Plot

In this first part of a two-part season finale, the BAU encounters a gang of bank-robbing serial killers in the nation's capital. As the team tries to negotiate the situation unfolding inside a bank, one of the team is taken hostage.

It's a lazy Saturday morning, a day off for the BAU. Beth has come over to Hotch's house to spend the day with him and Jack; JJ plays with Henry while Will goes off to work; Morgan goes through Prentiss' just-purchased house with her, the purchase pending the inspection which she seems to want to go badly (as she seems to have buyer's remorse); Reid is Garcia's unofficial date to a sci-fi convention since she and Kevin split over his planned marriage proposal; and, Rossi heads home to bed after an all night cigar aficionado event... or so he says to Garcia and Reid, whom he runs into. Their collective quiet is shattered when they are called to a botched bank robbery attempt, at which Will and his partner are one of the first on the scene. This robbery is the latest in a string committed by a group calling themselves the Face Cards, since the three robbers each wear a mask of a playing card (king, queen and jack, respectively). At each of the seven robberies thus far, they have been unidentifiable, and they have killed one person by a gunshot to the abdomen, which the police, up to this point, considered secondary to the robberies themselves. The three are holed up inside the bank with several hostages, they've killed their trademark one person, but they have no way out and the "jack" has a serious gunshot wound inflicted by Will upon his arrival. There is a stated hierarchy within the group, with the "king" as leader. Using recognition software, Garcia is able to identify the two males as brothers Chris and Oliver Stratton, low level criminals. Even after she takes her mask off and plays to the the surveillance cameras, the "queen of diamonds" is unidentifiable. The career status of the brothers and the actions of the queen make the team to conclude that she is the real leader and with a hidden agenda beyond her vanity and sadistic streak (as she is the one who has done all the killing thus far). They also learn that she is working with someone on the outside. They have to discover her identity, her motivation, and her outside accomplice before she kills more hostages.—Huggo