‘Criminal Minds’ Season Finale: JJ Admits She ‘Always Loved’ Spencer Reid

Criminal Minds wrapped up its 14th season with some emotional cliffhangers, including one BAU member revealing her true feelings for one of her co-workers.

The CBS crime procedural’ highly-anticipated Season 14 finale spent most of its time solving the latest case of the week, involving an Unsub forcing people involved in a previous criminal case to murder people by threatening their loved ones, as the team also prepared for David Rossi (Joe Mantegna) and Krystall Richards’ (Gail O’Grady) wedding day.

The case’s climactic moments led to JJ (A.J. Cook) admitting her real feelings for Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) while on a stressful hostage situation.

The beginning of “Truth or Dare” found the team anticipating Rossi’s wedding day and seemingly bored from not being assigned a new case for two days. Their playful game of cards is interrupted when Prentiss (Paget Brewster) announces their latest case, involving a man crashing into two different victims and later shooting them.

The investigation takes the team to Los Angeles, with Rossi promising Krystall he would not miss their wedding day for anything in the world, and they find the case is more complicated than they first thought.

An eyewitness tells Luke Alvez (Adam Rodriguez) that the shooter seemed to be shaking when he shot his latest victim, as if he didn’t want to do it. The show then reveals that there is someone else behind the scenes, forcing the killer to murder people as the mystery man is holding the killer’s wife hostage.

The team and some local officers finally catch up to the killer but he is shot to death during the confrontation. Upon examining the scene, they find a photo of his wife and the clue leads them to their apartment where the woman was killed, likely at the same time as the man was shot since he failed to kill his next target.

The team finds a connection between the victims related to them all being involved with an old criminal case, including one of the jurors, an eyetwitness and one of the lawyers. As they discover the twist, the Unsub is seen coercing the former judge on the case to continue the mission, revealing he kidnapped her daughter.

JJ and Reid then follow a lead to a store and find the Unsub — a man named Casey — and the judge attempting to rob a store. The situation escalates into hostage situation leaving both BAU agents in danger. At that point the team realizes the Unsub’s fascination with the game “Truth or Dare” and JJ volunteers to play with him to keep the other hostages safe.

The man holds a gun on JJ’s head and tells her she has to tell him a “truth” that will interest him enough to spare her life. After she revealed the name for her unborn child, she admits to the killer and Reid that she always had feelings for him.

“I have always loved you. I was just scared of saying anything before, and things are too complicated to say it now,” she tells Reid. “I’m sorry but you should know.”

Reid seems in shock by the reveal but takes the opportunity to release himself and use second gun to kill the Unsub and save their lives.

Back in D.C., the team gets together to celebrate Rossi and Krystall’s wedding and as they exchange vows, Reid and JJ exchange their own awkward glances. JJ stays by her husband’s side for most of the wedding until the end of the episode, when he asks her if she meant what she said. Before she can answer, however, he says that things are O.K. between them, and that is how they will stay.

With JJ being married with children, could the CBS series be setting up for a tumultuous love story between the two BAU members?

Criminal Minds has already been renewed for a 15th and final season.