Final Shot
A battered Dallas wife wife escapes her abusive husband, and he sends a professional hitman after her. To cover up the hit, the UnSub kills a bunch of random people while tracking her down. All the while he imagines himself in a situation with the woman to keep himself awake.
Tropes
- All Just a Dream: Colin's interactions with Maya are all in his head, a fantasy designed to help him stay awake while waiting for her to appear.
- Daydream Surprise: A Played for Horror variation: all of the subplot regarding Colin interacting with Maya as an apparent member of the railroad trying to help her turns out to be a daydream created by a focusing technique Colin has been taught in sniper school to keep awake and focused for days, waiting for the proper time to attack.
- Boom, Headshot!: How Hotch kills the sniper.
- Call-Back: The UnSub is an L.D.S.K..
- Domestic Abuse: Maya's narcissist husband Erik has hired a sniper to off her since she left him.
- Irrevocable Order: With the death of Erik (the abusive husband who hired Colin to kill the former's runaway wife) in the end of the second act (ironically by being hit by a car when he was trying to get away from the agents), the BAU does not have any data on the sniper and can only hope they can find Maya before she gets killed.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Erik is run over by a car when he tries to escape the BAU when they come to ask him questions.
- Red Herring: The first killings of the episode happen, through coincidence, on the anniversary of JFK's assassination. The BAU suspect for a few moments early in the episode if the spree has some kind of political meaning until they uncover further evidence that it's something more personal.
- Serial Killings, Specific Target: A series of seemingly random shootings designed to hide the contract killing of a runaway battered wife and the underground railroad she used to escape.
- Underground Railroad: The organization that helps battered spouses escape their abusive husbands is directly compared to the legendary Underground Railroad and follows a similar structure (each member of the railroad only knows the person of the next "station").
- Witless Protection Program: The underground railroad, as mentioned by one of its members, had been effective for many years. The sniper spends a couple of days getting to his target, one of the women they helped escape, by killing his way through the chain and almost achieves his goal if not for the BAU arriving in time and Hotch pulling off a counter-snipe.
- Witness Protection: This episode provides us a civilian example, an Underground Railroad for battered women to escape their abusive husbands.
Rossi: "Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." John F. Kennedy.
