u/absolutelydari

I’m currently watching Criminal Minds: Evolution after binge watching the first 15 seasons of Criminal Minds. I found this parallel that intrigues me. One of the intriguing moral dilemmas for me has been the way David Rossi was concerned about his books potentially being used by serial killers to learn from. In season four, when a serial killer used his books to study killing, the episode where the girl who wanted to be a profiler goes to Rossi’s book signing and then gets killed, Rossi expresses concern to the team that his books could do more harm when the public has access to it. His teammates reassure him that law-enforcement officers and profilers have used his books for good and even led them to become profilers themselves. He occasionally has worries about that throughout the series, but his teammates are able to reassure him.

What’s interesting to me is that a core theme of Criminal Minds: Evolution is Rossi’s worst nightmare, becoming reality. The fact that the most prolific serial killer that he’s ever seen in his career is someone who religiously studied his books like textbooks and used them as training material for him to kill people and hide his kills from the FBI has got to be the most devastating outcome he could’ve imagined.

Not only is Voit’s intelligence a major challenge to the BAU’s ability to pin him down, the fact that technically Rossi trained him himself has got to be disorienting.

TLDR; it’s interesting to me how Rossi’s worst nightmare in the original criminal minds eventually comes to pass in evolution when Voit obsessively studied Rossi’s work and used it as training material to get away with killing over 60 people.