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Criminal Minds Fans Have Convincing Theory About Who Gold Star Could Be

Criminal Minds Fans Have Convincing Theory About Who Gold Star Could Be
Image credit: CBS, Paramount+

It seems the BAU is in for a lot more mind games.

Summary

  • Criminal Minds: Evolution returns with the Gold Star mystery.
  • The veil of secrecy surrounding this nickname has been lifted, but it has sparked a new, disturbing investigation for the BAU.
  • While the profilers struggle to figure out who exactly Gold Star is, fans have a plausible theory.

The second season of the Paramount+ revival of Criminal Minds, titled Evolution, premiered with a bang. In fact, the two new episodes, Gold Star and Contagion, which landed on the streaming platform on June 6, have some of the highest scores on IMDb.

Even though this season is going to be as Spencer Reid-less as the previous one, the rest of the BAU team is doing a really great job of keeping fans glued to their screens. The mystery of the Gold Star and the rivalry with Elias Voit aka Sicarius, both of which originated in Season 1, raise a lot of burning questions and intriguing potential storylines.

Gold Star

The phrase 'Gold Star' first appeared as a bargaining chip used by Voit to get away with his multiple murders. The words meant as little to the BAU as they did to viewers, but Deputy Director Doug Bailey saw them as a reason to get in a room alone with Voit, which cost him his life.

Season 2 lifted the veil of secrecy surrounding Gold Star. The nickname hides an unsub, a highly trained killer who commits gruesome murders out of revenge, leaving bullets with a star engraved on them at the crime scenes. Apparently, the secrecy surrounding this individual is due to his affiliation with a federal agency.

The FBI and DOJ were so afraid of letting the information about the unsub get out that they kept the investigation under wraps and made a deal with Voit: if he can provide the information that will help catch Gold Star, he will never be charged with Sicarius' murders. And it seems he can.

Criminal Minds Fans Have Convincing Theory About Who Gold Star Could Be - image 1

During the COVID pandemic, Voit created a network of serial killers through which he communicated with Gold Star. So now he is playing mind games with the BAU, who are less than happy with the direction things are taking.

Fan Theory

Our beloved profilers are determined to catch Gold Star all by themselves so that Voit cannot escape justice. So far, however, their efforts don't seem to be working. They are stuck on the idea that the unsub is a highly trained and methodical assassin, probably a soldier, a cop or an agent. But Voit has torn this version to shreds, which has led the fans to come up with their own theory about Gold Star. And it sounds convincing.

Based on Voit's words that Gold Star is 'more than a serial killer, more than an assassin,' and his total disregard for the usual profiler methods of analysis, Criminal Minds fans think it could be the network within the network.

Crazy, right? Well, not really. If someone with formal training, probably someone from the BAU past (which is heavily implied in the show), created a group of killers and gave them clear instructions on how to commit murders without leaving any evidence, then analyzing M.O., victimology, and signatures would be useless. And that's exactly what Voit means when he talks about the BAU's tunnel vision problem.

In this case, the profilers are being led to this case like a mouse to cheese, and we are really worried about them.

The next Criminal Minds episode, Homesick, is scheduled to air on Paramount+ on June 13, 2024.

Do you think the theory that Gold Star could be a team of killers is plausible?