| “ | I remember. | ” |
— Tina to Tommy.
| ||
Tina Wheeler is the sister of the delusional serial arsonist and mass murderer Tommy Wheeler. She appeared as an incidental character in the Season Four episode of Criminal Minds, "House on Fire".
Background[]
When she and Tommy were five, their parents both died in a house fire, and they were sent to live with their grandparents in Royal, Indiana. While Tommy was more traumatized by the fire and the deaths of their parents, even showing signs of being emotionally unbalanced, she adjusted more quickly. Since their grandparents were probably too old to care for them, she became Tommy's world; by the time they were eight, they even had their own language. Over the years, Tina was unaware that she became Tommy's love map, which soon began to disturb the townspeople, who came to believe Tommy's love for her was incestuous.
In 1998, she and Tommy made plans to go to the Spring Formal, which was being held at the community center. On the night of the dance, Tommy was attacked and brutally beaten by grown men outside of the community center, sustaining numerous critical injuries (which included broken bones and a punctured lung) and nearly dying. No real effort was made to investigate the attack, as no one, not even Tommy, would ever talk about it. Fearing for their grandson's life, Tommy's grandparents, after talking to the chief of police, sent him to a Colorado boarding school, severing all ties between her and Tommy. Despite this, she still kept the photos she had left of them. While Tommy was away, she went to a community college a few towns over, got a degree, took a job as a Fire Department Volunteer and planned to marry her fiancé, Jason Elliot
House on Fire[]
Tina first appears with Rossi and another firefighter responder at the Highland Theater fire and is devasted by the destruction that happened, despite managing to get the fire out fast. Tina comments how they didn't put out the fire fast enough and started to think about all those people that died and all the hate that went into it. Rossi tells them the unsub's rage could have been building through the years; knew exactly what he was doing after years of practicing how to start fires. Tina compares his thoughts to every teenage boy who grew up in Royal as she knew there is really not a lot to do in this small town. Tina reappears later when Pop's Place, a local bar, was burned down as the front and back doors were locked to ensure that no one got out. She begins to cry and comforted by one of her fellow co-workers because she knows Jason Elliot, the owner of the bar and fiancé, was inside and killed in the fire as she just spoke to him on the phone who told her he was coming home.
Opening the front door, she is excited to see that it's her brother Tommy after all those years. He takes her to the local community center to reminisce about a local dance they used to go when they were younger, where he soon talks about him and Tina being soul mates and how 'they' can't stop them anymore. She asks him if he killed those townspeople, including Jason, but Tommy tells her not to say his name, implying that he was jealous of him. She is forced to try and remember the time they had at the Spring Formal before telling him to turn himself in. Tina soon begins to reject him as to the fact that they are siblings and it is incest, causing his hallucinations to worsen; begging him to let her go when the police and BAU, who have discovered his past and track him down, burst in and is taken hostage by him. Refusing Hotch and Carlson's orders to let Tina go, Tommy knocks over a can of gasoline and lights a match, threatening to kill himself and Tina, but Hotch and Rossi manage to calm Tommy down, causing him to regain his senses and let Tina go. Dropping the burnt-out match, Tommy tells Tina he loves her--she knows he does as he is handcuffed and watches him being hauled away by the police and BAU, causing her to cry into Prentiss' arms.