Paramount+'s Crime Masterpiece Rips Up the Serial Killer Rulebook—21 Years Later

Two decades in, Criminal Minds is still finding new ways to mess with our heads. Paramount+ just dropped a fresh look at the next run of Criminal Minds: Evolution, and the show is taking a big swing: turning its nastiest killer into a resource. Bold move, considering the body count.

Quick context: the show that outlived the trend

Crime dramas never really go out of style. Network, cable, streaming — they all keep them alive for a reason. Law & Order, SVU, NCIS — those machines just keep running. Criminal Minds did 15 seasons on CBS, then pulled off the rare transfer to streaming, where Paramount+ rebranded it as Criminal Minds: Evolution and leaned darker without losing the core vibe. Most of the original creative team came along for the ride, which is why the tone and quality have stayed consistent even as the format shifted.

How the Elias Voit situation turned into the show's new rulebook

• Season 16 (Evolution season 1): We meet Elias Voit, aka Sicarius (played by Zach Gilford), not just a prolific killer but the architect of a murder network. He isn't just doing the crimes — he's franchising them.
• He specifically targets and toys with members of the BAU, including Dave Rossi and JJ Jarreau, which makes him more than just another case file.
• Season 18: A medical emergency jolts Voit's arc in a new direction. Instead of a straight line to consequences, the show starts pivoting him toward something that looks a lot like rehabilitation.
• Season 19 (Evolution season 4): Per the new trailer, the BAU no longer treats Voit like the monster under the bed. He's still locked up, but now he's positioned as a 'resource' — essentially consulting as part of a redemption track.

The big swing in season 19

The trailer frames this as the series rewriting its own playbook: after years of catching monsters, the BAU is now leveraging one of its worst. It's a provocative angle for a show that built its legacy on profiling predators and putting them away. The pitch is clear: what if the most dangerous unsub can help you stop the next one?

Does Voit deserve a redemption arc?

Short answer: not yet. I get the appeal of a well-earned turn — TV loves a reformed devil. But in Voit's case, the ledger is nowhere close to balanced. He killed a lot of people over a lot of years and recruited others to do the same. Season 18 gave us his traumatic backstory, but that context doesn't cancel out choices. And foregrounding his pain risks softening the impact of what he did to the victims, the families, and the BAU team he terrorized.

Where this could still work

Using Voit as an information source makes sense inside the show's profiling-first DNA. Keep him behind bars, keep him useful, and do not sand down the edges of who he is or what he did. His cooperation should feel like the bare minimum — not absolution, not a victory lap. If the writers hold that line, they get the tension of the unholy alliance without rewriting history.

Criminal Minds has earned a lot of trust by staying sharp through big changes, especially after the jump to Paramount+. If season 19 is going to rehabilitate its worst unsub, it needs to do it without rehabilitating his crimes. If they pull that off, this could be the show tightening its screws all over again — not loosening them.