Last night’s Criminal Minds introduced us to the section of the FBI that deals with International crimes involving Americans overseas. Unit Chief Jack Garrett (Gary Sinise, CSI: NY) calls on our beloved BAU to help them after a family annihilator they have been searching for has turned up again for a third time. He always strikes in April and targets the fathers in his brutal attacks.

The man had eluded Garrett’s team in Aruba while the BAU did not have luck in Florida when the unsub attacked a family there. They are hoping they will find him before the next family is killed in Barbados.

At first, the teams believe the unsub is taking on the role of the father figure, but as they look over autopsy reports from previous victims and consider how young the unsub appears to be, they realize he is actually taking on the role of the eldest son. In the latest abduction, the Sullivan family consists of Greg, Colleen, Alison, and Nick. They try to survive in various ways, even as they suffer horrific abuse and are forced to watch the unsub attempt to hurt the kids.

For this episode of Criminal Minds, we were introduced to a new team, which is supposed to be for another spin-off attempt of the show.

While the first spin-off didn’t work out so well, it is possible this one could since Sinise is such an amazing actor, especially when it comes to crime dramas. Until we know for sure how this spin-off will do, let’s take a look at some of the top moments of this episode that either gave us insight into these characters or left our hearts in our throat.

Image via Tina Kaawaola/INFevents.com

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10. The case

Unit Chief Jack Garrett works on International cases and he gets information that a third family has gone missing. He brings in Rossi and Hotch to help with the case, which they have been unable to solve in two years. They are hoping to find the families within 24 hours because that is how long they have before they will be killed.

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9. Meeting the team

We get bits and pieces of information about the team members before they go off to look for the unsub. Agent Matthew Simmons (Daniel Henney) talks to JJ outside the plane before taking off and they talk about him having four kids who are all under the age of three. This prompts JJ to call his wife “a saint.” Also part of the team are Lily Lambert (Anna Gunn) and Russ ‘Monty’ Montgomery (Tyler James Williams) and they all bring different aspects of investigation into the case.

Image via Twitter from Criminal Minds

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8. Greg’s parents

Garcia experiences something she has never done before with fellow tech Monty. He deals with the families left behind since his team is usually away, something Garcia doesn’t do since she stays behind to do her work on the computers. So they go to speak to Greg’s parents together. She is surprised when Monty outright lies to the parents about if they will be alright and later, Garcia asks about it since they both know how the unsub would really react if Greg fights back. Monty reminds her they need to hold on to their hope. It was interesting to see this dynamic and how different the teams are in experiencing the cases.

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7. Glimpses

While our team determines how the unsub could have gotten to his victims, we get flashbacks of the unsub’s life being abused by his father. He gives this same treatment to Greg when he isolates him from his family.

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6. Set of eyes

While looking into the case to figure out how the unsub got the family while they were feeling vulnerable in an unfamiliar setting, we find out some information on one of the agents, Lily Lambert. It appears she has a brother who was wrongfully convicted of a crime overseas and she is still trying to get that taken care of, so Hotch offers to look at the file.

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5. Greg tries to escape

Greg does his best to save himself and his family. He uses a knife to cut the ties off his wrists and fights with the unsub, but is overpowered. They make a desperate attempt to get to the canoe that will get them to safety, but the unsub stops them and the canoe goes out into the water.

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4. Location

After figuring out that the victims had a combination of freshwater and saltwater in their lungs, the team determines they were near some body of water. They do some research from the previous Florida victims case and realize he had to get them to a body of water quickly in order to avoid detection. This leads them to look for piers close by that could have been used. One of the agents we meet has connections that work to their favor since they have a harbor that is only thirty minutes from the crime scene.

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3. Overboard

As the team had learned over the course of their investigation, the unsub has always forced the husbands to watch as their families died first. At this point, the team discovers their suspect is Jerry Tidwell, who is not American, but his stepmother and half-siblings were. His father abused him while the rest were not and he had murdered them while on vacation and was in institutionalized until age 21. While the team is getting ready to go to the location where they believe the boat is, the Sullivan family is forced to watch helplessly as their youngest child, Nick, is thrown overboard. This moment was absolutely painful to watch.

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2. Rescue

The team makes it to the boat just as Tidwell is about to shoot and kill the daughter, Allison. While trying to get the unsub to let her go, JJ gets Allison’s attention to get her to focus on the agent. Eventually as Tidwell tries to shoot toward the agents themselves, JJ tells her to get down and they shoot him dead. The parents immediately tell the agents about Nick and Morgan calls for a search of the waters. Amazingly, Nick managed to get to the canoe that had drifted away from the boat and is reunited with his family.

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1. Reunion

One of the best parts of the episode was the final scene when we got to see the family reunite with Greg’s parents. In an early scene, they had talked about wanting to protect their children no matter how old they were and it was great to see Greg hug his mother as both teams watched from the stairs.