Lauren
Directed by Matthew Gray Gubler
Written by Breen Frazier
Prentiss has fled, and the rest of her team is figuring out that she left to protect them. Emily is going after Doyle.Written by Breen Frazier
Prentiss: "The secret to getting away with lying is believing with all your heart. That goes for lying to yourself even more so than lying to another." Author Elizabeth Bear.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: Tsia's fiancé Jeremy, one of her and Prentiss's Interpol colleagues, is revealed to be this as he sold Doyle the list of operatives involved in his imprisonment before Doyle had him killed.
- The Bus Came Back: JJ returns this episode to help the BAU find Prentiss and bring down Doyle.
- Character Focus: This is Emily's eponymously titled episode, named for the alias she used while undercover in Doyle's gang.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Doyle and his men to Prentiss, including branding her on the chest.
- Death Faked for You: Hotch, despite knowing that Prentiss survived her injuries thanks to receiving medical care, has her declared dead by the hospital so she can flee the country and fly under the radar to take down the rest of Doyle's operations. From the team, only he and JJ know she's really still alive.
- Disney Death: Prentiss apparently dies at the hospital from her injuries inflicted by Doyle, and the entire team is shown mourning her. The very end reveals that she's still alive and in contact with at least JJ, who's helping her hide overseas.
- Flashback: We get several to Prentiss's past when she was undercover in Doyle's organization.
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: Prentiss, badly injured from the torture Doyle has inflicted on her, gently asks Morgan to let her go. He refuses.
- Internal Reveal: The team figures out that Emily Prentiss and Lauren Reynolds are the same person.
- Manly Tears: Both Spencer and Dave shed manly tears when they believe Emily didn't make it. Spencer has long-term abandonment issues, and he has reacted in similar ways whenever he misses another surrogate family member.
- Meaningful Name: Invoked. Emily, as Lauren, figures that "Ian" is a more Protestant than Catholic name, so she guesses Doyle had to prove himself to the IRA.
- No One Gets Left Behind: Morgan, after spending much of the episode upset at finding out about Prentiss's past and clearly a bit hurt that she never confided in the team about any of it, tells her this when they find her, refusing to let her die and calling her his friend and partner, making it clear that these prior feelings are water under the bridge.
- Put on a Bus: On account of her faked death, Prentiss flees to Europe to lie low and is absent from the rest of the season.
- Secret-Keeper: Most of the team is told that Prentiss died from her injuries on the operating table. Only Hotch (who helped her fake her death) and JJ know that she's still alive, although Rossi reveals in a later episode that he eventually had a hunch as well.
- You Are Not Alone: Garcia in the voice message that she leaves for Prentiss, telling her that the team loves her and begging her to come back to them.Garcia: Hey, It's me. Hotch asked me to try all your numbers, and I have this as an old listing, and you probably don't even use it any more, but if it is you and you're out there, come home, please. God, Emily, what did you think, that we would just let you walk out of our lives? I am so furious at you right now! Then I think about how scared you must be, how you're in some dark place all alone, but you're not alone, okay? You are not alone. We are in that dark place with you. We are waving flashlights and calling your name. So if you can see us, come home. But if you can't, then, then you stay alive, because we're coming.
- Jareau: Psychoanalyst Walter Langer wrote, "People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one, and if you repeat it frequently enough, people will sooner or later believe it."
