. Because Voight said to Bailey, “You’re the guy who always wants the gold star.” That made Bailey go all the way to California, and insist on going in there by himself. So what the heck is this Goldstar? Why is it so important?

We knew at the end of last season it was going to become the big thing for this season. In doing so, it really just gave the team this opportunity to sort of be at odds sometimes. You Rossi and Prentiss arguing. “I don’t think this is our guy, I think it is this guy, because I need it to be our guy. Because we need to end this right now.” It’s rare that our team isn’t in agreement. I think it’s just the very nature of Voit. Being in his presence makes everybody on edge and changes the game just enough.

This season, Voit is in an interesting position, effectively acting as their personal Hannibal Lecter. What excited you about forcing that dynamic onto the team?

Yeah, you’re right. We’re always looking to challenge ourselves. Especially with Evolution, we can do anything. We’ve got 10 episodes to do it. How do we want to build on what everybody knows and loves about Criminal Minds. What have we never done before? It’s been a lot of episodes! 344 by the time we wrap this season. That’s a lot of hours of television. So what have we never done? We’ve never done this. We’ve never had to consult with a serial killer the way that we’re doing with [Voit] this year.

I’ve got to hand it to Zack, he’s so good as Voit. He’s a liar, a manipulator and a killer. You can’t believe a word he says. And yet, he’s still very effective. Because what he says has enough truth in it, that it does make you scratch your head. But you can’t take everything he says — you can’t put too much meaning behind everything he says. So his greatest weapon this season is his mind. Arguably that’s been the case the whole time. This season he’s literally behind bars. And he’s still puts us at unease. He really is reflective of the title.

The team is mad at themselves for letting him be that. He’s locked up. He shouldn’t feel any sense of control at all. And yet he has it and he’s getting it and we’re giving it to him… as the season unfolds, you’ll learn the reasons for all of that. It is a really frustrating position for [the characters] to start the season, yet also it’s creatively really exciting because we’ve never been able to tackle anything quite like this before.

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What surprised you the most with this new season?

I feel like we definitely pivoted more toward the end of the season. I really thought it would be Hannibal Lecter… we enjoyed having this conflict so much that we were like, ‘No, we have to keep him around.’ So that was a big change. He ends up being having a little more knowledge of of Goldstar than we initially thought he would. I think in terms of the team, we knew we wanted to play Rossi’s trauma from having been abducted. But we didn’t intend to go as far as we went with it. By the time episode six rolls around, he’s really in a big crisis and having delusions and not doing well at all.

We didn’t see that coming. That was really Joe bringing it, how affected he was by Voit. He didn’t see him in person, but he was having these visions of him. We purposely didn’t have him see [Voit] in the flesh until episode five. Once we did that, we really knew where we were going for the rest of the season with him. Then with Prentiss, she goes down the rabbit hole a little bit in terms of… “I need to solve what this gold star mystery. We need to solve it, because solving that figures out why Bailey got killed?” Paget brings so much to Prentiss. When you look from episode one to 10, it’s really Prentiss’ journey this season. She’s sort of working on her own initially, which is not like her. She always brings the team in. Where she ends up going by the end of the season, all kinds of things happen. It’s great.

Criminal Minds: Evolution is now streaming on Paramount+.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.