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JJ and co. had to say goodbye to Will in Criminal Minds: Evolution, but the truth behind filming his death scene wasn’t as straightforward as one might think.
Following the release of Criminal Minds: Evolution season 3, episode 2, star A.J. Cook spoke with TVLine about filming her onscreen husband’s death. They asked her how it felt when Josh Stewart walked on set, knowing his character was going to die. However, Cook revealed that that moment never actually happened. Stewart didn’t reprise his role as Will to film his death for season 3. Instead, Criminal Minds: Evolution used a deleted scene from season 1 to double as Will’s death. Cook explained:
“People don’t know this, I guess. But he wasn’t coming back to the show. Our writers had to get very creative. Remember the cancer storyline that we wrote in [during season 1]? We so badly were like, ‘We don’t want [Josh] to think he’s going to die,’ we got so freaked out by it, that we pulled this scene [of Will collapsing]. That’s how much we did not want Josh to leave us. [But when it was decided that Will would die], our brilliant showrunner [Erica Messer] was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we have this scene that we never used.’ Erica Messer put the pieces of a really complicated puzzle together, and it worked. It’s weird how it happened that way, but that just goes to show how much we just did not want any more pain to come to this family.”
Source: TVLine