Criminal Minds Season 5 Episode Guide
Plot summaries for every episode of the fifth season of Criminal Minds, which aired on CBS from September 2009 to May 2010. Hotch recovers from the Reaper’s attack only to face him again in the show’s 100th episode, the team meets Sam Cooper’s Red Cell unit, and the season closes with a serial attacker in Los Angeles known as the Prince of Darkness.
Season 5 recap
Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner spends much of Season 5 of Criminal Minds, which aired on CBS from September 2009 to May 2010, dealing with the Reaper. The cast is unchanged, but the chain of command is not. In “Nameless, Faceless,” Hotch wakes in a hospital after George Foyet stabs him nine times, and Haley and Jack Hotchner are hidden by U.S. Marshals. Hotch returns after more than a month away, but at the end of “Cradle to Grave,” with the bureau questioning his leadership, he steps down as unit chief. Derek Morgan becomes acting chief over David Rossi, Spencer Reid, Emily Prentiss, Jennifer “JJ” Jareau and Penelope Garcia.
In “Outfoxed” a taunting note sent to an imprisoned killer proves to be from Foyet. The 100th episode, “100,” tells the end of the hunt in flashbacks during an inquiry led by Erin Strauss. Foyet tortures and kills the marshal guarding the family, reaches Haley by posing as a marshal himself and takes her and Jack to the house they once shared, where she is shot dead after sending Jack into hiding. Hotch beats Foyet to death, and Jack is unhurt. “The Slave of Duty” opens at Haley’s funeral and closes at her grave, where Hotch says she already knows he is coming back.
Other cases take Rossi back to his Long Island hometown in “Reckoner,” where a dying judge who hired a hitman proves to be the widower of Rossi’s first love. Gavin Rossdale plays a goth singer whose manager has a disturbed fan kill to boost record sales in “The Performer,” and “Mosley Lane,” the first episode Matthew Gray Gubler directed, returns a boy abducted eight years earlier to the mother who never gave up. Forest Whitaker arrives as Sam Cooper of the Red Cell unit in “The Fight,” the backdoor pilot for Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, and Garcia joins a field case in Alaska in “Exit Wounds.”
A Los Angeles heat wave sets up the finale, “Our Darkest Hour.” Tim Curry plays the Prince of Darkness, a killer who uses rolling blackouts to break into homes, spares one witness each time and has been at it for 26 years. His first child survivor is the lead detective, Matt Spicer. At the end Spicer is shot in front of Morgan, the killer takes Spicer’s daughter, Ellie, and Morgan vows to find him, a cliffhanger left for the next episode.
Episodes
- 1
Nameless, Faceless
A vengeful father threatens a trauma surgeon’s teenage son, while the BAU discovers the Reaper has attacked Hotch and found his family.
- 2
Haunted
A Louisville man who stopped his medication to recover lost memories kills three people, and the BAU traces his violence to a decades-old child murder case.
- 3
Reckoner
A dying judge hires a hitman to execute people he believes escaped justice for crimes against children, and the case pulls Rossi back into his Long Island past.
- 4
Hopeless
A trio of construction workers kills strangers for the thrill of it in a gentrifying D.C. neighborhood, while Morgan’s bond with a victim’s sister worries Garcia.
- 5
Cradle to Grave
A couple holds runaways captive to bear children, killing each mother after she gives birth, while pressure from Strauss leads Hotch to step down as unit chief.
- 6
The Eyes Have It
In Morgan’s first case as acting unit chief, the BAU tracks an Oklahoma City killer who hunts people like game and removes their eyes with surgical skill.
- 7
The Performer
When young women in Los Angeles are found drained of blood, the BAU’s trail leads to a goth rock star whose fans worship his vampire persona.
- 8
Outfoxed
As a killer wipes out Virginia military families while the fathers are deployed, Hotch and Prentiss question the imprisoned family annihilator who received the killer’s fan mail.
- 9
100
In the 100th episode, an inquiry into the BAU’s hunt for George Foyet retraces how the Reaper found Hotch’s family in hiding and how the chase ended.
- 10
The Slave of Duty
Days after Haley’s death, the BAU hunts a Nashville killer who forces his victims through a romantic evening, while Hotch decides whether to leave the FBI for his son.
- 11
Retaliation
A paroled bank robber escapes custody with an unlikely accomplice, and the BAU must learn what hold he has over the man before more people die.
- 12
The Uncanny Valley
Women in Atlantic City are drugged into months of conscious paralysis and dressed like dolls, and the BAU traces the killer to a childhood scarred by abuse.
- 13
Risky Business
A run of teen hangings in rural Wyoming looks like suicide until the BAU finds an online choking contest and the adult secretly running it.
- 14
Parasite
A con man juggling ten aliases begins killing the investors who see through him, and the BAU follows his paper trail to the family he keeps hidden.
- 15
Public Enemy
A killer who slashes throats at Providence’s best-loved landmarks lives for the city’s fear, and the BAU stages a public event to draw him out.
- 16
Mosley Lane
When a girl is snatched from a crowded festival, the BAU comes to believe a grieving mother who has spent eight years insisting her own abducted son is still alive.
- 17
Solitary Man
The BAU tracks a lonely trucker who abducts women along the interstates, tests them in his rig and kills those who fail, while he fights to keep his daughter.
- 18
The Fight
Sam Cooper persuades Hotch to defy orders and let his Red Cell team join the BAU’s case in San Francisco, where a former convict abducts fathers and daughters and makes the fathers fight for their lives.
- 19
Rite of Passage
Called to a Texas border town after three severed heads appear outside the sheriff’s station, the BAU hunts a killer who has preyed on migrants for years.
- 20
…A Thousand Words
A serial killer tattooed with his victims’ faces stages his own suicide, and the BAU races to find the hidden partner still holding a missing college student.
- 21
Exit Wounds
With Garcia joining them in the field, the BAU hunts a killer in an isolated Alaska fishing town who preys on residents planning to leave.
- 22
The Internet Is Forever
The BAU hunts a hacker in Boise, Idaho, who studies women through social networks, plants cameras in their homes and streams their murders to an online audience.
- 23
Our Darkest Hour
During a Los Angeles heat wave, the BAU hunts a killer who invades homes during rolling blackouts and always leaves one witness alive, and whose past crimes reach into the lead detective’s childhood.