Watch Clips From Tonight’s ‘Criminal Minds’

Tonight, Criminal Minds returns from the winter hiatus with the first new episode of 2015. You can find sneak peeks, questions, interviews, tweets and photos after the jump!

Here’s the first of three sneak peeks from “The Forever People”, featuring JJ Jareau (AJ Cook). (You can also find it on CBS.com, CBS Press Express and SpoilerTV.)

The second clip features JJ and Dr Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler). (It’s also available on CBS.com, CBS Press Express and SpoilerTV.)

This third and final scene from the episode is from TV Guide, and it also features JJ and Reid.

“The Forever People” dredges up the past for JJ, who is affected by her kidnapping from last season’s 200th episode. “So much time has gone by – it’s been a year since all that stuff happened – and frankly I’m thinking wow, J.J.’s like a superhero here to not have to deal with any of this stuff like a normal person would,” Cook told Starpulse. “I was so relieved to see that they finally wrote it. I want J.J. to be a normal human being. She can’t be a superhero all the time; it’s not real. It was refreshing to see her kind of come apart a little bit.”

TV Guide also spoke to Cook about the episode, and here’s an excerpt about JJ’s PTSD storyline:

It’s just been a long time of her living in denial, repressing it and not facing her demons. Unfortunately, when you’ve been through something so crazy like that, you can only do it for so long. It works for a little bit, but you start to fall apart. We kind of get to see her dealing with it in her own way, but her way seems to be a little self-destructive.

Here’s a TV Guide question from last month relating to “The Forever People”:

Any Criminal Minds scoop? — Brett

Remember JJ’s PTSD? She’ll turn to Reid as her “sounding board” to get through it, executive producer Erica Messer tells us. “I’ve always loved their friendship and this will bring them closer together,” she says. And don’t worry about this triggering any PTSD for Reid — he’s doing just fine these days. “Emotionally, he’s going to be so invested in JJ’s story,” she says.

Cook also did an interview with TV Fanatic, including this question and answer about JJ and Reid’s friendship:

TV Fanatic: When Reid and Morgan have to go through and deal with their demons, fans really pick up on that. I guess there’s a lot of relating going on.

Cook: I love that. I love it when we see our characters “put down their capes” – as they say – for a minute and just act like a normal human being and cope; when they deal with it like a normal human being would.

And I love, in this episode, that Spencer steps up and reaches out. He, out of everyone, realizes what JJ’s going through and he calls her on it.

It was so nice to be able to, once again, see that relationship. They’re so tight, and you just feel the love between the two of them. Not that kind of love but just that they’re best friends. We haven’t touched on that in a very long time. So it was very refreshing and exciting to get to see that pure 100% caring for one other relationship.

It was really nice to get to shoot those scenes with Matthew. They turned out great, so I’m really happy for the fans to see that and to see two great characters coming together to work through something. It was a lot of fun to do.

Zap2It spoke to Cook about the episode as well. Regarding the scenes between JJ and Reid, the actress said: “That’s one of my favorite things about this episode is that we really get to see their amazing relationship. We haven’t really touched on that in a really long time and so you forget that these two are best friends. He’s the godfather of her child. It’s palpable the scenes between us in this. Spence really wants to help his friend.”

And here’s another interview with Cook from BuddyTV, including this question:

The man who abducted JJ returns, so are we seeing flashbacks? Is JJ having nightmares? How is that going to play out?

I know! When that guest cast list was released and Tivon Askari was on there, people kind of were very confused by that, like ‘What? How? How is he there? I thought he was dead…’ I don’t want to give anything away, but it’s one of the most intense scenes I’ve ever shot in my life, and he is so freakin’ talented, Faran [Tahir], and this episode would not have worked if he didn’t come back and play with us. There is an insanely intense scene between the two of us, so that’s all I say on that. … I don’t want to give anything away, because it’s such a cool thing that they did. I’ll let everyone be surprised.

Finally, here are some tweets and photos:

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