Criminal Minds season 12 finale review: Is Spencer going to be a father? Shemar Moore returns!

We have reached the end of the road for Criminal Minds season 12 and while we’ve had a bit of a rough time enjoying the tail end of the Spencer is in jail story, we are completely invested in the Cat Adams was responsible for the whole thing story! On the last episode of Criminal Minds it was revealed that Mr. Scratch wasn’t behind the set up of Reid going to jail, but it was Aubrey Plaza’s character of Cat Adam’s who you might remember from last season. Reid sent her to jail and she has since been plotting and scheming with people on the outside to pull apart Reid’s life and put him behind bars just like he did to her. Even though Spencer is out of jail now, Cat’s accomplice has his mother.

Let’s jump into Spencer and Cat’s meeting. Even though Cat’s a crazy psychopath there’s this undeniable chemistry between Spencer and Cat and we saw that again tonight in their prison fantasy game. They are both incredibly smart, are very good at the art of mind manipulation and play off each other like no one else. Cat is ready to play a game with Spencer and here are the rules: He can ask her as many questions as he wants in four hours to get to the right answer (a secret he doesn’t want to tell), but he can only guess the answer one time. If it’s right then she will release his mother and if not then she will put a call into Lindsey to kill Spencer’s mother.

As this game plays out, Cat tells Spencer that she’s pregnant and that it’s his child. He’s not the only one that’s completely confused as to how that happened since they’ve never slept together. So how did this happen? Cat claims that Lindsey dosed Spencer in Mexico, pretended to be the love of Spencer’s life – Maeve Donovan – and got a sample from Spencer to the impregnate Cat… at least that’s the story she’s telling him. It turns out that she is 3 months pregnant and the time line matches up with when Lindsey was in Mexico, but at this point there’s no proof that it’s Spencer’s. They have found a guard that worked at both Spencer and Cat’s prison… could this be the father of Cat’s baby? Yup, that’s the real father, not Spencer, but what a beautiful baby Cat and Spencer would’ve had! When Lindsey finds out that Cat is pregnant (did we mention that they are lovers?), she decided to give herself up and release Spencer’s mother after Cat’s betrayal.

Oh, did we mention that Shemar Moore is back for the finale tonight? Garcia isn’t the only person that’s happy he’s coming back since we have also missed hearing him say “baby girl”. What we are mostly hoping to see happen with Morgan’s return is that he is going to convince Garcia to be nicer to Luke and that’s exactly what we got! We get that no one can replace Morgan for Garcia, but there’s no reason that she had to be this hard on Luke for this long and while she hears him out, we don’t know if she’s really listening. Morgan got a text message from Garcia saying that Spencer needed to see him and that he and his mother are up in a safe house for the night… but it doesn’t sound like Garcia. Turns out her phone has been hacked and they think it’s Mr. Scratch surfacing to bring them into a trap – a trap they went running straight into. The whole team heads out and gets into a major car crash with a transport truck. Ready to sit on that cliffhanger for the whole summer, because it looked like Prentiss got his straight on!

Although this has been a rough season watching Spencer in jail this season, this was a very satisfying ending to the season. We love seeing Spencer and Cat together, she is the perfect evil genius to go up against him. It’s been a hard year with losing Hotch, no Morgan and seeing Reid in jail, but we’ve also gotten a few new cast members (Luke and Stephen) that we really love. Can we also say that while it was really great to see Morgan and Garcia reunited, the goodbye scene went on a little long and started to feel awkward by the time they were blowing kisses. While their relationship has always been a bit over the top with the flirting, tonight felt like a whole other level. Episode grade: A

What did you think of the Criminal Minds season 12 finale? Are you satisfied with how it ended? Leave us a comment in the box below with your thoughts. If you want to know more about what we know about season 13, then head on over to the link here. (Photo: CBS)