Well, that uneventful, quiet period that was the previous episode was nice while it lasted, wasn’t it? We’re back into crazy story land this week, with one hell of a complex and twisty (and twisted) case. And to make matters worse, the episode ended on quite the unsettling note, hinting at some even crazier and scarier things going down in the season finale.
Fortunately, it was also one of my favorite episodes of the entire season. The mystery of the case sucked me in, it left me guessing and wondering where it’d go next, which is always fun, and it showcased the team and their abilities nicely, and gave me some very tantalizing possibilities regarding the team and their future to mull over for the season finale, and beyond.
There was a LOT to sort through here, so let’s break this down, section by section.
The Setup:
Starting off on a pretty uneventful note this week. Two prison guards are sorting through the recent mail deliveries, chatting about the objects within, as well as their upcoming weekend plans. Looks like an ordinary night in store.
Then one of the guards makes a rather unsettling and disturbing discovery. He pulls out what looks to be a bloody piece of clothing. And what’s worse is, that isn’t the only piece of bloody clothing in that package.
Time for some backstory, courtesy of Garcia. Two years prior, a twelve year old boy named Adam Morrissey vanished as he was heading home from school. Adam’s parents had just been through a contentious divorce not long beforehand, so it was assumed his disappearance was the result of a custody dispute gone bad, and that his dad had run away with him to Mexico. Seems a plausible explanation, though the fact that nobody’s heard from Adam in those two years is still quite distressing.
That’s where the story gets worse. Three months after that, a thirteen year old boy named Jimmy Bennett also disappeared. He’d been living in foster care ever since his parents got hooked on drugs, and he’d had a history of running away from his foster homes, so authorities, while concerned, didn’t think there was any reason to suspect foul play or a kidnapping. Add in the fact that the two boys were from different towns in Virginia (Jimmy was from Richmond, Adam was from Franklin), and the nature of their disappearances being so different, and law enforcement treated them as separate cases.
Until now. That bloody piece of clothing that one of the guards had found? Seems it’s one of the boys’ pieces of clothing. So that’s troubling. It was also part of a package that contained other bloodied pieces of both boys’ clothing. More specifically, pieces of the very outfits they’d each worn on the days they went missing. DNA testing proves the items belong to the boys as well. The package was postmarked to Roanoke, the return address was the address of the prison where it was sent, and the post office has no answers as to who the sender was.
There is one piece of good news, however. Because the guards got to the package first, they were able to stop it from going to its intended target: a female prisoner by the name of Antonia Slade.
So just who is Antonia Slade? She’s actually better known by her nickname, “The Runaway Killer”. Around ten or fifteen years ago, Antonia was responsible for a series of murders of young teenagers. She used her job as a clinical social worker to set up a runaway hotline for wayward youth as a means of luring them in, and once she had them captive, she killed them. Five of her victims were girls, four were boys, and they’d all been wrapped in plastic, shot in the head, and stuffed behind the drywall of her basement (ick). She had a lover named Phil Garmond, who killed himself when police arrived on scene, thus implying he likely played a role in the crimes somehow.
Another interesting detail about Antonia’s case? Gideon worked it. And it was one of those cases for him, the kind that haunted him for years afterward. You see, after Antonia’s capture, she never once talked about the case, nor did she ever give an explanation for why she committed the crimes. She remained tight-lipped for years.
Obviously, this begs a few questions. Why send the package now? Is this all part of some grand scheme of Antonia’s? And what does this mean for Adam and Jimmy’s fate? Are they still alive? What started off as a seemingly relatively simple missing persons case is starting to look more and more complex.
It’s then that we get our first glimpse of the infamous Antonia. She’s relaxing in her cell when she gets the news that the BAU is coming to visit her. The warden on duty doesn’t even need to tell her the nature of the visit, either. She knows why they’re there. Antonia begins talking about a Helen McGill, who turned out to be her fourth victim. Helen had been with her a week before suffering a stomachache one night. Antonia tells the warden she gave her some tea and held her hand, but as we see in a horrifying flashback in which Helen’s pleading for her life and Antonia’s holding a weapon, the truth is clearly much darker. This story seems to indicate she’s willing to finally start discussing her crimes, however, as well as their connection to the current case.
Antonia’s not going to make things easy for the team when they visit, though. Oh, no. She’ll talk...but only with “certain requirements” in place. She doesn’t do well with crowds, so her big request is that each team member meets with her one-on-one. This should be interesting…
The Meetings:
Hotch and JJ are the first team members to arrive at the prison, and it’s then they learn a few more things about Antonia. She’s been in solitary four weeks, a road map of Virginia was found in her cell which a groupie supposedly sent her, and that groupie is not the only one she’s got. We’re all familiar with women who fall in love with male prisoners, of course, but it seems that Antonia’s got just as much luck as the guys do in that regard, getting letters and gifts from admirers all over the place. Charming. She never interacts with her twisted fan club, though. She never wanted to see anyone at all...until now. So how do these interviews play out?
Hotch: He’s the first to visit, and true to form, he gets right down to business. Hotch mentions the missing boys, asks about the package that was sent to the team, and even tries to appeal to Antonia’s powerful nature, reminding her that she’s got the upper hand here. She likes her power and control, so he’s willing to play her game if it means she’ll talk. He knows she’s dying to say something – she wouldn’t call him in otherwise.
Antonia is moved by absolutely none of Hotch’s tactics, though. The entire time he’s talking, she’s writing in a notebook. She soon throws a crumpled piece of paper at his feet, which contains a very cryptic message: “All work and no play makes Agent Hotchner a dull boy.” Oh, great. A ‘Shining’ reference. So what does that mean?
Afterward, Hotch notes that this piece of paper also held an imprint of what she’d written on the page before it. His hope is that by investigating what the imprinted words say, that might give the team more information, and thankfully, he and the team do get an answer, albeit another typically confusing one. The paper says something about proof and faulty logic, and the monotony of the rain being soothing to Antonia. It sounds like the beginnings of a letter she was writing to someone, but is there more? We’ll return to that later.
JJ: Next one up, and her visit gets very interesting very fast. At first, Antonia wants to know some of the basics about JJ. Where she grew up (turns out they’re both country girls), if she’s an only child (it’s hard not to notice the visible wince and hint of emotion in JJ’s face as she says no). Unlike their shared country childhoods, however, Antonia’s an only child. “Good training for solitary confinement,” she dryly says. JJ’s willing to play this “bonding” game if it means she might unintentionally let her guard down and reveal something.
Throughout all of this, JJ tries to keep directing the conversation back to the case. She asks if some guy had told Antonia he was sending her a package, and this catches Antonia’s attention. She begins rattling off a rather lengthy list of men who could be the guy in question, and the gleam in her expression as she mentions all these names shows just how much she relishes her fame.
Then things takes a very odd turn. Antonia moves back onto the subject of JJ, now wanting to know how long she’s worked for the BAU. She then asks if JJ’s respected as much as Hotch is at the Bureau. JJ says yes, though the slight hesitation in her voice is telling, and makes me wonder if she’s remembering the way she was forced out back in season six.
Antonia’s not done yet, though. She keeps pressing the issue, wanting to know if JJ feels she’s treated the same as Hotch. Again, JJ says yes, this time without hesitation, though she does acknowledge the obvious fact that Hotch will get treated a little differently in some ways simply by virtue of being the boss.
That doesn’t fly for our unsub. Now she really starts digging in, telling JJ that she IS smarter than Hotch, and it should be her running the team instead of him. She goes on and on about how people tend to dismiss someone like JJ as nothing more than a pretty face who’s not meant to be taken seriously, and tells her that if she really wants to move up the chain, she should stop being so polite and playing nice and start taking charge. O-kaaaaaaay, then.
Understandably, JJ’s rather taken aback by this sudden outburst, but she doesn’t have much time to process any of it, because Antonia now wants to make a deal. She’ll help with the case if she can get a transfer to another prison in her home state of Kentucky. Obviously, JJ refuses, and so ends that incredibly bizarre meeting.
JJ senses there’s more to Antonia’s request for a transfer. Antonia likes her solitary existence, going so far as to intentionally trying to get sent there, and yet, she’s also tried to escape a few times in the past. This transfer could be her latest attempt to run free. JJ’s starting to wonder if these letters Antonia’s writing are meant to go to whomever’s responsible for the package, a partner who might try and help her eventually escape.
Reid: Number three on the list. He brings a copy of the letter Antonia had been writing, wanting to know who she’s writing to.
Antonia doesn’t even try and put on some chatty act with him. Instead, she’s immediately dismissive of Reid, claiming he’s not too bright, and reminding him that she threw the original copy of the letter out. Reid keeps pressing on, but Antonia’s really enjoying her little takedown of him. She’s pretty ruthless, too, going so far as to flat out call him a phony and a fraud. His “Doctor” title is just something to make him feel smart, he feigns the intelligence he’s known for. Ouch. She also notes that he’s very sad.
To his credit, Reid remains unfazed by the insults. He knows what she’s doing. She’s treating them as though the opposite of who they really are, and trying to break them. Fortunately for Reid and the rest of the team, her plan hasn’t worked at all.
At least, for the most part. Antonia does hit on one particularly painful truth in regards to Reid. He is indeed sad about something...his sadness is almost a grief, she notes. Like he’s lost someone important recently. When Antonia asks if it’s a friend he’s lost, Reid’s pained, emotional expression says it all. To make things even crueler, he has to tell her who this friend is in order to get the information he wants from her. It’s then we learn that Reid is still struggling with Morgan’s departure. Awwwwww.
Antonia proceeds to dig the knife in even deeper, claiming he’s hiding his grief because the rest of the team doesn’t seem as upset, and he’s so affected by this loss because it’s yet another in the long line of protectors he’s lost, and dear God, at this point I just want Antonia to shut her mouth, because this is getting utterly heartbreaking.
Luckily, though, since Reid was honest with her, she gives him what he came for. Sort of. She spits some food into his hand (ew), and traces something into the glob of food (“they took away my pencils”, she explains). This message, she claims, will tell him and the team who he’s looking for. At first, Reid thinks she wrote the initials C.H. on his hand, leading him to believe that’s the name of their unsub. Thing is, though, there’s nobody in the prison logs with those initials. So what do they make of this person who’s sending her this package and kidnapping these two boys? Is he someone she works with, or some random fan who just wants to impress her?
Oh, one more thing Antonia shared with Reid? The missing boys are still alive.
But is she telling the truth about that? Given her eccentric behavior thus far, it’s hard to be sure, but the team will take whatever they can get at this point.
Reid also analyzes the paper with the imprinted writing. Given the odd nature of the words and phrases used, he concludes that this is some sort of code, specifically one that has a cipher in it. Who better to try and crack all of this than him? That’s when he realizes that Antonia didn’t write “C.H.”, she wrote C + +, some sort of programming language. The entire letter isn’t a message; rather, just one sentence is important:
“When I think that proof alone will never beat faulty logic, I bleed twice.”
He continues to explain the code and characters a little more, but to sum it up, his analysis of the message all boils down to three words: “Atone full moon.” Yet another head-scratcher.
Later in the episode, Reid holds a pretty intense interrogation with a man named Oral Wilber, a prison guard who’s been picking up a lot of shifts that just happen to involve guarding Antonia in particular. He’d been handling the letters Antonia sent out. Turns out that she (not surprisingly) has a lot of influence in prison, and so long as Wilber handles Antonia’s letters, she’ll protect another prisoner he’s in love with. Wilber also admits that he recently sent a letter addressed to a man named John Smith. A pretty common name, but another potential step in finding their unsub.
Rossi & Lewis: Rossi has no time for games, suggesting that he and Tara try and turn the tables on Antonia for a change. Antonia is not happy about her “one person at a time” rule being broken, however, so initially, she refuses to open up about this mysterious John Smith.
The two agents aren’t fazed, though. Rossi goes on to diminish and mock Antonia’s so called power and allure, while Tara talks about how boring someone like Antonia would be as a research subject. I greatly enjoyed this moment – I always do love it when Rossi turns the snark on while dealing with a criminal, and Tara joining in made it even more amusing.
The plan works, too, as Antonia suddenly wants to start talking. She remains as dismissive as ever of others, though, Gideon was a total fool, and made Phil out to be worse than he really was. She doesn’t think too highly of Rossi and Tara, either, but she does want to talk to Tara alone.
She gets that chance not long afterward. At Antonia’s request, Tara decides to open up about her childhood...and the story she shares is quite a doozy. As a result of Tara’s dad’s military career, her family had moved to Germany for a time when she was nine. She was the only black kid in her class, and stuck out rather noticeably as a result. She was teased and bullied for it, and a swastika was even painted onto her locker one day. Tara told the school about the vandalism, but unfortunately, word of her making a report got out.
As a result, the next day, she was jumped by the boy who’d made the offensive artwork, along with a couple of his friends. She wound up in the hospital for three days because of the severity of her injuries.
Pretty horrible story. Except Antonia’s not buying it. At least, not the part about being attacked. Antonia knows firsthand how bullies work, after all, and can tell when someone’s lying. She thinks that part of the story was something that happened to somebody close to Tara. So now she wants to know, who was that person, and why is Tara taking on their story?
The Missing Boys:
Antonia is telling the truth about one thing for certain: the boys are indeed still alive. They’ve been held in some sort of barn or shed somewhere for a while, and when we first see them, they’re trying to plot an escape while trying to hide from a man who comes in to gather some food for dogs. Looks like we might’ve had our first glimpse of Antonia’s newest partner in crime.
Later, the man holding the boys drags them out and begins driving them to another rural area. Clearly he’s got more pain in store for these children. To make matters worse, Adam’s fallen ill, and Jimmy tries to tend to him while attempting to figure out a new method of escape. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess what could happen to them next.
The team also learns that there is a precedent for taking two boys at once, because Antonia had tried this sort of plan before in her original crime spree. One of the two boys she’d kidnapped was named Hector Ramon. He fortunately managed to escape, telling investigators that Antonia had come off nice and loving the first week he and his friend were there.
After that, she became abusive and cruel, and that’s when she started talking about how the boys “must atone” for breaking the rules of the house. Sadly, Hector’s friend Sam didn’t escape alongside Hector, and as a result, he wound up being the last of Antonia’s victims. So now the team needs to work even harder to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself.
Putting the Puzzle Together:
The team believes that Antonia’s partner, the man holding the boys, is very similar to Phil – submissive, easy to manipulate and cast aside, and works in a computer/tech field of some sort. They’re certain that John Smith is a false name, and that instead of writing to multiple men, she wrote to this man alone, addressing him by a variety of names in her letters so as not to tip anyone off.
It’s also revealed that the blood stains on the boys’ clothes thankfully aren’t human, but canine. So that’s one piece of good news, and it’s also further proof of the lengths this unsub will go to try and impress Antonia. Either that, or Antonia told them to bloody up the clothes as part of her attempt to remain the mastermind of the operation.
As for the “Atone full moon” message? Essentially, that’s a warning that the team has only five hours until the full moon hits to save the boys’ lives. They have no choice now. They have to give Antonia what she’s been asking for in order to rescue these boys in time. As she joins Rossi, Reid, and Tara on the jet, I can’t help but feel rather nervous – forget about whether or not she’ll give them the information they’re looking for, what if their trip turns life-threatening?
On the jet, Antonia talks a little more with Tara. She confirms that this unsub is replicating her incident with Sam and Hector from years ago. Antonia then murmurs something I can’t quite make out to Tara, who responds in kind (and which Reid overhears). Tara’s mysterious response seems to get through to Antonia, too, because she then reveals that this unsub is bringing the boys to Kentucky...but not the area where the team thinks they’re going.
Rossi and Reid, meanwhile, are in the back of the jet trying to come up with their own theories as to the unsub’s whereabouts. It’s then they make a horrifying realization: The part of Kentucky she’s being transferred to is where the unsub is...and she doesn’t want to return home. No, she wants to witness the murder of these two boys. Eep.
Meanwhile, Hotch, JJ, and Garcia, who are back at the office, take a different tack in trying to narrow down their unsub. Is he someone from Antonia’s past? Did he move to this area of Virginia to be close to her?
With Garcia’s fancy tech work, we finally get our answers: The unsub’s name is Claude Barlow. He was a patient of Antonia’s when she was a social worker and he visited her twice a week for three years. Things got rather creepy after she quit her job and moved to Virginia, though, because he followed her there, even going so far as to show up at her place. So now he’s crossed the line into obsessive stalker territory. He disappeared after a restraining order was put out on him...but after Antonia went to prison, he showed up there, too, under the name Peter Evans. By this point, Antonia had come to relish his devotion to her, and started encouraging it.
Garcia also finds two possible addresses where Claude might be holding the boys: his childhood home and the place where Antonia’s practice used to be, which is now shut down and abandoned. Antonia agrees to take Rossi, Reid, and Tara to where Claude is, but of course, she’s got one more request. She wants to be unchained completely. It’s a sign of how desperate the team is to solve this case that they take yet another risk by letting her have even more freedom.
The team also has to debate whether or not to trust her to take them to the right spot where Claude might be. Ultimately taking her at her word, they soon make their way to an old building way back in a wooded area. They find Jimmy, and he’s alive, but Claude and Adam are still in the wind. Antonia then leads the team down a trail called “Devil’s Backbone” (ahhhh, episode title reference!), and it’s there they find the two men at long last.
Despite Reid’s pleas to end this hostage situation, Claude demands to see Antonia. Upon reuniting with the woman he’s devoted to, Antonia helps release Adam before telling Claude she has something to say to him. We never get to hear her words to Claude, but whatever she says, it shatters him. Shortly afterward, Claude shoots himself in the head.
Antonia isn’t even remotely fazed by the suicide, though. She walks away as calm and cool and collected as ever, not flinching in the slightest. Proof of just how cold she truly is. Obviously, because of the games she played with the team, her transfer ain’t going through, so she’s boarded back onto the jet and eventually returned to her old cell.
On a happier note, Adam and Jimmy are reunited with their parents again. Rossi had stayed with Adam’s mom the whole time, attempting to comfort her as she dealt with her immense guilt, and Jimmy’s dad had recently kicked his drug habit in the hopes of getting his son back. Seeing these struggling parents get another chance with their children just made the rescue of the two boys all the more moving.
As for that hard to make out exchange between Tara and Antonia on the plane? Reid mentions what that was about – the two women were speaking German to each other. Tara told Antonia she’d changed her mind about studying her for her research project...but of course, it was a lie, just like so many of the exchanges between Antonia and the team throughout the episode.
So that’s that. Everything ended well, the boys were saved, Antonia’s back where she belongs, case closed.
Well, almost. Hotch isn’t done talking to Antonia just yet. He wants to try and figure out just why she’d set this entire chain of events in motion to begin with. Before he does that, though, we learn a bit about Antonia’s past through his mini-profile of her. Apparently, she was able to speak German with Tara because she too had lived there for a time when she was younger.
When Antonia was fourteen, she missed school for an entire year due to an “undisclosed illness”. Around that same time, a fifteen year old boy in her town was killed in what was initially seen as a tragic hunting accident. Hotch put two and two together and realized that Antonia’s “illness” was code for a pregnancy, and that the murdered boy was the father of her baby. Her father was a military man, and that boy’s death was no accident.
Hotch believes Antonia’s entire “I don’t get close to people” thing she’s built her life on has been a response to that tragedy, and murdering those teenagers was a symbolic way of punishing herself and her boyfriend for their mistakes over and over again. He is curious about one thing regarding her past, though: what happened to her baby?
Antonia, true to form, doesn’t answer him. Instead, she simply offers this ominous warning:
“There’s a storm coming, Agent Hotchner, and you’re about to be swept away.”
Cue the “To be continued...” card at the end, and that deeply unsettling ending is our launch into what looks to be a very intense and nervewracking season finale, if the promo is any indication.
I really liked this episode. Antonia Slade was definitely one of the creepier unsubs the team’s dealt with in a while, and as tough as it was to watch her manipulating the team as she did, as frustrating as her games were, I also enjoyed the tense back and forth between her and the BAU, and seeing how hard the team worked to try and stay one step ahead of her, if not more.
The one-on-one interviews were particularly intriguing and revealing, and raised so many questions for me. Especially the whole thing about JJ running the BAU instead of Hotch. Is that meant to be foreshadowing of some sort of team shakeup coming? Would JJ step into the unit chief position if it were offered to her? I don’t know how likely such a scenario would be, since she’s not exactly a “second in command”, so to speak, but given she’d taken on such a significant role in her Middle East mission when she worked at State, maybe any opportunity for a promotion for her is tied to that? We’ve never had a female team leader, so I must admit to a bit of curiosity and interest at the thought of a woman in charge for a change.
As for Reid, as heartbreaking as it was to hear him admit that he still greatly missed Morgan, it was also exciting to see his skills being put to such prominent use this episode. I loved that this case gave him a deep, complex mystery to solve, and it was great to see him cracking codes and bringing his linguistic skills into play.
The interrogation scene between him and Wilber struck me, too, because he displayed a slight hint of intimidation not entirely unlike that of Morgan. Does this mean he might have a potential chance to move up the ladder in the team, too? If there is a team shakeup, will it lead to a potential competition between him, JJ, and the other team members for a higher position in the Bureau?
Tara’s story about the attack she claimed to experience had me intrigued, too. Did that really happen to her? Or is Antonia right that she’s covering for someone else. If so, who? I wonder if we’ll learn more behind that story in the finale.
Of course, the biggest question regarding this entire episode: what on earth does all of this mean for Hotch? The promo for the finale, as well as cast info, indicates that Mr. Scratch, the unsub who’d drugged Hotch and seriously messed with his mind, will be returning, as will Antonia Slade. It’s also revealed that Hotch will be suspected of being involved in a conspiracy. Will that conspiracy have anything to do with the season long Dirty Dozen story arc? And if so, how will it tie into his interactions with both Mr. Scratch and Antonia?
And what will happen if Hotch does have to step down again, the way he did during the Foyet arc? Would that demotion be temporary yet again, or will it be permanent this time? There’s clearly so many possible ways this storyline could play out, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t incredibly nervous about Hotch’s future, as well as that of the team’s.
Not only did this case keep me invested on the team front, but it also brought an intense sense of urgency to the search for the missing boys. There were times I honestly didn’t know how the case would end in terms of whether or not they survived, and I think that suspense and uncertainty really added to the unpredictable nature of the episode.
I felt the same way about Claude. I liked that he remained kinda shrouded in mystery throughout – I could relate even better to the team’s desperation to find out who he was as a result, because I wanted to know, too! I thought his backstory worked well against Antonia’s power thirst, too. It was easy to see how he could be manipulated by someone like her, and the fact that he tried to get help, and it didn’t work in the end, just made his overall story that much more tragic.
His death scene was incredibly haunting, too. The Radiohead cover was a perfect choice of song to play in that moment, and his story didn’t end in a quick “only a few moments left, let’s wrap this up” style. Having him echo Phil’s suicide from years ago was an appropriately eerie touch, a testament to Antonia’s disturbing ability to manipulate and control people. And it added to the slight hint of sympathy I felt for him, that he was so mentally messed up to where someone like Antonia could jump on him as easily as she did.
And it would’ve been so easy to just keep Claude’s story the tragic one, and Antonia’s all creepy and mysterious. But learning more about her at the end actually made me feel for her a bit, too. Obviously, it certainly doesn’t justify or excuse her crimes, but it’s easy to see where the seeds of her destructive personality were sown as a result, and it’s easy to see where that kind of dark backstory would add to the societal fascination people have with her.
I know some might think that Antonia giving the team the answers they needed to find the boys seemed a bit too easy at times, especially considering her need for and love of control. But I saw this as her helping them with this case so as to get them to let their guard down and trust her...only for her to then turn around and mess with them yet again. I get the feeling she’s playing a long con here with the team – the fact that she appears in the season finale further confirms my suspicions. If that is the case, I wonder what else she has in store for them, and how they’ll work to take her down.
Course, I could very well be wrong, too. Maybe she’ll wind up proving a helpful ally to the team, intentionally or otherwise. She knows how to withhold information until it’s absolutely necessary to reveal it, so who knows what other secrets she may be hiding that she’ll share in the future?
As of the date of this review’s posting, we have only three days left to wait before we learn the answers to most, if not all, of those questions. Until then, feel free to speculate about what you think will happen in the season finale. I look forward to discussing the last episode of season eleven with all of you when the time comes!
What did you think of this week’s episode? Did you enjoy seeing Reid in his full element throughout? Do you think the comparisons between JJ and Hotch are a hint at some sort of big change or team shakeup happening? Do you think Antonia will prove helpful or harmful in the season finale? Do you think Tara’s story is sincere? What do you believe Antonia’s warning means for Hotch, and the team at large, in the season finale? Share your thoughts in the comments!
