Criminal Minds Season 9 Premiere Recap and Review: Aaron’s Decision, a Creepy Case, and Where to Watch The Episode

In an attempt to put behind the events following the capture of The Replicator from last season, the Criminal Minds Season 9 Premiere opened with a fairly strong episode, raising a lot of questions and issues for the team.

Beware of the following Criminal Minds Season 9 Spoilers when you read on.

Recap: What's happening with the team?

Perhaps the biggest issue plaguing JJ (A.J. Cook), Morgan (Shemar Moore), Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), Garcia (Kristin Vangsness), Blake (Jean Tripplehorn), and Rossi (Joe Mantegna) is the possible loss of a team member, Hotchner (Thomas Gibson).

Hotch is torn between taking on the job of the late Erin Strauss as a full-time Section Chief and continuing his stint with the BAU team. His decision doesn't only concern him as Morgan and the rest try to reconcile the idea of losing Hotch as part of the team.

The upside of the new job is that he gets to spend more time with his son Jack, but on the other hand, Hotch has been a prominent figure of the team, and is often looked at as the leader whom they will follow to the ends of the world.

Creepy case of cannibalism

The show has had its run of creepy cases, but the Criminal Minds Season 9 premiere episode brings back cannibalism as a ritualistic creepy element to the cases.

For Season 9, Episode 1, the team is on a chase for an Unsub who has a very troubled and disturbed past with a woman. As though raping and killing his victims with a shot to the heart is not enough, this episode also looks into forced cannibalism as well.

While viewers get a taste of Reid's usual dose of sudden enlightenments and cool new facts, particularly the one about the praying mantis's way of breeding, it does seem like a very disturbed way to put some sense into the Unsub's past.

Although this may be justified thanks to the cliffhanger twist that sheds a new light and opens new doors to the resolution of this week's case.

What to look forward to next week

But perhaps what makes this the first of a two-part Criminal Minds Season 9 premiere episode is the twist in the end--a wrong arrest due to a simple yet overlooked fact: the Unsub has a twin.

In terms of the twist that the last scene provides, you have to admit that it takes you by surprise, because nothing in the profile or the actual progression of the story foreshadowed this twist, but it would be interesting to see where this train of thought would take the Criminal Minds Season 9 Premiere episode.

There are a lot of unanswered issues and questions for the Criminal Minds Season 9 premiere: what will Hotch's decision be? If the team does lose Hotch to a desk job, what will happen? Will Morgan really take over the role to become the leader of the pack? How will this affect the team's performance as a whole?

What are your thoughts about the team's new challenges? Do you think Aaron leaving to lead is a good thing? Or should the BAU team stick together like the family they are?

If you haven't been able to catch the episode, Criminal Minds Twitter has uploaded a link where you can watch the Criminal Minds Season 9 Premiere episode online.