Reflections of Desire
Directed by Anna Foerstar
Written by Simon Mirren
A man whose abusive mother made him reenact her one movie role his entire childhood, processes the trauma by kidnapping pretty women (who look like his mother) and forcing them to reenact the scene with him. When they don't get it exactly right due to nerves, he drugs and mutilates them.Written by Simon Mirren
Garcia: "Fame will go by and, so long, I've had you, fame. If it goes by, I've always known it was fickle. So at least it's something I experience, but that's not where I live." Marilyn Monroe.
Provides examples of:
- Abusive Parent: The UnSub's mother blamed him for ruining her acting career because of her pregnancy.
- Agony of the Feet: The UnSub cuts off one victim's toes instead of getting her a larger shoe size, similar to the older versions of Cinderella where one of the step-sisters does the same thing to fit into the shoe.
- Attention Whore: An interesting case with the UnSub. He lives for the girl that he currently holds as hostage to have the attention on the news so that he makes an "actress" who's gotten more attention than his mother.
- Child Hater: The UnSub's mother says this in the UnSub's illusion of her, and it's likely true due to what her own son's birth did to her career.
- Child Supplants Parent: The UnSub hates his deadbeat dad and wants his mother to acknowledge that he is a better man who became famous under the pseudonym the Hill Ripper, given to him by the newspapers before they knew his identity.
- Damsel Fight-and-Flight Response: The victim breaks the UnSub's nose and immediately flees for a door only to discover it's locked. Later, in a second escape attempt, she finds out she wouldn't have wanted to go in there anyway.
- Dead All Along: The UnSub's mother.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The Reflection of Desire movie appears to be a Film Noir, and the hallucination of Rhett walking the red carpet with his mother is monochrome as well.
- Foreshadowing: The security cameras don't show the UnSub's mother sitting down next to him in the train station.
- Hates Their Parent: The UnSub hates his deadbeat father, that hate and the desire to be a better man than he was motivating much of his actions.
- Kick the Dog: On top of kidnapping and murdering young women, the UnSub also tells a little girl that she's an "ugly girl with nothing to give the world".
- Once More, with Clarity: Rhett walks out his house with his mother in his arms, just like the scene he reenacted with his female victims... only when he crosses the threshold, it's revealed that she was Dead All Along.
- Only a Flesh Wound: The UnSub gets shot while running away and all he does is yelp as he continues like nothing happened.
- Papa Wolf: Penny’s father declares on the press conference that he will kill the UnSub for abducting and killing his daughter.
- Shout-Out:
- To Psycho, complete with "Psycho" Strings during the reveal of him carrying his mother's corpse.
- The UnSub's name is Rhett.
- The UnSub's mother dresses like Marilyn Monroe.
- The movie the UnSub tries to emulate is a Casablanca pastiche.
- Cinderella, where the step-sisters cut off parts of their feet to fit into the shoe.
- Much like during the UnSub's arrest where he thinks he's going down a red carpet, Sunset Boulevard ends with Norma Desmond believing that the police apprehending her after she commits murder is a camera crew.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: Penny, the rescued hostage, asks this of Hotch when she's in the ambulance.
- Show Within a Show:
- Garcia plays a Femme Fatale in an amateur stage play.
- Also the film the episode is titled after.
- Teen Pregnancy: May, Rhett's mother, got pregnant at nineteen. It ended her acting career.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: The UnSub's mother is presented as alive until the final reveal.
- Title Drop: The title of the one film Rhett's mother starred in is the same as the title of the episode.
- Train-Station Goodbye: The scene the UnSub keeps trying to remake with his victims.
- Garcia: "I believe humanity was born from conflict. Maybe that's why in all of us lives a dark side. Some of us embrace it. Some have no choice. The rest of us fight it. In the end, it's as natural as the air we breathe. At some point, all of us are forced to face the truth. Ourselves."
