What To Know
In a pivotal episode of FBI, Maggie faces her worst nightmare: serial slasher Ray DiStefano kidnapping her sister.
Missy Peregrym breaks down the emotional episode, including the shocking ending, and what it means for Maggie going forward.
Maggie (Missy Peregrym) faces her worst nightmare in the Monday, March 16, episode of FBI. Her first arrest, serial slasher Ray DiStefano (Matthew Rauch), has kidnapped her sister, Erin (Adrienne Rose Bengtsson) — and they have yet to repair their relationship. It’s an hour that features probably Peregrym’s best performance to date on the CBS drama, one that’s so raw and so emotional and should be honored in some way despite procedurals like this not being recognized at award shows.
But will they have the chance? It doesn’t take long for Ray to also take Maggie, leading to the two facing off in a cabin in the woods while the rest of the team, including her partner OA (Zeeko Zaki) and retired profiler Peter Olsen (Zach Grenier), rush to find her before it’s too late. TV Insider spoke with Peregrym about the Maggie-centric episode, filming that last scene, and how Maggie moves forward. Warning: Spoilers for FBI Season 8 Episode 14 ahead!
Erin is taken when she thinks she’s meeting a guy she’s been talking to online — and being honest with regarding her and Maggie’s relationship — only for it to turn out she was catfished by Ray. Maggie doesn’t think it would’ve been possible if she’d been in Erin’s life. But Ray doesn’t kill, Maggie notes. Something’s changed. While following a lead with Peter, Maggie’s abducted and Peter’s knocked unconscious.
When Maggie comes to, Ray has her chained to the floor and taunts her with what Erin told him. He tells her he wants to give her a scar she can’t hide or pretend doesn’t exist (like the one he did in the past). She’s willing to play his game, she tells him. But as he sees it, this is a reckoning, for betraying what they had and him by lying about his father. To get information out of him during a previous case, Maggie said she’d look into him getting furlough to see his dying father, but he had already passed. Own up to what she did and apologize, and he’ll let Erin go, he says.
Maggie does just that, but he claims he doesn’t buy it. Ray tells her she made Erin feel like a burden, suggesting that she doesn’t love Erin because she’s not strong like her. Maggie insists that’s not true but does admit that her sister scares her because she can’t control her or fix her, and since she can’t do that, she can’t protect her, which is all she’s ever wanted to do. Emotional, Maggie begs Ray to let Erin go — and then the moment she has the opportunity, she lashes out, disarming him and choking him using the chains around her wrists until he’s unconscious, even as he stabs her in the leg. She frees herself, cuffs him, and runs outside to search for her sister. She glances in the truck, but it’s locked, and after seeing Erin’s necklace, one she bought her for her 13th birthday, on the ground, heads into the woods.
Meanwhile, Peter knows that this is about vengeance for Ray, and so his father is at the heart of it. That leads the team to a campground where his dad used to take him, and Peter goes with OA to check it out.
Ray frees himself and chases Maggie, with their confrontation ending near a cliff. He reminds her of what he said about giving her a scar she could never hide, and during their subsequent fight, he goes over the edge but grabs onto her. He falls to his death, and OA pulls Maggie up after she catches herself on a branch.
Bennett Raglin/CBS
But then comes time to find Erin, and Maggie returns to the cabin to see Peter standing outside the truck. Erin’s dead, inside, and Maggie cries and rages in grief over her body.
Below, Missy Peregrym gets emotional taking us inside filming that last scene, discusses that major loss for Maggie, and reveals how the FBI agent will be doing going forward.
That was such a heartbreaking ending. Episodes like this, you assume that Maggie will find Erin alive, that Ray was just taunting her, but instead we find out that Erin was already dead in that truck. Talk about reading the script and your reaction, especially to that ending.
Missy Peregrym: We have a great writing team and Mike [Weiss, showrunner] was super receptive to my feelings about the script. I was scared to do this script. I was scared to play this part, knowing what a dark place I would have to go to to just live in that moment, and I really cared that if I had to go that far that we did this as grounded and real and scary as possible. And so it was amazing to work with them to figure out, what would be the most heartbreaking thing? Originally, it was written where there was a little bit more of a wrap-up with Peter in the episode. And I just felt like, “Ugh, how could you even talk after discovering your sister?”
I didn’t really know how it was going to go. Yangzom [Brauen] was the director on this episode, and it was so scary. I just kind of went to work and I was like, “OK, I know what I have to do today, but I don’t know how I’m going to do this. I know where I need to go, but I don’t know what my body’s going to do.” And we did it in one take. Zeeko was joking around with me before, and I was like, “Get away from me.” I was like, “I can’t be laughing right now.” He was so respectful and he just stayed really still because the scene began from when I was running from the woods to seeing Peter’s face, to knowing this isn’t good, to then discovering her in the back of the truck. But I didn’t look at Erin beforehand. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to know what I was — I didn’t know anything. And so when I turn that corner and go into the truck, that was the first time I was experiencing that moment, and it was hell.
It was hell. And I think what was really important for everybody in terms of telling the story, and specifically for me, is everybody’s lost somebody, we’re experiencing this a lot. It’s obviously not going to be the same scenario, but that grief and that fear and that, oh, it’s the worst feeling in the whole world. And I didn’t want it to wrap up. I didn’t want it to feel OK in the end. It makes me cry thinking about it now because it’s real.
We’re a procedural show, so we don’t get to go this deep into the character, and I’m really grateful to the writers for trusting me with this episode in the moment, as scared as I was to do it. And I’m grateful — I haven’t seen it. I’m grateful that it’s turned out well, but my hope is that people can really relate to Maggie in the next chapter of having to get back up and how does she make sense of her world now after this gigantic loss, not even just with Erin, but with her career? How can she trust herself to move forward and be herself and be vulnerable or do her job without feeling that anybody she loves or herself is not going to be threatened again?
Bennett Raglin/CBS
I was going to say what stands out to me is the fact that not even OA can comfort her in that moment.
No, no. There’s nothing to say. I remember when we were filming it — again, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I remember looking back at him just desperately and the look on his face was so perfect. Do you know what I mean? He didn’t know what I … Nobody knew what was going to happen in that scene. And I have to say, it was just remarkable the way everybody just stayed present, perfect marks. And it was a miracle take. It was a miracle take. There was no camera problems. I mean, the crew, every single person was so solid and present for that moment. And I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget it. I’m just very grateful.
Did you have any conversations with Mike or any of the writers about why Erin was killed off and if there was any consideration about her surviving?
Not really. I didn’t ask why she didn’t survive. Really, what they wanted to do was to put Maggie in a position — I mean, they brought together DiStefano, my most vulnerable work person, with my most vulnerable family member and just made this huge explosion, and it’s such good TV. I think that was the plan. I think the idea is that to have Peter there, and it’s profiling, this is something that I’ve been working on, and to have to try to figure DiStefano out with my sister being on the line, her life being on the line, trying to beat him to get to her to save her life, there’s nothing else you could take from Maggie. I can’t go to a worse place for my character. So, kind of grateful for that. Hopefully things are looking up from here.
Also, Ray was her first arrest.
Right. Right.
So, what was harder for Maggie, being held captive by Ray or being forced by him to be honest about how she felt regarding her sister?
That was a really interesting scene to play because the truth is, he’s trying to get to me and he’s saying things, but the heartbreaking part is that he’s telling me the truth about my sister and I don’t even know this information. I don’t really know — He had the conversations with her over text messages and messaging. So, he’s informing me about how she feels about me and hearing it come from his mouth is sickening.
Then the truth of the matter is, and this is what we worked on with Mike, he says something that I could easily just go, “That’s not true,” but it is true. There is a part of me that wishes so badly that my sister could just get a little bit more of a grip with her addiction or whatever, the things that she’s really struggling with, just be a little more present so that A, we could have a relationship and B, I would be able to relax. I would be able to protect her. I would be able to feel comfortable finally that the one person I just care about the most, that I would be able to … I could love her properly. The thing I do in my job, I could do for her. And it scares me. She scares the crap out of me that I’m helpless and I hate that feeling so much on it. And so for him to get that out of me is perfect.
I was so excited that we were having a real moment and it’s not just a typical scene of, oh, the bad guy and the good guy; it’s complicated and I have to play it right. I have to be able to get out of there. And then so all of a sudden, it’s like I’m having a real moment which makes him feel like we’re having intimacy. We’re not. I’m breaking, and he thinks it’s because we’re connecting. So, to come towards me, and then I just see the opportunity to get out of my situation… But it wasn’t a tactic. It was just me genuinely — here’s the thing, too, that’s really tricky. I’m BAU. I’m trying to be BAU. I’m learning how to profile, but in this moment, it’s too close. It’s too close to my heart to just be professional here. The risk is too great for me to be able to compartmentalize, which I also loved.
Yeah, because it’s seeing Maggie as a sister.
That’s right.
What are we going to see from her grief going forward? Because there also has to be so much regret mixed up in it, given how the sisters’ relationship was.
Totally. This is the tricky part of our show. You’ve got to be able to turn the TV on and watch an episode out of order and understand what’s happening. And so, we don’t really carry on storylines for a very long time. Obviously, I’m impacted by this. I’m actually off the next episode — we’re saying that I’m dealing with the funeral and that stuff. Then, I come back, and my thinking is that I just have to get back to work. What else do I have? This is how I dealt with the death of my husband, and this is how I’ve moved forward. I’ve had to give [her late friend’s daughter] Ella away because of the risk of, again, DiStefano. And so it’s the only way I’ve known how to move forward is to get back to work, and I think that’ll help me stabilize. I don’t want to say too much, but it’s just not what I think moving forward.
And so we do address that, obviously, and it’s still stuff that I carry with me. I’ll never be the same to a certain degree. Never. I’ll never be the same. Which again was why I was so scared to go this far with my character. Playing something for eight years and then all of a sudden having a loss like this, you don’t ever go back to the person you were before. You’ve got to navigate a completely different set of, I don’t even know, rules, set of understanding, trying to figure out where your place is anymore. What can you trust? And it’s terrifying.
We talked about how she couldn’t lean on OA in that moment in this episode, but is she going to lean on him going forward? Is she going to talk to anyone else like Isobel (Alana De La Garza)?
Yeah, we’re going to see her talking to Isobel. And OA checks in, for sure. I speak with Peter about it. And there’s a couple comments here and there with other characters, which is nice, but nothing is as in depth as this episode in the same way.
Because it’s also Maggie trying to figure out how to move on and in order to move on, she can’t keep talking about it, right?
Right. You can’t. Also, there’s work to do. We’re not a character show where we sit around in our living room and chat about everything. I’m choosing to come to work because there’s work to do. So, it’s finding those moments to have those discussions and figure those things out, but we still have cases to solve.
FBI, Mondays, 9/8c, CBS