‘Criminal Minds’ season 8 finale review: Mark Hamill and a ‘shocking’ death?

If you watched “Criminal Minds” live on Wednesday night, you can sit here and say genuinely that you put two full hours of your life into seeing what was going to happen following near-constant teases of a death and massive hype surrounding a mysterious guest star. But were you satisfied? This is what we’re a little unsure about.

Let us start with the positive, and that is that Mark Hamill plays a fantastic villain, so much so that it’s hard to really remember that he was ever one of the greatest heroes of all time. His role as the Replicator was much more similar to Darth Vader, or a character in the Joker that he has played via voice-acting over the years.

Was the villain ultimately stopped? Yes, but prior to that, there was a loss in Strauss. This is where the episode gets a little tricky. Were some of you expecting something even bigger than that? We don’t want to minimize the drama and the character, but we were almost expecting a face who had made many more appearances over the years to kick the bucket. There were some touching moments where we said goodbye at the end, but the whole organization of some of the scenes surrounding this felt a little strange.

In the end, our reaction to the “Criminal Minds” finale, and thus season 8 in general, is mixed. There were some things done right, but the show lacked that punch of finesse that we were looking for. When you are more of a procedural show, you need these finale episodes to be at least a grade “A”. We’re not fully sure that the story as a whole did that, even if we are pleased to not have a massive cliffhanger for a change.

The good news is that “Criminal Minds” will be back for season 9, and all of the major cast members are signed up.

Photo: CBS