Warning! Spoilers ahead from the Season 4 premiere of Criminal Minds: Evolution. You can stream it now with a Paramount+ subscription.
The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit is officially back with the fourth season of Criminal Minds: Evolution, which is also the 19th season overall of Criminal Minds. The first two episodes of the new season dropped on the 2026 TV schedule, and they were certainly intense, as per usual. Unfortunately, it was impossible to get through the episodes without tears, and I’m heartbroken over the surprise death of a fan-favorite character.
Episode 2, “Cluster,” kicked off with Adam Rodriguez’s Luke Alvez in a cemetery, sitting by a grave, clearly upset. As the team grew more concerned about him, viewers were given flashbacks throughout the episode showing Luke finding out bad news about his dog, Roxy, who eventually died after a tumor spread. As a dog person and as someone who has had to say goodbye to two of them, one as recently as last year, this hit particularly hard, and I’m not the only one who was tearing up.
Showrunner Erica Messer told CinemaBlend what the reactions to this moment were like as they were making the episode, and I can only imagine how hard it was to film:
No, we didn't have a dry eye. Yeah, in the read-through, there wasn't a dry eye. We've all [been there]. Anybody who's been there, who's lost an animal, it's just like the hardest thing.
Of course, Criminal Minds has lost characters over the years; most recently, Josh Stewart’s Will died, and that was definitely hard to watch. But there is just something about an animal dying that hits differently, and when it’s a dog, it’s even worse. Also, the fact that this development came out of nowhere was rough because there wasn’t really a lot of time to comprehend what was going on until the show revealed it.
However, with Roxy’s death, fans of this great Paramount+ show also got to learn more about Luke. Rodriguez joined Criminal Minds in Season 12, and while fans have learned about him over the seasons and have heard about Roxy, with this episode, we really got to find out just how Roxy came into his life. The dog was helping Luke after the military, and they really bonded. So, Messer wanted to hone in on that connection and Luke’s military life:
Well, I think what you end up learning new about Alvez - we knew he had a dog, and we knew she was a service dog, and we knew all these things, but we didn't really know that their origin was because he was really unwell, right? And that Roxy really saved his life. That part hadn't been shared before, that he needed her. She was his partner, his teammate, all that. But the fact that she really pulled him out of a dark place, that was new information to share about that character. Then it felt like, what does that mean now when you lose her? How much have you grown since those days? Obviously a lot, right? I mean, he's now trying to help people and all that. So it sort of felt like the right time to introduce this whole world of what Tom Milliken is doing with helping veterans, and that Alvez knew him from before that, and then the Roxy of it all. It's like losing that connection just felt really awful and sad, but also real, right? I mean, it happens. We all lose those pets.
As much as I love learning about Luke and love that we’re still learning about him after seven seasons, I really wish they had found a different way to do that. At the very least, this might be better than the show dragging out Roxy’s unfortunate diagnosis throughout the season. Just getting it out of the way, while very heartbreaking, rips the band-aid right off.
It will be interesting to see how Roxy’s death will continue to affect Luke as the season goes on. Losing a pet is hard, and the grief doesn’t go away automatically. He certainly has the support of the entire team, especially Garcia, and at least he has work to keep him focused. Fans will just have to tune in to new episodes of Season 4, dropping on Thursday on Paramount+, to see what happens.
