The Season 4 Plotline That Criminal Minds Fans Want To See Get Resolved
With over 300 episodes, "Criminal Minds" tackled nearly every permutation of serial killers and murderers. There were pyromaniacal killers, spree killers, family annihilators, mass murderers, and assassins. Typically, once the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) was on the case, they profiled and tracked a crime's unknown subject, or unsub, until the criminal was either apprehended or killed. If by episode's end, the killer had eluded capture, it was indicative of a longer story arc to be explored in future episodes.
On Reddit, user u/Rissarie recently noted an episode that broke away from the "Criminal Minds" norm. In Season 4, Episode 13, "Bloodline," the agents of the BAU are dispatched to Alabama after a murder and kidnapping. Unlike most episodes, "Bloodline" ends with a hint of more to come, yet the story built in the episode is never revisited again. As the replies to u/Rissarie show, many fans believed the story should have been explored in later seasons, especially given the ominous last line of "Bloodline."
Bloodline begins with a brutal murder and kidnapping
The episode begins with what appears to be a mother, father, and their 10-year-old son (Cynthia Gibb, Andrew Divoff, and Slade Pearce) sitting in a car at night in a residential area. The parents are encouraging the young boy, who is clearly hesitant about what the family is about to do, and specifically about meeting a yet-unknown "her." Just before the opening credits roll, the family exits the car and breaks into the nearby home. The next morning, the butchered bodies of Geoff and Nancy Hale are discovered, and their daughter, 10-year-old Cate, is missing.
The family holding Cate, whom the young boy has renamed Elena, is unaware that she requires medication to control epilepsy. After a day without her medication, Cate has a seizure while in captivity in the family's camper. Upon watching the seizure, the man decrees that Cate is "no good," and pulls out a knife with the intent to kill her. The woman stops him, telling him they don't kill young girls. A compromise is reached, and Cate is bound, rolled into a rug, and left on the side of a road.
As the investigation and the episode proceed, it's revealed that the trio from the opening scene are actually part of a criminal Romani family that has been active in both the U.S. and abroad, kidnapping young girls and killing those in their way for nearly 100 years. The girls they kidnap are then brainwashed and married off to the young boys in the family network. Further details come to life, including that the female unsub was herself abducted by the Romani in the early 1970s.
Bloodline ends with the reveal of a larger threat
After the family kidnaps another young girl (killing her parents in the process), they burn all their belongings, including the camper. They then head to the nearby shopping mall to shoplift new clothing for themselves. Anticipating that plan, the BAU also heads to the mall, armed with an aged-progressed photo of the female unsub. When the boy spots the flyer, he rushes to his parents in the store dressing room where they are filling bags with soon-to-be stolen goods. In order to give the father and son time to escape, the woman allows herself to get caught shoplifting.
During her interrogation, the woman tells the BAU where to find the father, son, and the little girl they abducted. By the end of the episode, the little girl is rescued, the father is arrested, and the mother — certainly headed to prison — gets a chance to say goodbye to her son, whispering to him in a foreign language. When Rossi (Joe Mantegna) receives the translation, the team is stunned. The mother told the boy, "Don't tell them about your brothers." The last scene of the episode is of another Romani family, sitting in a car at night, preparing to abduct a young girl and kill her parents.
Despite the sorta-kinda cliffhanger ending, the Romani family storyline is never revisited again in the series. It's possible the writers intended to leave the viewer with unease. It's also possible that the storyline was forgotten as seasons went on. Either way, the end of "Bloodline" was one of the darkest and most ominous in "Criminal Minds." It's no wonder that fans are still demanding closure, over a decade after the episode first aired.