Since the show started back in 2005, Criminal Minds has had a handful of recognizable actors join episodes for various different roles ranging from agents, victims, and perps. These iconic actors helped make some of the most memorable episodes of the show.
- Matthew Lillard – season 8 episode 6. ‘The Apprenticeship’
- Since he is one of my favorite actors, it only makes sense I’d include the amazing Matthew Lillard on this list. He appeared on the show for season 8 episode 6 ‘The Apprenticeship’ where he plays David Roy Turner, a serial killer who takes a teenage boy under his wing to form a killing duo that quickly goes sour when his apprentice proves to be a careless teen who leads the FBI right to Turner’s door. In comparison to his other roles, Lillard truly embodies the coldness of a serial killer which is so different from his earlier performance as a killer in the 1999 movie Scream, where he plays Stu, a teenage serial killer who lacks the maturity that his criminal minds character has, giving us two completely different serial killer performances from the same actor. Lillard’s character ends up being shot by agent Derek Morgan at the end of the episode concluding his iconically chilling performance on the show.
- Evan Peters – season 5 episode 16 ‘Mosely Lane’
- ‘Mosley Lane’ is truly one of the most heartbreaking episodes on the show with Evan Peters playing Charlie Hillridge, who is one of the victims of kidnappers who spent their years kidnapping children and rather than killing them the couple keeps them for years abusing the kids and using them to obtain more. The focus of this episode is on a little girl named Amy who gets kidnapped by the same couple that took Charlie years prior. Charlie’s mother helps the BAU realize that this couple is to blame for multiple kidnappings going back 10 years. The team gets the parents of the missing children together for interviews and to help in their investigation. The parents stayed in the BAU until the team returned with the surviving children Amy and Charlie being among them. The episode ends when Peters’ character goes up to the parents of one of deceased children to say how sorry he is for their loss and his role in everything. They accept his condolences and ask how long their son has been dead, leading Charlie to share that their son died a day earlier protecting Amy from the kidnappers’ abuse, ending the episode with one of the most heartbreaking sentences spoken on the show, “he was alive yesterday?”
- Ariel Winter – season 3 episode 5. ‘Seven Seconds’
- Ariel Winter, most known for her role as Alex Dunphy in Modern Family, started her acting career in criminal minds with the role of Katie Jacobs in season 3 episode 5. Katie goes missing from the mall while spending time with her parents, cousin, aunt Susan and uncle Richard. After investigating Katie’s house the BAU discovers multiple signs of childhood molestation at the hand of her uncle and it is discovered that after finding out what her husband was doing Susan decided that taking out Katie was the only way to fix her marriage. The episode ends with the team finding and saving Katie after Susan’s confession. While Winters did not have a significant acting presence throughout the episode this is still marked as her first role in a big tv show and one of the most memorable episodes in the earlier seasons.
- Cameron Monaghan – season 2 episode 6. ‘The Boogeyman’
- Prior to his role in Shameless, Cameron Monaghan played Jeffrey Charles in season 2 episode 16 ‘the boogeyman’. In this episode, a small town is shaken by a killer who is targeting children in the community but what they don’t know is the killer is a child himself. It is discovered that the son of the town guidance counselor was taking out his rage on children his father was helping after his mother abandoned him. The team tracks Jeffrey down to the woods where he is chasing after a young girl named Tracy Belle. The team is able to easily apprehend Jeffery and save Tracy. When asked why he did it Jeffrey simply says because he wanted to, concluding the terrifyingly compelling performance by a very young Cameron Monaghan.
- Elle Fanning – season 2 episodes 6 ‘The Boogeyman’ & 23 ‘no way out 2: the evilution of frank’
- Elle Fanning makes her first appearance on the show as Tracy Belle, the young girl that Cameron Managhan’s character Jeffrey tried to kill in season 2 episode 6. She later returns in season 2 episode 23 when recurring serial killer ‘Frank’ steals a notebook from Agent Gideon that has the names of everyone he has saved and lost. Frank kidnaps Tracy and has her make a call to Gideon asking if he remembers her and to save her like he already did once before. Her performance on the show ends when Gideon takes out Frank and Agents JJ and Reid find Tracy unharmed in a walk-in closet. Her last scene on the show, shows her calling Gideon one final time to say thank you for saving her life twice.
- Tyler James Williams – season 10 episode 19
- Seeing the star of Let It Shine in criminal minds was never something I anticipated making his cameo all the better. Tyler James Williams plays Russ ‘Monty’ Montgomery, the tech analyst for the FBI’s international response team that calls upon the BAU team to help them when a family of four is abducted during their vacation in Barbados. During this episode Monty works closely with BAU tech analyst Penelope Garcia trying to find who could’ve taken an entire family. They found other similar cases from around the Caribbean and all of them happened in April. With this information Monty and Garcia are able to go through airport security video from those times and find out the unsub is using a van to kidnap his victims. Williams’ time on Criminal Minds was short but the shock factor alone from seeing him in the show made his performance and episode that much more memorable. This episode was the pilot to a spin-off show called Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders that was canceled after 2 seasons.
- Tim Curry – season 5 episode 23 ‘our darkest hour’ & season 6 episode 1 ‘the longest night’
- Tim Curry who is known for his role Pennywise in IT definitely brought the same horrifying performance to his episodes in this show. He plays Billy Flynn aka The Prince of Darkness, a serial killer who terrorizes LA for years specifically attacking during power outages. In the beginning of his terror reign he would attack families sparring the children and one of the children he left alive is Matt Spicer who ends up becoming a prominent police detective 26 years later in LA and is the one who calls in the BAU to help when more families were being attacked during power outages. Once Flynn finds out who Matt is to him and that he has a daughter he kills Spicer, kidnaps his daughter Ellie and forces her to act as his accomplice. During the BAU’s attempt to find Flynn and save Ellie, Agent JJ makes a statement empathizing with Flynn and showing him that he is hurting Ellie the same way he was hurt as a child. Curry’s acting in the scene alone should have won awards; he did such a stellar job adding depth to such a disgusting character. After hearing JJ’s statement Flynn lets Ellie go and requests that Agent Morgan arrest him alone. After an emotional conversation Flynn commits suicide by cop by raising his weapon forcing Morgan to shoot hum. Tim Curry is such a phenomenal actor, he was only given 2 episodes and he is one of the most iconic killers on the show, he added so much depth to Billy Flynn making him one of the most memorable killers in the entire show.
- Mark Hamill – season 8 episodes 23 & 24
- Mark Hamill’s role on Criminal Minds as John Curtis (aka the replicator) was so compelling and harrowing, despite the audience not having a face for who the Replicator was for most of his character build up. Once he was shown however, Hamill gave us such a dedicated performance and a very interesting plot line for the season 8 finale. The way he took out Chief Strauss, drugged agent Rossi and committed so many atrocities while being an FBI agent kept the audience engaged making him a fan favorite and making season 8 a popular favorite. Curtis had unimaginable intelligence, and his character is marked as one of the FBI’s most narcissistic serial killers. His own narcissism ends up costing him his life because in an attempt to trap the BAU team and blow them up, agent Rossi uses one of Strauss’s sober chips to block the lock from engaging, allowing him to escape and instead trap Curtis in a tomb of his own making. Seeing Hamill in such a disturbing role was shocking especially because of how well he played it. The shock value from seeing Luke Skywalker play a serial killer so well has also made The Replicator a fan favorite and such an iconic addition to their guest stat list.
- C. Thomas Howell – recurring throughout season 4 & 5
- Howell is probably the most memorable unsub for most fans solely because of how recurring he was with his character George Foyet being present for most of seasons 4 and 5 as well as coming back in seasons 9 and 15 as a memory for Hotch and Reid. His introduction into the show was one of the most well written story lines I have ever seen. Foyet is initially seen as a victim of ‘The Reaper’ a serial killer who ended up fixated on Hotch and ruining his life. Foyet is found in the front seat of a car next to his fiancé who ends up passing away. Foyet is interviewed by the BAU multiple times in relation to The Reaper case and during one interview he asks the agents if they have any idea how long it takes to stab someone 67 times when talking about his fiancé and after Hotch reviews the files, he realizes the fiancé had exactly 67 stab wounds and that George Foyet was in fact The Reaper. He offers Hotch a deal where he will stop killing if the BAU stops their pursuit of him to which they refuse. Howell’s run on the show ends when he murders Hotch’s exwife and Hotch murders him. Foyet only returns through flashbacks in later seasons.
- Aubry Plaza
- Arguably the most iconic cameo the show has had would be casting Aubry Plaza as Cat Adams the infamous Black Widow killer who appears in many episodes throughout seasons 11 and 12. She was known for terrorizing Agent Spencer Reid (played by Mattew Gray Gubler) by framing him for murder, kidnapping his girlfriend’s family and kissing him in front of said girlfriend. She is my all-time favorite unsub of the entire show, her performance was compelling, chilling and so harrowing as you truly never knew what her character was going to do next. Her time on the show ended when her character was apprehended and executed. Her performance on Criminal Minds marked Cat Adams as one of the most chilling unsubs in the entire show.