Blood Relations
Directed by Matthew Gray Gubler
Written by Breen Frazer
A serial killer in West Virginia turns out to be the illegitimate son of a woman who had sex with her brother and later married into a feuding family, causing her original family to disown her.Written by Breen Frazer
Blake: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." William Faulkner.
Tropes in this episode
- Brother–Sister Incest: It turns out that Cissi Howard married into the Howards and was born a Lee, specifically Malachi Lee's sister. They had an affair when they were teenagers and had a son, who turned into the UnSub.
- Feuding Families: The Lees and the Howards have been at it for generations. They were rival bootleggers during the Prohibition, and currently rivals over the production of organic fuel.
- Former Teen Rebel: Caleb Howard used to be a rebelious youth, a far-right political activist and agitator, and a habitual criminal. But as it turns out, that was about 30 years before. When the BAU locate him, his rebelious youth is long gone. He has become a respectable, middle-aged community leader, and is running a youth center. He has no involvement in the recent crimes involving his kinsmen.
- Humiliation Conga: At the end of the episode, all the villagers involved in the family feud know about Malachi and Cissi's incestuous affair.
- Inbred and Evil: The UnSub is a serial killer and the product of the siblings' incest. His victims mostly consisted of his half-siblings and other relatives.
- Karma Houdini: The UnSub escapes the BAU and is last seen tormenting an innocent couple several miles away.
- Never Found the Body: Of the UnSub. He ends up submerged in a lake, and the BAU shoots into it thirty times, but they don't find him afterward, even as they insist he has to be dead. The last scene shows him attacking a couple.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: The UnSub was never actually given a birth name, and as such is only referred to as either the UnSub or the "Mountain Man".
- Screaming Birth: Cissi has one of these.
- Teen Pregnancy: Cissi Howard had the UnSub when she was a teenager.
- Two Aliases, One Character: Inverted. The Team occasionally hears stories of a so-called "Mountain Man", a local legend believed to be stealing barbed wire from farmers, a remnant of the Confederacy trying to start another Civil War, and a member of the Appalachian people. The Team initially thinks this is their UnSub after hearing of Caleb Howard, the Black Sheep of the Howard family who wanted to start a new Civil War by getting the South to succeed, but upon meeting him are proven wrong. Caleb admits to having once been the "Mountain Man", but had left and reinvented himself as "Sam Caplan" to distance himself from the bad blood of his family. The UnSub they then realize was another "Mountain Man" after finding out about Malachi and Cissi's incest Teen Pregnancy, this one having been raised in the Appalachian area by the woman Cissi gave the baby to, and was responsible for stealing the barbed wire, using it to kill members of the Howard's and Lee's to get Cissi's attention.
