‘Criminal Minds’ season 10, episode 9 preview: A major surprise for Rossi revealed

We knew that Wednesday night’s new “Criminal Minds” episode was going to put Rossi in the spotlight to a certain degree, but we never quite imagined that it would be anything like this.

In the sneak peek below at the bottom of this article, you can see the character struggle with a reporter named Joy who he is starting to think of as a harasser. However, right when he tries to get her to be taken off by security, she drops a major bomb on him: She is his daughter!

How is Rossi going to handle this? That is not entirely unclear, but we do at least know that the idea came from Joe Mantegna himself. Speaking to TV Guide (who also posted this sneak peek first), showrunner Erica Messer had the following to say:

“We sit down with [the actors] every summer and talk about ideas, and Joe came in and said, ‘I’d really like it if Rossi had this other thing going on.’ … We kicked it around and landed on something really great.”

Just in case you were not interested enough in this story, Messer says that this is going to be something more than just a one-off appearance by this character. We’re going to be seeing more of Joy in the 12th episode of the season, and that will mark a great chance to further along this story.

This is turning out to be a tremendous year for Rossi, given that an upcoming episode is going to focus on him alongside Gideon during some of the early days of the BAU.

We’ll be back tomorrow with much more in the way of coverage of this particular “Criminal Minds” episode, so stay tuned for some further scoop at this link! Also, sign up to get some other great TV updates on all we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: CBS.)