Erica Messer Pushes Criminal Minds Into a Forced Voit Partnership in Season 19
criminal minds returns on Thursday, May 28, with the BAU forced back into Elias Voit’s orbit in Season 19. Erica Messer says the team and the jailed killer are “not thrilled” about having to keep talking, but the season makes that uneasy partnership part of the job.
Voit is behind bars and being used as a living resource to help the BAU catch others like him. Messer called the dynamic a “forced relationship” with “all this baggage,” which turns the premiere into more than a reset: the unit is not just reopening a case, it is working with the person it wants least in the room.
Voit Returns to the BAU
Season 19 begins a year after Season 18 ended, and the gap has not softened the arrangement. Messer said the BAU and Voit “both navigate the season not loving that they have to talk to one another, but at the same time, really just being forced into it,” a setup that keeps the serial killer inside the casework instead of outside it.
Lewis gets one of the season’s bluntest lines: “You are a living resource and we have to have a relationship whether you’re excited about it or we are excited about it, it doesn’t matter because there’s a greater purpose out there.” The line puts the business of the season in plain terms. Voit is not a guest turn or a one-off villain beat; he is an operational tool the BAU has to use, even while the team resists the arrangement.
JJ and Voit Mirror Each Other
JJ’s story gives the season its other pressure point. Will died before Season 19 begins, and she is preparing to send her oldest son, Henry, off to college. Messer said Voit and JJ are “two sides of a coin” this season when it comes to their families, and that pairing ties the season’s criminal plot to a more personal kind of loss.
JJ’s arc leans on time, control, and the awkward threshold between holding on and letting go. Messer said, “We’re sending our kids to college, and just what a big shift that is in your life and as a parent and as a working parent and all those things that, did I do it right? Are they prepared to go? So that whole journey for JJ feels like it kind of ripples into just this sense of time and how quickly it goes and how it feels like a thief in so many ways, and you just don’t get to control that as much as you feel like you’ve been able to control the decisions that you make.”
Season 20 Pulls Away Again
Paramount+ says the Fan is awoken by Voit’s newfound infamy, and describes the character as precise, calculating, and relentlessly dangerous. That pushes the BAU “to the brink and back under the shadow of Elias Voit,” so the season is not only about cooperation with one prisoner; it is about how that prisoner keeps widening the circle of damage.
Messer said Season 19 “spread[s] the suffering around a little bit more,” before adding, “I do feel like we spread it around a little bit more in Season 19, but then we’re talking about Season 20, and it’s right back.” For viewers, that makes the May 28 premiere the point where the show commits to a messier, less compartmentalized year — one where the BAU cannot treat Voit as a solved problem.
