Criminal Minds: The Surprising Story Behind That Shocking Will Scene

There was a funny moment during my recent Zoom with Criminal Minds: Evolution star (and TVLine Performer of the Week honorable mention) A.J. Cook, to discuss JJ tragically losing her husband Will after 18 years together.

She and I were talking about the late Linda Lavin guest-starring as WIll’s mother Connie… and franchise vet Matthew Gray Gubler’s cameo as Spencer… when I quipped about her TV husband’s unexpected Episode 2 encore:

“When Josh [Stewart] showed up, was he like, ‘Hey, how are you doing? I’m here to die’?”

Because I, like at least some of you, was curious about Stewart returning to set for Will’s migraine/collapse in the kitchen.

Except, Cook was quick to correct me, Stewart did not return for that scene. Once the decision was made to kill off Will (via a rare kind of aneurysm), it was agreed that it would be impolite to ask Stewart — who was famously MIA from Season 17 — back just for a brief, sad moment.

Instead, a deleted scene from Evolution‘s first season was used.

“People don’t know this, I guess,” Cook said, clocking my confusion over Stewart’s Episode 2 appearance. “But he wasn’t coming back to the show,” and as such, “Our writers had to get very creative.

“Remember the cancer storyline that we wrote in [during Evolution‘s first season]?” reminded Cook. “We so badly were like, ‘We don’t want [Josh] to think he’s going to die,’ we got so freaked out by it, that we pulled this scene [of Will collapsing]. That’s how much we did not want Josh to leave us.”

But when Will’s number indeed came up early into Season 18, “our brilliant showrunner [Erica Messer] was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we have this scene that we never used…,’” Cook recalled.

“Erica Messer put the pieces of a really complicated puzzle together, and it worked,” Cook continued. “It’s weird how it happened that way, but that just goes to show how much we just did not want any more pain to come to this family” — at least back in Season 1.