Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for Episodes 1-4 of Criminal Minds: Evolution.
The BAU (Behavioral Analysis Unit) has returned to screens after nearly three years away in Criminal Minds: Evolution. With the first four episodes released, it is clear that this new season will feature a bad guy to rival all those that came before. Some of the show's best-ever unsubs (short for "unknown subjects") include Mr. Scratch, Cat Adams, Frank Breitkopf, Benjamin Cyrus, and the Reaper — not just because their arcs often lasted multiple episodes or reoccurred across multiple seasons but because they also gave the BAU team a real run for their money.
Season 16 brings us a new unsub in Elias Voit (Zach Gilford), who has been killing undetected for over 15 years, and is now the driving force behind a network of serial killers. Akin to a cult leader, Volt, aka Sicarius (after the poisonous Sicarius spider), activates his followers to kill and has enough control to force them into committing suicide when the cops close in. With tech skills to rival Penelope Garcia (Kristen Vangsness), financial backing, and "kill kits" buried all over the USA, this unsub may be the hardest yet for the team to catch. He is also the perfect central villain for the reboot of Criminal Minds, because he is a combination of some of the most impactful and terrifying unsubs that we saw over the first 15 seasons of the show.
RELATED: 'Criminal Minds: Evolution' Cast and Character Guide
Sicarius Exerts Control Over Others to Do His Bidding
Played by Keith Carradine in the original Criminal Minds series, Frank Breitkopf was a sadist who killed over 170 people and enjoyed the pain and fear of his victims. He would kidnap people and torture them inside his kitted-out mobile home, and leave their bodies (sans a rib bone) along Interstate 80. We don't yet have a profile on Voit, but we do know he likes experimenting with killing methods and really enjoys listening to his victims' screams of agony. One of his victims from the container had spiders poured down their throat, then in Episode 3, Voit trained a victim's dog to kill and then commanded him to eat a man alive — so it is a safe bet that he too is a sadist.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Cyrus (Luke Perry) was the leader of a Separatarian cult in Season 4 of the original series. He had many followers, most of whom were willing to die by his word. Benjamin's devotees were so dedicated to him that years after his death they still served his pseudo-religious beliefs and lived by his guiding principles. Voit has similar cult-like power over his followers, and while he uses leverage and threats instead of religion he still has do-or-die control over his disciples who have willingly entered into a "devil's bargain" with him that gives him full command over their lives as well as their deaths.
One of the original series' most notorious unsubs, George Foyet, aka The Reaper, (C. Thomas Howell) was a serial killer from Boston, Massachusetts. He was all about manipulation and power; the mere act of killing itself was not enough for him. He needed to exert control over others, which Voit also likes to do. While Foyet turned this on local police by forcing the lead detective to sign a contract to stop hunting him, Voit controls those within his network, telling them exactly when to begin killing, when to stop, how to evade capture, and how to end their lives when law enforcement catches up to them.
Foyet masqueraded as a Reaper victim for a decade, pretending that he was afraid for his life and enjoying the subterfuge and deceit enough that he could avoid killing for this length of time. Voit is also leading a double life; when he is not promoting murder to his loyalists he is a loving husband and father to his two daughters. However, as we saw in Episode 4 with the disappearance of his previous girlfriend, those he uses as cover are in just as much danger as everyone else.
Sicarius Also Enjoys Killing by Proxy
Peter Lewis, aka. Mr. Scratch (Bodhi Elfman), was introduced in Season 10 when he committed murder by proxy. He would induce psychotic breaks with drugs, and send people into trance-like states where they thought they were in danger from a monster in the dark and so killed the person closest to them, their girlfriends, wives, and mothers. Voit also kills through others, although his proxies are more than willing. He selects his surrogates through the internet when they "audition" for him, making his choices based on those whose fantasies match the kill-kits he has buried around the country.
Cat Adams (Aubrey Plaza) was an assassin who liked to kill up close and would sometimes kill the person who hired her instead of the intended target. Cat, or 'Ms. 45,' was originally introduced as one of four criminally sophisticated killers that made up an unnamed online network of assassins. Each of the assassins within this network had a specialty — one who made deaths look like accidents, a sniper, a chemist, a bomber, and a black widow — just as each of Sicarius's "kill-boxes" has a special purpose, like acid, fire, and strangulation. Voit is also a part of a network of killers, but these killers are not assassins; they kill for enjoyment, not profit. While Cat Adams and her "colleagues" required the help of the Snowman (Erich Riegelmann) a teenage computer expert to set up their network, Voit (as far as we know) set up his network entirely on his own.
Although formidable, the mistake made by most of these unsubs was to make things personal with the BAU team. Cat Adams orchestrated a vendetta against Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) which sent him to prison, Frank killed Jason Gideon's (Mandy Patinkin) girlfriend Sarah (Moira Squier) and went after the team's saved victims, and the Reaper killed Aaron Hotchner's (Thomas Gibson) ex-wife Haley (Meredith Monroe), and it inevitably cost them their lives.
The opposite is so far true for this season of Criminal Minds. Sicarius is not making things personal, the BAU is. They are under threat of being dismantled and need to close this case so that they are not reassigned, replaced, and retired. So far, Voit has managed to stay hidden, and while he manages to keep to his "rules" the team does not have much hope of catching him. However, with the stressors of an asshole neighbor, negative bank balances, redundancy, and private school payments due, even someone as rigorous as this unsub is bound to make mistakes that will bring him face-to-face with the team. When this happens, we will get to see our favorite profilers do what they do best and take down the worst bad guy we could ever possibly imagine.
Criminal Minds: Evolution premieres new episodes weekly every Thursday on Paramount+.
