By: Mariah Thomas
A couple discusses burial arrangements with the owner, Marvin Bancroft (Joseph Cross), of a mortuary. The woman makes a passing comment about the owner’s mother and he informs them she passed a few months prior. In the basement, Marvin finishes his work on the body of an elderly woman before opening the crate to retrieve another body. He presses play on a grief podcast as he prepares this new body. The narration feels eerie as the viewer begins to get a sense this body is different. In reality, the woman is still alive and the intro credits roll.
At Penelope’s (Kirsten Vangness) the BAU team is set and ready for a surprise graduation party for JJ’s (A.J. Cook) son Henry (Mekhai Anderson). The team cheers in their college gear as a not-so-surprised Henry walks in alongside JJ and Michael (Phoenix Anderson). Emily (Paget Brewster) has an immediate face drop while Rossi (Joe Mantegna) jokingly accuses JJ of telling him. Michael is quick to point out that they all parked their cars in immediate view of entering the apartment building. After a laugh, Henry thanks his “Auntie P.” Emily and JJ go off to the side and JJ mentions ‘Spence’ (Matthew Gray Gubler) has kept his word about being ready to help Henry get into Caltech with a single phone call. This is a reference to season 4 when Spencer meets Henry in the delivery room for the first time. Being Henry’s godfather, he has kept in touch. Emily nods along and reminds JJ she has so much to be proud of and that this celebration is also for her and Will for their part in raising Henry. The team sets up for a group photo. First a serious one and as they go to pose for the silly photo, the team all get texts calling them in for a new case.
Garcia and Tyler (RJ Hatanaka) take turns presenting this new case. A woman’s body was found completely drained of blood with her eyes glued open. She is the second woman in a few month’s span to be found this way. Luke points out embalming fluid may have been used to further preserve the body for the unsub to still look back and enjoy. Prentiss breaks up the team and they begin work on this new case.
Rebecca (Nicole Pacent) and Tara (Aisha Tyler) go visit Voit (Zach Gilford) to question him about his request to check on his family. In order to do so, Tara and Rebecca would have to break WITSEC protocol. They instantly can tell something is wrong and Voit must have a reason for wanting them checked on. Though Tara assures him it is a safe program, Voit remains adamant. Rebecca tells him they’ll see what they can do.
Marvin cleans the body of the incapacitated woman while he has a phone call for the mortuary business. Once the call ends, he continues his grief podcast from earlier. He begins the process of gluing the woman’s eyes open. This strangely calming silence is interrupted by yelling. In a bathroom downstairs, we see Marvin has already abducted another victim. Grace Menard (Alyssa Jirrels) continues to shout and begins to panic when Marvin enters the room to force a mysterious liquid down her throat.
Tyler and JJ speak with the first victim’s husband, Ted Fussel (Frank Gallegos). He comments on how alive her body looked when he had to identify her. JJ questions him about the day she went missing and what he remembers. He carries guilt for not having security cameras to see what happened to her. He tells the team the clothes she was found in were not hers. This sparks a new opening into the case for the team. Back in the roundtable room, the team realizes he is recreating a fantasy. The unsub had been force feeding the victims magnesium to enhance hydration and induce inflammation. This allows him to create a perfect canvas for his posing. In a quick cut back to the unsub, we see Marvin staging another victim in the living room for a photo.
Tara and Rebecca bring Prentiss a Voit update. They looked back at his visitor’s and spotted the fan (Justin Kirk). Due to a certain type of reflective lens in his glasses, the camera whites out his face so they are unable to I.D him. Though he didn’t consent to the audio recording, they have video of the moment he shows Voit a photo of his family. The next step is for Tara and Rebecca to speak with Alex Ryan (Casey Biggs). The Fan faked an identity of being Alex’s cousin to sneak in to chat with Voit. Alex instantly knows why they brought him in and tries to protect his “cousin.” However, when Tara begins to ask a series of questions, Alex realizes he has been played. Though his cousin Joshua was real, the emails he received were not actually from him.
Luke and Rossi head out to West Virginia to see the dump site of a new body. The victim is staged in the exact way of the others. Rossi points out they now have a distinct pattern as each victim is getting younger by a decade. The clothing style seems to also become more outdated. They point out it seems as if he’s honoring a deceased family member. Due to this, the clothes may be from that person and DNA may still be on the clothing.
Back at the mortuary, Marvin plays his soothing opera music on vinyl. He does this as he develops the photos of the last victim. Grace is still locked in the bathroom but takes the chance of the loud music to try and break free from the cuffs. She puts a towel in her mouth to help with the pain and pulls with all her might to add pressure to the cuffs. She is able to free herself without alerting Marvin.
Back in his prison cell, Voit’s imagined Rossi taunts him. Voit is gaining momentum and courage to potentially break out to protect his family. He has a memory of teaching Holly (Allison Nordahl) to drive. This shows the special bond these two specifically had at a point. This memory is interrupted by Tara and Rebecca. They let him know they are aware the fan visited him and he confirms he had a photo of his family. Tara tells him there are many ways he could have gotten the photo and they have updated confirmation that his family is safe. Voit is hesitant to share more information about his talks with the fan. He acknowledges telling them information could be part of the fan’s plan to lead the BAU into a false trap.
In the roundtable room, the team further flesh out their profile. Garcia informs them DNA was found from the same unidentified woman on all three victims’ clothes. With a genetic profile, they are able to confirm her traits match those of the victims. This confirms their theory of the unsub being set off by a loved one’s passing. Luke and JJ prompt Garica to find the names of local embalming servers who would have recently lost a female family member. She pauses her search when a missing person’s report comes through that matches their victimology. They know time is crucial with another victim already captured.
Marvin makes phone calls upstairs while painting a portrait of his mother. Downstairs, Grace is able to break through the glass of the bathroom door and begin her escape. Marvin is alerted to a notification on his phone about movement in the embalming room. He quickly ends his phone call and races down. He sees the broken glass and is distracted while Grace stabs him with a shard and runs for the stairs. Unfortunately, Marvin has many of the doors locked so she is stuck in the mortuary. As she makes her way to the front door, she is shocked with a stun gun by Marvin.
Garcia was able to sort through her list of names to find Marvin. His mother died 6 months prior by driving off the same cliff the first two victim’s bodies were found. The team heads out to Marvin’s home. In a tense split scene, Marvin prepares a room in the home with eerie candles to play the piano. Grace is now strapped to the embalming table and Marvin prepares to begin his process of staging her for a photo. He first tends to her wounds as Grace panics and tries to free herself once more. Grace caught a glimpse of the memorial wall Marvin has set up for his mom. She tries to use this emotion as a way to talk to Marvin on a human level and convince him to let her go. However, it doesn’t work and he continues. The BAU arrives just in time as they storm the mortuary and make their way downstairs. Holding him at gunpoint, JJ tries to reason with Marvin as a mother. She tells him his mother would not want to see him get hurt and urges him to put the gun down. Marvin does the opposite and is instantly shot. As he falls, he takes his mother’s urn with him and her ashes scatter on the floor.
JJ and Gracia reminisce over old photo albums on Henry. JJ grows emotional when Henry walks in with a new suit for graduation. He tells her to stop doing the thing again and she tells him to deal with it going in for a big hug. Luke, Garcia, JJ and her boys head out to a late dinner with the team.
Despite the previous scene, Emily and Tara are still in the office going over the video of the fan. They lay out the timeline and confirmed kills to try and pinpoint his motives. With the profile they’ve built, they realize Laura Boyd (Jessi Case) means something to him and is not just a random chosen person. Tara points out U.S Marshalls stopped monitoring weeks ago and rushes to call Rebecca to have her in protective custody again.
That phone call may be a little too late as the next scene is Laura being abducted by the fan after getting off of work. Despite a few scares getting to her car, the fan was waiting for her in the backseat.