Criminal Minds Season Finale, 5/20/09

Since I couldn't find any threads regarding this season's shows, I would like to ask if anyone else saw the finale last night, May 20. In the final scene, was that a dream or was there really a shot fired?

Re: Criminal Minds Season Finale, 5/20/09

There hasn't been a CM thread since 2006 for some reason -- I looked last night and was going to post, but was too lazy to start a new thread.

As far as I can tell the end was real. I can't think of any reason that it would have been a dream sequence, but I missed the first hour so I was wondering if there was some setup for the ending I didn't understand that had been foreshadowed in the opening scene of Part 1 maybe. EDIT: After some further searches, it appears the prevailing theory is that the masked shooter was named in the opening credits and is from a March episode (which I missed) and involves a case from Hotch's past where a deal was offered but declined.


Certainly a cliffhanger.

Re: Criminal Minds Season Finale, 5/20/09

This thread really took me by surprise. I've been faithfully watching Criminal Minds since the first episode and hadn't even noticed that there hasn't been a discussion of the show since season 2. I guess with all the other shows that just beg to be talked about (like Lost) a solid, episodic procedural like CM can kinda get lost in the sauce.

The intruder at the end of the episode seems to be the Boston Reaper, a serial killer who was Hotch's quarry in his first case as a lead profiler. He was never caught, but the killings abruptly stopped. The working assumption was that he had died, or been imprisoned on some unrelated charge. Many years later, Hotch learns the truth: One of the Boston police detectives he worked with on the Reaper case made an almost literal deal with the devil - the cop would get the manhunt called off and close the case. The Reaper would stop killing. The deal would hold as long as both men lived. (I forget how the cop got the case closed. Maybe he hinted that their best suspect had been killed Since the killings stopped, people would have bought it.)

Hotch had his doubts and continued to investigate the case on his own time. When the Boston detective was on his deathbed, he sent for Hotch to confees what he had done and to warn Hotch. Convinced that the Reaper was still alive, the cop was certain that the killings would start again once he was dead. He was right.

In the course of the new investigation the Reaper offered Hotch the same deal - no more killings as long as Hotch was alive in exchange for letting the Reaper go and shutting down the investigation. Hotch turned him down. In the end the FBI came close to getting the Reaper, but he escaped.

I'm sure the gunshot was real. The question, of course, is whether or not Hotch was actually hit or if we're going to tune in next year to find out that it was a warning shot fired near Hotch, not at him.

Seems that a lot of shows are cutting their budgets for next year by killing off characters in their season finales this year. Hope this isn't one of them.

Regards,

Joe

Re: Criminal Minds Season Finale, 5/20/09

That final scene came up without any warning or set up. If a viewer went to the bathroom thinking the show was over, they would have missed this. I saw C. Thomas Howell's name in the credits and kept wondering when we were going to see him. Thanks for the clarifications about who the character in the mask is.