‘Criminal Minds’ season 9 spoilers: Boss on AJ Cook’s difficult 200th episode performance

Typically when you have a 200th episode of almost any show, one of the hopes that you have in some ways is to make the event into a celebration. When you think about everything that the characters of “Criminal Minds” have been through, you would almost want to see that more than ever.

However, what it looks like right now is that at least the beginning of the episode, JJ is going to be one of the most terrible circumstances possible. She will be suffering from something pretty devastating in being captured, and it remains unclear if and how she could be rescued. We know that we will learn about her past throughout this story, but based on what showrunner Erica Messer tells TVLine, the focus for at least the start of this story is going to be on the rescue mission that gives AJ Cook some of her hardest material to date:

“The people who have her are known for horrible torture techniques, so the threat is there, that something could happen to our sweet J … It was really interesting to watch one of our main characters have to do something that our guest cast does every week, which is scream and cry and be tortured. And so disheartening. To ask one of our heroes to do that was, I think, very uncomfortable for us to watch.”

Are we still encouraged that she will make it out of her alive? Sure, but mostly because it would be a million dimensions of cruel for a show to take away a major star as a part of a milestone episode.

The unfortunate thing about this story in particular (at least for now) is that you’re going to be waiting for a while