'Criminal Minds' Season 15 Finale Recap: Everett Lynch, goodbyes and emotions come together in closing episode
'There will be no "wheels up in ten" ever again — let that sink in.
After a very successful15 season run on television, the BAU finally shut its doors this week. 'Criminal Minds' has officially come to an end — but like most of its time on-air, it left us with many emotions and a smashing story.
The two-hour series finale brought back the worst UnSub the team has ever dealt with, Everett Lynch aka The Chameleon.
Lynch has been out of the picture for a bit because he's been dormant for a while, possibly recoiling after he killed his own daughter Grace and sliced her face off. However, as is with killers like him, he's back to killing again, it's just only much worse.
In the first hour, we see Dave Rossi, Lynch's arch-nemesis trying to figure out what's missing in their profile and a young Gideon's memories come back to help him.
He realizes that there was a reason why Lynch had let Rossi live, even though he could have easily killed him. Rossi realizes that it was possible he saw his father in him, and there was a possibility that Lynch's real dad was still alive.
Simultaneously, Roberta Lynch's mother wiggles out of her sentence after charming her lawyer and goes on to kill Lynch's father — a surrogate life for Grace, her granddaughter.
Lynch finds out and calls Rossi and asks him to meet him alone in the woods. He runs off into the woods and the team hunts him down to a home where Lynch is holding a girl hostage.
What they realize later is that Roberta had wanted to kill him and herself and wanted to end the story. They realize it a second later and Reid gets knocked down to the ground. They think he's dead since the house explodes — but nope, the Chameleon's body goes missing.
Meanwhile, Reid has cranial hemorrhaging and passes out — so he's out of the picture temporarily. He is caught in his own guilt and his understanding of life in his head and meets his dead ex Maeve. Even as the show is ending, they couldn't give poor Reid a chance to breathe.
Reid realizes that he is better off not dead, thank god, and that he should go back to the land of the living. He regains consciousness to find Garcia and his mother beside him, reminding him of the things he loves.
Back at the BAU, the team tracks down Lynch, after he kidnaps Ross' wife and demands the team give him an airplane to escape. However, Rossi demands he take him instead and a fight ensues, where Rossi gets shot. Meanwhile, JJ shoots at the fuel tanks, sets the plane on fire and Lynch finally, finally dies. Very 'Die Hard'.
The show ends on a happy note, with a party at Rossi's house where everyone's giggling and dancing and Luke asks Garcia out. The next day, the team walks in while Garcia is quietly moving her stuff out since she's quitting her job at the BAU and a case comes in.
"Wheels up in ten," says Prentiss and just like that, with a shot of the elevator, this mammoth of a show comes to an end.
It was a pretty satisfying series finale with some amount of fan service but what was really great to see was that it didn't try to be over the top. It was emotional, yet thrilling — a classic 'Criminal Minds'. What did you think of the finale? let us know in the comments below.