The BAU searches for a serial killer who leaves distinctive marks on victims' faces.

The BAU is called to Los Angeles to investigate an LA city bus poisoning resulting in many deaths. The team must work quickly to stop a second attack believed to be on a much larger scale.

In Savannah, Georgia multiple brides-to-be have been found murdered the night before their wedding day. The team quickly realizes they are searching for an unsub suffering from severe rejection.

The team heads to Las Vegas, New Mexico where three employees at a local restaurant were killed during a robbery. The investigation leads to the re-opening of a cold case from six years ago, which is believed to be related to the restaurant homicides.

In Detroit, Michigan the BAU investigates several murder victims found morbidly incorporated into graffiti. They believe the murders to be the work of a notable street artist.

The team must search for a killer in a small Florida town with a large population of sex offenders, presenting an overwhelming suspect pool.

Rossi's daughter, a journalist, investigates the disappearance of a college student. JJ comes back from maternity leave.

The team heads to Phoenix, Arizona to hunt a serial killer who tortures his victims using sleep deprivation. Hotch, Morgan, and Garcia continue their on going search for the dirty dozen.

The BAU works with the NSA when two undercover DEA agents are murdered and another goes missing; Hotch hopes the team's work with the NSA will bring them closer to finding a ring of hit men.

The BAU search for an UNSUB who is fascinated with disturbing medical experiments.

As Reid narrates to one of the hitmen how they tracked her, the BAU works to get him out of the hitman's gunpoint.

The group tries to track down and arrest a deranged man posing as a taxi driver in Boston. The man beheads his victims and leaves their bodies in very public areas.

The Atlanta field office requests the BAU's assistance in a case with two victims thus far, both stabbed multiple times to death, both victims found bound in different truck stop rest rooms, one outside of Chattanooga and one outside of Birmingham, posed post-mortem, both victims missing their left ear, with the murders probably taking place elsewhere as concluded by the lack of blood at the scenes. The wounds indicate indecisiveness and inexperience in the act of killing, while the posed bodies in highly public locales indicates the exact opposite of experience in the act, leading to the competing theories that there are two people working together, or one person who has long fantasized about what he is doing and is only now being able to act upon those fantasies. One victim is a homeless John Doe, while the other is a well regarded schoolteacher. When a third victim emerges with a slightly different M.O. in that she was killed at the disposal site, the team knows that the victims are targeted and not random, that there is only one unsub who was removed from his family at a young age and is now getting revenge on those associated with the family court and welfare system, but that the unsub is being fed information by someone in the generation above his on who to target. When the team believes they have discovered the identities of both the unsub and his older information provider, the latter who may not know what he's doing, the question becomes whether the older partner will give up the other in the pairing.

The BAU goes to St. Louis when an 18-year old woman escapes from a house where she and 2 other women were held for a decade.

The BAU heads to the Los Angeles, California area, where two women, in separate incidents, were found murdered within a day of each other, each found in their own home with no sign of forced entry, both single, and both having died of asphyxiation from being wrapped pre-mortem by a regular household item like a blanket or rug. By the time the team arrives at the Los Angeles FBI field office where they are basing their investigation, a third dead body with the same victimology is discovered. From surveillance footage at the third victim's apartment complex, the team believes the unsub is either masquerading as an FBI agent or truly is one. When the team determines that he is only masquerading as one, but that he needs to gain the confidence of his victims by real world events, they decide to set a trap for him that is potentially dangerous for the public. But in doing so, they, in the process, learn of an unfortunate real life tie to the agency. Through it all, Morgan can't help but worry about a text he received from Savannah before the team left for Los Angeles in her need for them "to have a talk".

The BAU works against time to find Morgan after he is kidnapped. Danny Glover guest stars.

The team searches for an unknown subject who abducts children after visually impairing their parents while they sleep. Distracted father-to-be Morgan tries to find out who attacked him.

When an unsub targets the BAU, the team pursues the person who is responsible for the actions.

Former BAU team member and current Interpol Agent Emily Prentiss tracks an international serial killer to American soil and enlists the teams help to track him down. Meanwhile, the team deals with Morgan's departure.

The team go to Sacramento, CA to find an unsub mutilating the faces of his recovering addict victims found in enclosed bodies of water. Even Rossi, who has to choose between spending time with his grandson and work, joins them.

The authorities believed that two Virginia based cases of missing boys, Adam Morrissey and Jimmy Bennett, from two years ago were unrelated, until their bloodied clothes, those in which they were last seen, had just arrived in one intercepted package at Fletcham Correctional Center in Troy, Virginia. The addressee of that package is Antonia Slade, a serial killer of young teens, she who was convicted in part by work of the BAU, most specifically Gideon. A social worker, she ran a fake youth hot-line as a means to lure her victims to her home, where the dead bodies of the young teens were found encased behind her basement drywall. Since, she has never talked about the murders, and has refused all visitors. However, she seems to know about the clothes and the missing boys before the BAU's arrival at the facility to speak to her. They know that she, a narcissist despite not responding to the correspondence from any of her legion of groupies, has no compelling reason to talk to them unless there is something she knows, divulging which would be to her benefit. In speaking to her, the team members find that she is controlling, and any accomplice or associate to her criminal activities would have to be the submissive. Beyond cryptic statements, the one thing she is clear about is that Adam and Jimmy are still alive, but for how long is uncertain. The team discovers that she is indeed corresponding to the outside world through unofficial means, they needing to find how, to whom and what those messages state for them to find a hopefully still alive Adam and Jimmy.

The team works to clear Hotch's name after he's arrested by the DOJ for conspiracy.