What’s the work?[]
Criminal Minds is an American police procedural crime drama television series created and produced by Jeff Davis and Erica Messer. The story follows the BAU, an analysis unit of the FBI that specializes in the profiles of "unsubs". This is the season finale character and one I think is a solid count.
Who is Everett Lynch?[]
Out of every image they could have of Everrett on the criminal minds wiki, they pick the one with the blur.
Everett Lynch, also known as "The Chameleon", is a recurring villain in the final two seasons of the CBS TV series Criminal Minds, appearing as the titular main antagonist of the Season 14 episode "Chameleon" and the main antagonist of Season 15. He is a con artist and serial killer who swindles and murders wealthy women before cutting off their faces. He is the second archenemy of David Rossi.
What makes him heinous?[]
Everett Lynch was forced to assist his mother by acting like a poor 7-year-old boy so Roberta could steal the money from men. When Roberta neglected his daughter Grace, leaving her to almost drown, he couldn't forgive her and left. Lynch became misogynistic due to this and would start killing women by faking an identity, instigating a month-long relationship, giving a sob story, proposing to them, stealing their money, strangling them, cutting off their faces, and burning down their houses. At the time of the episode, Everett has killed 9 of them and started a relationship with Mary Cullen.
While the relationship with Mary begins as usual, it goes downhill when she proposes to him instead, angering him enough to bash her in the head with a vase in front of his daughter. At the Cullen house standoff, he keeps Cullen captive in a barn and forces Grace to attack Luke Alvez and Spencer Reid with a knife. While inside the barn, he attempts to shoot at Cullen, Tara Lewis, Matthew Simmons, and David Rossi. When Rossi attempted to flank Lynch after he ran away, Rossi was tackled into a bush, strangled until unconsciousness, and cut on the forehead as a sign that Lynch could have killed him.
In exchange for a lawyer to steal an identity from, he teaches Sebastian Hurst how to lure and murder victims, resulting in the deaths of 3 men and the attempted murder of another. After he kills Arthur Terrel, he poses as Grace’s lawyer, stabs a U.S. marshal to death, and shoots 3 others. At the parking lot, Everett is cornered by JJ and forced to drop his gun, but fortunately for him, Grace has a gun in her jacket, and when JJ reaches to pick up Everett’s gun, she shoots JJ in the stomach. Everett abandons the van, carjacks a man, and drives to a secluded place; he says they must split up, but Grace demands he come. Grace shoots and kills a couple and manipulates her former ex-girlfriend into coming to her house, but when she does get there, robs her, binds her, and cuts off her fingertip to get into her parents' bank. After Grace is deemed a loose end, he strangles her, smothers her, and cuts off her face while chanting the same phrase his dad said.
In the next few months, Everett starts back up his M.O. by killing Alexandria Duggan, and then Marilyn Irwin by befriending her diabetic daughter. To get revenge on his father for drowning him when young, he hires a private investigator to find his location. Lynch goes to a place in the middle of the forest at the behest of David Rossi and says that if he is hurt, the diabetic teenager will die from her disease, though the threat was empty as the medicine was in the fridge. Returning to his house as Roberta had already killed Delvin, Roberta finds him in the basement and takes him hostage. Everett then shows the body of Olivia’s mother and releases Olivia to the police. Alone with her son, Roberta tears up as she can't bring herself to kill her son, which gives Everett the chance to knock her out and blow up the house's gas mains. Unfortunately, SWAT agents enter the house just as it blows up, resulting in the deaths of Roberta, six SWAT agents, and Orlando Gaines. Due to the explosion, it also injures several cops and Spencer Reid, who receives intracranial hemorrhage.
Believing Lynch to be dead, the BAU has a party, but they later find information that he is alive. After FBI agents are dispatched to the BAU families, Reid is found on the floor suffering from a seizure. Lynch, being obsessed with tormenting Rossi, murders the FBI agent guarding the house, steals the agent's outfit, and takes Rossi’s wife Krystall Richards hostage. At the airport, Rossi convinces Lynch to give up his wife and take him into the plane instead. Because Rossi and Gideon basically had the jet made, Rossi retrieves a secret gun from the department and shoots at Lynch. In the final standoff, Rossi manages to jump out of the plane and have JJ shoot a flare gun bullet at the plane gas trail, finally ending Everett.
Heinous Standard[]
The heinous standard is quite high, even considering it’s a crime show, serial/spree killers show up in almost every episode. There are around 50 prolific serial killers in the show, ranging from brutal tortures, rapes, or just high kill counts. Everett is a serial killer who kills 11 women, which seems lackluster for the series, but these kills are unique as they are the ultimate betrayal. Imagine falling in love and being proposed to, only to be strangled to death by the person who you loved, serial fucking backstabber is what Everett is (While Bill Hodges partially does this, he only has 2 murders, with the rest of his crimes being simple cons, which Everett did himself)
Everett Lynch mirrors George Foyet in several ways. Both murdered their parents (Foyet killed both his mother and father; Lynch killed his mother) and racked up significant body counts before their apperance—Foyet with at least 20 confirmed kills, and Lynch with at least 9. Both escalate from serial killing to mass murder: Foyet kills two couples, seven bystanders, and a U.S. Marshal; Lynch kills a lawyer and four others during an office attack, plus bomgs six SWAT agents and injures several others in a bombing.
Both take breaks in their sprees—Foyet after escaping prison and torturing a marshal, Lynch after several months, returning to kill two more women. They also turn into personally enemies in their last appereance; Foyet murders Hotchner’s wife and targets his son, while Lynch murders an FBI agent, kidnaps Rossi’s wife, and nearly kills Rossi.
Lynch’s is additionally heinous by having Grace commit a double murder and mentoring a new killer who racks up three victims, bringing Everett’s murder count to over 30. Both villains inflict lasting trauma on their enemies: Foyet causes PTSD in Hotch, Lynch in Rossi, and Lynch also triggers psychological hallucinations for Reid, including hallucinations of Foyet. While Lynch’s murders of women are not as brutal as Foyet, the serial betrayal gives him a lot of personal villainy to the victims he targets. Foyet doesn’t torture his victims but stabs them repeatably which is a quick process, so it’s not like he is mutilating his victims before killing them.
I know I keep comparing Foyet and Everett, but since Lynch has to compare to Foyet because of their murders and high personal villainy, its fairly important. Now, Elias Voit is who i would use to compare to Lynch, but the resource gap is fairly major, and anyway, Voit would easily outshine both of them combined if we added him to the discussion. Now, since it can both go ways, I will let you decide
Mitigating Factors[]
Lynch hated his mother for what she did to Grace, but he didn’t actually care about Grace beyond using her for control; he eventually murdered her anyways. While he also hated himself, this insecurity doesn't show up often, nor is it sympathetic or preventing. He had Grace with Liz Coster, but she’s only briefly mentioned, and her death doesn’t seem to mean anything. As a child, Lynch was drowned by his father and later took care of Olivia. Her mother was a drug addict who neglected her, and Lynch stepped in to help her. The BAU even believed that he cared for Olivia out of guilt of killing Grace. Lynch might also have standards since he doesn't kill children, which is exemplified by his attitude when Grace almost died as a kid and when he drives the children of victims to close relatives when the mothers "disappear."
In the standoff with Olivia, this redeeming quality is gone. He laughs when she sees her dead mother and tries to use her as a human shield. Any sign that he cared about her really can't hold anymore even if he did care at the start. The same phrase his father used while drowning him is the one he later repeated while killing Grace, but even with that, Lynch stands on his own as a pure psychopath. He tells Roberta that she should’ve let his father finish the job, making it clear that he isn't affected too much to make him tragic, not minor tragic either, but fake tragic.
The only prevention is that he never hurts children, even if he does emotionally abuse them by killing their mothers, it doesn’t stop him from having standards against assaulting or killing children, as they are two completely different things.
Verdict[]
I say yeah