Revelations
Written by Chris Mundy & Andrew Wilder
Reid has been taken hostage by Hankel, who takes him to a secluded location and tortures him to get him to confess his sins. Aware that he will likely kill him if he confesses, Reid endures the torture, and Hankel's meeker side decides to drug him, which results in Reid reliving being abandoned by his father when he was ten.
JJ and Prentiss talk to Hankel's neighbor, who has nothing but sympathy for Hankel killing his father. He reveals that Tobias is addicted to dilaudid. Garcia is working on hacking Hankel's home computers when Hankel streams a feed of a tied-up and beaten Reid to them. He demands Reid pick an individual for him to kill, and Reid complies, giving Gideon a chance to call the intended victim and warn her. Hotch regrets not teaching Reid to deal with his emotions.
Reid suffocates, but Tobias revives him after arguing it out with his father alter. He demands that Reid pick one of his team members to die. Reid picks Hotch, and misquotes the Bible to send his boss a message. Hotch proves that he's not a narcissist by having his team name his worst qualities without minding, and tells them that Reid was signaling him that he's in or near a cemetery.
Hopped up on drugs and in pain, Reid relives the memory of sending his mother to a psychiatric facility; at this time, he feels he betrayed her. Hearing his apology, Hankel thinks Reid is confessing to the sin of disrespecting your mother. It looks like Reid finally gives up, but when Hankel makes him dig his own grave, we realize he probably only wanted to be among the graves when the police showed up. While Hankel is distracted by the approaching flashlights, Reid grabs Hankel's gun and shoots him. Tobias comes forward one last time and expresses hope that he gets to see his mother before he dies.
[part 2 of 2]
This episode provides examples of:
- As the Good Book Says...:
- Hankel's different alters all know the Bible inside out.
- Reid has also memorized the Bible.
- Bait-and-Switch: When Reid talks about Hotch being a narcissist, even the rest of the BAU thinks that Hotch takes it personally. But he's not; he's evaluating Reid's choice of words as potential clues to his whereabouts.
- Deadpan Snarker: Though he's being tortured and briefly died, Reid doesn't let that stop him.Raphael: You came back to life. There can be only one of two reasons.
Reid: I was given CPR. - The End Is Nigh: Charles Hankel was a bit of a doomsday prophet, especially toward his son.
- Flashback: The drugs Tobias administers to Reid makes him relive childhood memories from the time his father left, a time in his life he is usually unable to recollect.
- Forced to Watch: As was discovered in the previous episode, Raphael installed cameras in his clients' homes to monitor their activities and murder them if he feels they've sinned. When he claims another pair of victims here, he makes Reid watch it happen via the monitor that shows their camera feed.
- Foreshadowing: J.J. and Morgan both observe that relative-newcomer Prentiss is handling Reid's abduction relatively calmly, seeming far less shaken than the rest of the team. Prentiss offers a possible explanation that she's just better at compartmentalizing than most people. They, and the audience, learn just how true this is in Season 6.
- Freudian Trio: Tobias Hankel and his alters. Tobias himself is the Ego; Raphael is, or considers himself, an angel, and is the Superego; and the alter modelled on Charles Hankel, Tobias's violent father, represents the Id. The ironic part is that both the Superego and the Id are murderers.
- Funny Background Event: At the climax, Prentiss has a decidedly "what have I gotten myself into" look on her face.
- Genius Bookclub: Diana used to read Proust to her son when he was about ten. He picked the book.
- I Like Those Odds: Subverted. Reid takes his chances with the Russian roulette until his odds fall below fifty percent. It was the right one, too.
- Neutral Good: In-universe, Gideon reasons that Raphael wouldn't feel either way about what he does, as what matters is whether something is God's will, not whether it's considered good or evil by humans.
- Russian Roulette: Raphael plays this with Reid. If you're curious how he convinced Reid to play, he tied him to a chair first.
- Sadistic Choice: Raphael forces a couple of these on Reid:
- First, he shows Reid several monitors displaying the homes of his potential future victims, and forces Reid to choose one of these households to die first. Reid instead chooses one to save, which Raphael accepts; when the latter visits one of the remaining houses to murder the couple there, Reid is Forced to Watch it on the camera.
- Later, Raphael tries to force Reid via Russian Roulette to choose one of his BAU teammates to die. Reid refuses at first, but eventually names Hotch, in an attempt to send a message to him.
- Something Only They Would Say: When Raphael forces Reid to pick another member of the BAU for him to kill (which the whole team sees, since they're receiving video feed of Reid's torture), he chooses Hotch, calling him a "classic narcissist" and quoting a Bible passage. Hotch is well aware that, while he has many flaws, narcissism is not one of them, and when he looks up this Bible passage, he learns that Reid misquoted it, despite having earlier stated to have the entire Bible memorized by heart. This clues him in that the passage Reid claims to have quoted is actually a clue on how to find him. When they do so at the end of the episode, Reid even murmurs to Hotch, "I knew you'd understand."
- Title Drop: Tobias quotes Revelations quite a bit.
- Token Good Teammate: The original Tobias personality among the three within the killer; he does drug Reid repeatedly, but it's an attempt to release Reid from the pain that his two alters have inflicted on him. At one point, he even resuscitates Reid after his Charles personality beats him so badly that he stops breathing.
- Tragic Villain: Tobias Hankel. While both of his other personalities are violent and murderous and do terrible things, he himself is a kind young man who doesn't want to hurt anyone and tries to ease Reid's pain, but is so meek thanks to a lifetime of horrible abuse from his father that he's unable to assert himself enough to prevent his alters' violent impulses. When Reid shoots him dead at the end of the episode, Tobias's personality emerges one more time, and thanks Reid for killing him, since it means he'll get to see his mother again.
