Aahana Swrup
Paramount+’s police procedural ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ returns for season 3 with a daunting new mystery bubbling over the horizon for everyone’s favorite BUA agents. In the aftermath of the attack on Elias Voit in prison, lead profiler David Rossi finds himself in hot water with Internal Affairs. As a result, in order to dissuade their suspicions, he and Emily Prentiss dive into a heavy-handed investigation to unravel the truth about what happened on that fateful day. Meanwhile, the other agents, including a newly appointed Tyler Green, catch a new killer on their radar, who has a unique MO of killing his victims via drowning. Therefore, with numerous lives at stake, the team must move quickly to identify their UnSub and put a stop to his heinous crimes. SPOILERS AHEAD!
A Poolkiller is on the Hunt
Season 3 picks up six months after the events of the previous season, finding the BUA team with a brand-new case. JJ, Alvez, Tara, and the others, including newbie Tyler, have been following an elusive killer for months after dead bodies began washing up on the coasts with holes running up and down their rib cage. This peculiar calling card compels them to believe the victims were torture-killed in the ocean. Therefore, everything changes when forensics comes back, identifying stains on the victim’s mouth as “Swimmer’s Calculus.” The new information reveals that killings actually happened in a chlorine-infested water body, likely a pool. The fact that the killer dumped these bodies in the ocean had simply been a misdirect.
As a result, the team swiftly changes routes in their investigation. Soon, a breakthrough arrives when Garcia discovers that a connection exists between every single victim: they had all visited the same beach vacation website prior to their deaths. Consequently, the agents realize they can get more information by finding a way to look through the website’s highly protected data. Although it’s a difficult feat, a cleverly executed operation allows Alvez and Terry to convince a company executive to grant Garcia access to a backdoor. Meanwhile, the killer continues with his hunt, this time targeting a family of three as his victims. Thus, the mother-daughter duo, Vivian and Christy, find themselves in the killer’s backyard pool, forced to stay afloat as they slowly near a fatal end.
Rossi and Prentiss Examine the Strange Attack That Put Voit in the Hospital
Six months ago, when Voit was in a prison’s GenPop area, he ended up getting attacked by two low-level criminals who had uncovered his identity as a serial killer. In the aftermath, he somehow managed to kill his attackers before falling into a deep coma caused by brutal head injuries. Since then, Rossi has become the center of attention for the FBI’s Internal Affairs department. Prior to the incident, the Agent had warned Voit of a similar fate if he chose to appeal for a sentence to a low-security prison’s GenPop. For the same reason, IA suspects him of sustaining some sort of connection with the attack. Until the profiler can prove otherwise, he is effectively benched from his job.
As such, Prentiss compels Rossi to dig around for some evidence with her by investigating the specifics of Voit’s attack. So far, the general theory remains that after the other prisoners attacked him, the serial killer managed to defend himself and used their own shanks against them. Since he’s currently in a severe coma, and the other two prisoners are dead, there’s no tangible way to unravel the full truth. That is, until Prentis and Rossi put their heads together and realize that the details of the injuries sustained by all parties suggest the involvement of another weapon. The fact that crime scene photos reveal the possibility of Voit reaching for something during the altercation further strengthens this theory. As a result, Rossi makes a demand to visit the prison laundry room where the incident took place.
Sure enough, the short trip reveals a smoking gun. Months ago, when Rossi first visited Voit in his low-security prison cell, the man had revealed some of the amenities he had access to, including a table fan. Once the agent realizes that the killer must have fashioned a shiv of his own that he used to fight back against his attackers, it’s easy to connect the dots and realize the fan’s blades must have contributed to the same. From there, it’s fairly easy to spot the drain pan of the washing machines as the only eligible spot to hide the weapon in the aftermath of the attack. Thus, Rossi is able to find the weapon and use it to clear his name with Internal Affairs, at least for now. However, the fact that Voit had prepared a weapon of his own before the incident raises many questions, including whether he had prior knowledge of the attack and if the entire thing had been a self-serving move.
Franklin, the Poolkiller, Gets Caught Red-Handed
Once Garcia is able to hack into the beach vacation website, it opens up a treasure trove of leads for the BUA team. With the new data, they learn imperative information about the very first victims, which helps them narrow down the UnSub’s location, especially now that they know the killings are likely happening in a personal backyard pool. The same, paired with their conclusions about associations with a fetish for watching people drown, brings them to Franklin Fowler. The suspect’s family died via drowning, with Franklin emerging from the situation as the only survivor, despite also being the only one who couldn’t swim due to his asthma.
Furthermore, he recently installed a seven-foot customized pool in his backyard, a detail that all but confirms his identity as a killer. As such, armed with this information, Tyler, Alvez, JJ, and Tara manage to storm Franklin’s house in the nick of time. Fortunately for Vivian and Christy, fateful access to a bottle opener helped them stay alive in the tarp-covered pool all this time. However, Franklin makes one last attempt to condemn their lives by destroying the pool cover remote before blowing his own brains out in front of the FBI Agents. Still, Alvez and Terry manage to rescue the mother-daughter duo from the pool by tearing into the tarp and diving below the surface. Ultimately, the killer is stopped and two lives are saved.
Even so, a certain mystery continues to linger in the aftermath. As it turns out, Franklin wasn’t simply killing his victims. Instead, he also uploaded videos of them drowning to a private cloud. The similarities between his and Voit’s systems remain evident, compelling Prentiss to stay on her guard. Even though it could just be a coincidence, she and Rossi know better than to make such assumptions. To top it all off, as the episode ends, it brings a menacing update on Voit. So far, he had been in a coma, completely harmless in his unconscious state. Nonetheless, as a nurse visits him for a checkup, the killer awakens and instantly tries to choke out the medical professional. Thus, it seems it won’t be long before the possible connection between Voit and Franklin reveals itself to the BUA agents.
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