By: Mariah Thomas
Voit (Zach Gilford) is in full Sicarius play mode as he talks to “The Brutal Man” – Ronald Graber (Winter Andrews). As the pair talk, Voit regains more memories of his past interactions with him. Graber’s mother and sister were killed by Voit and he later recruited Graber. Until this moment Graber thought his family abandoned him – not knowing they were murdered. This struck his origin story as a family annihilator killer. Voit continues to taunt Graber to hurry and gives him his message, “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” Voit smirks and walks up to the two way mirror before telling the team “you might want to grab him” as Graber bangs his head into the table repeatedly.
The team discuss what they just learned in this interview. Seeing Voit act in the Sicarius role raises concern. How much is he remembering and is that changing him? Dr. Ochoa (Aimee Garcia) leads him into a private room to check his mental state as he appears to be in shock. From Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness) we learn Graber’s message is actually a Shakespeare quote from The Tempest Act ii. Tyler Green (RJ Hatakana) points out, “Act two and this is round two with the network.”
Rossi (Joe Mantegna) offers his office for Voit to lay down as he works through what new memories stir up. JJ (AJ Cook) heads to join the rest of the team as Voit softly asks Rossi to stay with him. Dr. Ochoa intends to show him photos of the recent case to track his brain’s reaction. The team receives a live feed of the images Voit is seeing paired with his brain scan in real time. His empathy levels are still intact, leading them to believe the monster they knew isn’t back. “I think he’s far too broken to be anything but himself,” Garcia reminds the team as they discuss the validity of the test.
As the team decides to call it a night, Rebecca (Nicole Pacent) comes in to inform the team that Voit’s new lawyer has placed protections that may stop the BAU from interacting with him. They realize they need a new strategy for how they engage when Tyler offers to speak with him. Voit instantly remembered Tyler’s sister, who was one of his victims, upon seeing Tyler in the BAU. Garcia refuses to let him go at it alone knowing Tyler may harbor resentment towards Voit when they need to approach with empathy.
Our first glimpse of the case in this episode is a woman who appears to have been buried alive. Claire (Carly Christopher) is able to locate her phone and call for help. As she is on the phone with the 911 operator, dirt begins to fall into the box she is in and Claire accepts her fate. She hangs up with the operator and calls her ex husband (Vinny Chhibber) to speak to her daughter (Ariana Elavia) one last time. Not understanding the seriousness of her situation, he urges her to call when she is done with her homework and refuses to put her on. As he hangs up, the top of the coffin caves him.
JJ Calls Prentiss (Paget Brewster), Luke (Adam Rodriquez) and Rossi in with a theory. Notably, when they capture one unsub tied to the network, another is activated. With ‘The Brutal Man’ in custody, they realize they have someone new to worry about. Soon, JJ gets the police report about Claire and brings the information to the team. Prentiss sends Luke and Rossi to the scene and has Tara (Aisha Tyler) and JJ focus on handling Claire’s phone call.
Rebecca and Tara run into an old friend of Rebecca’s named Evan Delray (Geoff Stults). Rebecca is shyly squeamish as Evan appears to be excited to see her again. Once he leaves, Tara lovingly teases Rebecca for the encounter. Later, Evan and Rebecca run into each other again. He invites her over for dinner and she reveals she and Tara are together. Evan quickly extends the invitation to Tara who is watching the interaction from afar with a scowl on her face.
Before letting Tyler in the room with Voit, we see Garcia check in with him. Not only is Voit different, but so is Tyler as he is part of the team now. Once the pair walk in Voit is confused with Garcia’s presence leading her to do a “guilt trip speed round.” She asks a series of questions, “Did you comprise my app that I spent years building? Did you plant kill kits all over the country, which forced me to go back to working at the FBI? Did you absolutely funk-ify my workspace at Quantico so hard that I set off the fire alarm twice at the FBI trying to sage it away?” Voit quickly says, “Uh, yes to all of that.” Tyler then prompts Voit to see what he remembers about the others on his network. To give them something to do, Garcia brought in Graber’s hard drive for herself, Voit and Tyler to work on as they talk through what Voit remembers. Voit reveals the origin to the network he created. In summary, he was bored during the pandemic and at a sour point in his marriage. He describes the network as a “support group.” As they continued working, Voit was able to discover a way to hack into the new network. However, it would require Garcia to use her high end equipment in order to do so. She is hesitant as it deals with the dark web. Tyler barges in to question Voit about Claire. Voit had Tyler’s sister call him to say goodbye. So, it is clear there is a connection as Claire tried to call her daughter. Voit and Tyler finally talk through all of the built up tension. Voit reveals he shortly dated Tyler’s sister prior to her death. He allowed Allison to call Tyler because she knew her son would be safe if she heard her brother’s voice.
Luke and Rossi visit the new crime scene and profile what they see. The coffin Claire was buried in was pre-rigged to blow up with the push of a button. The unsub was able to remotely trigger the explosion. He doesn’t get off on watching her be buried alive. Instead, he gets off on knowing he controls the moment she will die.
In a grungy basement the unsub, Kyle (Aaron Stanford), watches back Claire’s death video. He is interrupted when his daughter Ava (Adriana Miranda) came down looking for a snack. He quickly ushers her back upstairs and through his commentary it is clear he holds anger towards his ex-wife, Lainey (Alicia Urizar McCallum). This shows his motive in killing Claire and reveals what he may intend to do.
Claire’s ex-husband and daughter are brought in to talk with JJ and Tara. He reveals he and Claire had a toxic relationship and he only gets to see his daughter two days a week after their custody battle. He feels guilty for not letting her say goodbye to their daughter and struggles with how to tell his daughter her mother called to say goodbye. Meanwhile, Kyle abducts Lainey. He lures her into a car by saying their daughter was injured.
Tara inquires about Evan and notes how excited Rebecca seems. She reveals it is like a big weight has been lifted off of her shoulders. She tells Tara she previously downplayed her relationship with Evan and was feeling nervous seeing him again. When she assumes Tara may be mad, Tara laughs and says they’re grown ass women so of course they will have “body counts.” Tara uses her profiling skills to suggest Evan may still be interested in Rebecca. He showed signs of “peacocking,” which she uses the example of him smoothing his tie for her. When Rebecca offers to talk to him, Tara says she should be the one to do it. When Rebecca asks, “Should I be worried?” Tara smiles and simply says, “No…he should.” The conversation is lighthearted and playful with a hint of jealousy.
Tyler points out to Voit that something from all unsubs connected to the network, directly connect back to Voit with own means of torture and trauma. Tyler pushes for answers on why we would be connected to this current case. He reveals he and his wife had discussed a divorce before the pandemic. JJ and Luke help Garcia go through Voit’s chat logs on the network to find those who discussed marital issues. They eventually narrow it down to one that fits their profile. Lainey filed for custody and Kyle gets his daughter once a month. They predict Claire was a dress rehearsal for his plans for Lainey. They take action and head out to his house.
In Kyle’s basement, Lainey wakes up tied to a chair. She tells him if she dies, everyone will know he did it. He is angry at her for taking everything from him and ruining their family. He has her call their daughter who is frightened on the other end. Their daughter, Ava, says he brought her to the woods and Kyle turns on the tv to reveal he buried her alive. She cries out for her mom. Garcia is able to tap into the livestream and the team is able to see he buried his daughter alive. Not his ex-wife as they expected. Garcia is able to get a location to where she is and the team quickly heads out. In order to hack the network, Garcia has to do what Voit suggested earlier. She needs to use her computer chip on Graber’s hard drive. When she does, she is able to hack into the signal and stop Kyle from setting the explosives off.
Luke and Tyler rescue Ava as Prentiss and Tara bust into the basement with a group of officers. They are able to arrest him with no one else getting hurt. In a beautiful moment to close out this story, Ava reunites with her mom at the BAU. The team watches on as the two lovingly hold onto each other. Later, Prentiss interrogates Kyle. She tells him they know how the system works – one unsub stops and the next starts. She wants to know how they signal each other. Kyle just laughs and says, “Who said there was only one?” As he finishes, an alarm goes off in the building pushing Prentiss and Rossi to rush out. They make their way back frantically to the BAU room with the team to discover a package had been sent. In it the mask Graber wore during his kills. This paired with Kyle’s statement may imply that there are unsubs trained to take over once they capture the previous one. Hell is empty, where are all the devils?