Criminal Minds has had numerous cast changes over its 21 years on air. Jason Gideon exited early in the drama show's run, Elle Greenaway left the BAU in Season 2, Derek Morgan eventually departed to focus on family, and Aaron Hotchner disappeared from Criminal Minds after over a decade at its center. Even later additions have come and gone – not to mention that JJ and Emily Prentiss both left and returned – yet the BAU has always found a way to rebuild around whoever remains.
Spencer Reid has proved much harder to replace. Matthew Gray Gubler was part of Criminal Minds from its very first episode through its original series finale, but he didn't return as a regular when Criminal Minds: Evolution launched back in 2022. Reid has since made a brief return, yet he's still not back on the BAU's weekly lineup. However, Criminal Minds may have solved that problem long before Reid disappeared with a character who joined the show eight seasons ago.
Every member of the BAU brings something different to a profile, but Reid was always the team's most obvious intellectual weapon. Introduced as a young genius with an IQ of 187, an eidetic memory, and an ability to read at an extraordinary speed, Reid could recall obscure statistics, recognize patterns, and provide information on subjects ranging from mathematics and engineering to psychology. He also accumulated multiple degrees at an age when most people were still deciding what they wanted to do with their lives.
Those abilities obviously made Reid invaluable, though they weren't the only reason he became such an important part of Criminal Minds. He was frequently the team's most academically minded and empathetic profiler, capable of approaching an Unsub's behavior from an angle nobody else had considered. Reid could produce an obscure fact to break open a case one week and then use his psychological understanding to get inside a killer's head the next, and he frequently did. His awkwardness and inexperience in the field early on in Criminal Minds also made him stand out compared to traditionally imposing agents, like Hotch and Morgan.
Reid was also part of some of Criminal Minds' biggest storylines: Tobias Hankel kidnapped and tortured Reid in Season 2, which led to his struggle with Dilaudid. He developed a complicated relationship with Maeve Donovan before she was murdered in front of him, repeatedly crossed paths with Aubrey Plaza's Cat Adams, and spent part of Season 12 imprisoned after being framed for murder in Mexico. His intelligence obviously made him an asset to the BAU, but Criminal Minds frequently turned the intelligence against him with Unsubs who could challenge him in a game of wits.
Reid was still in the BAU when Criminal Minds ended in 2020, so he never received a traditional departure storyline. Instead, Matthew Grey Gubler didn't return when Paramount+ revived the series as Criminal Minds: Evolution in 2022, and within the story, Reid was still a part of the team but was just on assignment. Behind the scenes, showrunner Erica Messer said that scheduling prevented the actor from returning, and Reid only briefly returned in Season 18 to support JJ after she lost her husband, Will. So, while Criminal Minds hasn't closed the door on Reid, someone else has inevitably had to step up and provide at least some of the expertise that Reid brought to every case.
Dr. Tara Lewis wasn't created to replace Spencer Reid. When Aisha Tyler joined the show in Season 11, Reid was very much still part of Criminal Minds, and Tara initially helped fill the opening left by Kate Callahan's departure. Tara's background immediately made her different from most of the BAU, though; she was a forensic psychologist who had spent the past 12 years studying and interviewing criminals after the authorities had caught them, which led her to decide to help catch them herself.
Tara's expertise gave her something very valuable to the FBI: the ability to get inside an offender's head through direct psychological evaluation. Her introduction in "The Job" proves this, when she explains how she adopted the facial expressions, voice patterns, and cadence of a serial killer's wife to manipulate him into revealing what she needed to know. The BAU then gained another profiler and a different academic specialist who could understand how dangerous minds worked.
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