| “ | Unless you guys want to be responsible for the biggest FBI disaster since Waco, you will back off now. | „ |
| ~ Cat threatening the BAU |
Catherine "Cat" Adams, a.k.a. "Miss .45" and "The Black Widow Killer", is a misandristic, psychopathic, narcissistic, and international prolific serial killer, assassin, and later proxy killer who first appears in Season Eleven of Criminal Minds. She later reappears as the secondary antagonist in Season Twelve as the mastermind in a vendetta against Spencer Reid, her archnemesis. She returns again in Season Fifteen for a final confrontation with Reid and the BAU.
She was portrayed by Aubrey Plaza.
Personality[]
Cat is a charismatic and extremely manipulative woman who thrives from psychological seduction and was prone to target men who remind her of her father. She is typically able to keep her composure and maintain a confident and calculating demeanor, but certain triggers, most notably talking about her father, questioning her skill or attacking her ego, can easily led her to make impulsive decisions. She has no real ethics or moral compass, living only by her own rules, which loosely keep her in check and prevent her from acting out too much. Due to her clinical psychopathy, Cat is also incapable of forming meaningful relationships, as she constantly requires new external stimuli. Reid accurately explains that the reason why she would not be able to have a family is that she would simply grow bored of the routine and even her own child. While she did imply an attraction to Reid and is known to have a girlfriend, she was also perfectly willing to have sex with a complete stranger to gain leverage against Reid, while also cheating on Lindsey. She is ultimately a self-centered egotist, who sees her environment as little more than her personal playground.
Biography[]
Cat, being roughly the same age as Reid, was born around 1980 and subject to abuse by her alcoholic father Daniel, who was later locked away on the count of manslaughter for the death of her mother, his wife Laila. She was sent to a foster home, but she was abused by the foster father, who she eventually killed. In 1987, Daniel was released and left the U.S. shortly afterward. As a result, Cat traveled around the world in search of him, hoping to kill him as punishment for his actions. However, when she couldn't, she channeled her rage towards other men, using them as surrogates for her true target of hatred.
Cat eventually became a member of an online network of hitmen (though Garcia would later say that connection was "loose") that cropped up after the dismantlement of the Silk Road by the FBI in 2013, and she became known as "Miss .45", after her signature sidearm. Having developed psychopathic tendencies, Cat was the only member of the network who preferred to kill her targets up-close and personal, in contrast to the long-distance kills carried out by her colleagues. Though she was faithful to a vast majority of her contract kills, she actually double-crossed three of her clients when they wanted her to kill their wives, as said clients reminded her of Daniel, who she was still searching for.
Entropy[]
Cat appears for the first time when she meets an undercover Spencer Reid, pretending to be a potential client, at Henry & Glenn's Grill Bar. As the two sit down, Cat engages in small talk before asking Reid about the job and target, inquiring about his wife, how long he has been married and when she is expecting. Reid fumbles with the answers, but changes the subject, cutting to the chase and directly telling her that he wants Cat to kill his pregnant wife. Soon after, Rossi and JJ, dressed in plainclothes, sitting in the restaurant, notice that Cat had seen through his ruse. Cat is quick to tell him this, as for one, aside from Reid's bad acting, the ring was brand new. She further goes into detail that she was aware that the meeting was a sting operation and reveals that she had been gathering intel about the BAU for years. She describes in vivid details what she believes the BAU’s plan is to capture her, and for the most part, Reid says, it was correct. To prove this, she greets the hidden camera and microphone in his tie, calling Garcia by name. She also shows that she has takes a gun with her and points it under the table pointed at Reid. It is then when she starts making demands. Cat first orders that JJ and Rossi leave the restaurant, before setting a timer of 30 minutes, in which she was free to ask Reid any question she wanted answered.
Upon her request, Reid tells her how they tracked her down. They had started with two other known members of the network, Zac Rubenis and Barry Plyman, who they attempted to capture in a raid, but it ended with both of them dead. From there they acquired a list of names, with Cat's alias, Miss .44, being one of the most prominent, as she was regareded to be one of the FBI's most wanted asssassins. When Reid casually mentions that he had just recently returned from a break, which he first refuses to delve into. When Rossi starts moving towards them, Cat covers up Reid’s mic and threatens to kill him if Reid didn't tell her his story. In turn, Reid tells her everything about his mother, her schizophreni and the recent diagnosis with Alzheimer's, explaining that he left to buy special off-market medication for her.
However, Cat does not believe the story and believes that Reid is hiding something. Reid briefly tells her that the team had found her father right here in D.C, homeless and sleeping by a bus stop, not even able to remember having a daughter, as the alcoholism had fried his brain. After she regains control of her emotions, she adamantly reaffirms her current position of power. What doesn't know is that Rossi and JJ were not the only other agents present, as Lewis and Morgan were also there, clinking glasses and quietly murmuring about her overconfidence. After the stopwatch runs out she asks Reid for whatever reason she would stall him for thirty minutes. After all, this should have been in Reid's favor, as she had just given his police backup time to arrive. She then reveals that this was also part of her plan: she has a partner somewhere in the restaurant, one of her colleagues known as The Bomber, who had used the time to sabotage the gaslines and planted a remote explosive under the building. Lewis and Morgan try to evacuate, but when Cat threatens to detonate the bomb if anyone moved for the exit, they are forced to rely on their instinct, identifying The Bomber as a woman on her phone. They manage to take her down, but this causes Cat to take Reid hostage by grabbing him and aiming the gun below his chin. Reid and Derek then reveal a secret of their own: the BAU had brought her father outside the restaurant and would allow her to see him if she surrendered. Wanting to face the man who ruined her life, she exits the restaurant and steps towards the truck that supposedly holds him. When it's opened, it's empty. Cat realizes she had been deceived, with Reid confiding her that they had in fact gone out looking for him, but weren't able to locate him. Taking her defeat with relative grace, she steps inside and is put into custody.
Season 12[]
Green Light[]
It was revealed that when Cat was incarcerated at Mount Pleasant Women's Correctional Facility, she had to stay in a solitary confinement for six months, which left her unbalanced. By the time Reid meets her again, she has become consumed with vengeance and has become eerily open in displaying her unhinged nature. A year later Cat somehow got in touch with Lindsey Vaughn and along with a prison guard named Lionel Wilkins, put together a plan to incriminate Reid. They soon discovered about Peter Lewis, and used his M.O. for their plan, when Lindsey kidnapped Reid's mother, Diana, the BAU then soon invades the double house that resembles Lindsey and Peter, they soon find an IPad that shows Cat that simply starts insulting and she demands that Reid will visit her in prison, because it was he who arrested her. Soon after Reid and JJ go to the prison to visit Cat, which she then smiled and called him Spencie.
Red Light[]
Reid soon demands that Cat tell him where Diana who is Reid's mother is. Cat then interrupts him by saying that he treats her like a criminal, and that they will play the game her way. She then kicks a chair for Reid sitting down. Cat asks him if he liked the prison, and he says no. She asks him why he didn't go crazy. Cat then asks him to close his eyes as if she were the first woman he was seeing after leaving prison. He ends up seeing a fantasy world with Cat, she soon tells if he doesn't want to kill her or hurt her that Reid says no and then Cat says we'll play another game with Cat alone. Spencer asks if it's going to be the same game to ask the questions. She agrees that Spencer may ask what he wants: if he wins Cat tells Lindsey released Reid's mom, and Cat tells Spencer he has 4 hours. After a while, Reid said she knew the secret, and that after she was arrested she studied Reid and manipulated him by incriminating him, treating her as a criminal just to prove that Cat and Reid are the same. Bored, she says understands nothing, Spencer soon tells us that psychopaths got in easily, after that Cat asks him what pain he would invest. She soon mentions mentor and agent Jason Gideon. Reid then says no because he says how about Agent Derek Morgan and his fault for not visiting his son. Spencer then says he was in prison, Cat then asks him that he had time and why he didn't go.
Spencer soon tells him that he was distraught trying to help his own mother. Spencer says he would have no shame in admitting it and that Morgan would have. Spencer then asks Cat what he didn't admit to. He talks about the love he's felt for years for Cat, which Cat denies. Cat then says she gave Reid a clue, telling him he's pregnant, shocking Reid. Reid refuses to believe it because Cat is in jail. Cat, however, tells Reid to asks him how he had the baby. Cat then says he sent Lindsey and that he gave instructions to pretend to be Maeve Donovan. Reid's ancient girlfriend, she then teases him by saying the words Maeve said to Spencer. Spencer tells Cat that he could take her child, but that he would lose interest in it the way a child would lose interest in a hamster. He says that the child only has a purpose that would be to keep him still in the game. Reid says that his mother is dead, but Cat denies this. Spencer soon leaves and infuriates Cat and she then decides to let him talk to Lindsey.
Cat then calls Lindsey and she says Cat called early. Cat tells her to prove her life. In response, Lindsey shows Reid's mother screaming, and Reid picks up the cell from Cat hands Lindsey then shoots the car and drives away, after that Spencer gets enraged with Cat and asks what that Lindsey said he called early, and Reid says it was a signal to kill Spencer's mother, and Cat soon says not knowing, Spencer then demands to know the truth, Cat teases him saying that his mother is an idiot dying Alzheimer's and then she says if she dies it will be his fault. Spencer then asks for control and overturns the table he attacks Cat trying kills her, JJ tries to stop him later and calms down. After Spencer tells him to dance with him so he can say what he means, Cat tells him he wanted to be uncomfortable in the same way it was for Cat herself, so the team soon realizes that Cat has a third accomplice that a guard who works in both Cat's and Reid's jails, they soon find out it's Lionel Wilkins. After Reid tells Cat he was scared, but he soon says he liked to poison the other detainees, and he says he had a thousand ways to escape the situation and was the one that caused the most pain, then Cat says his team is already on the way and also tells Reid that they are going to fall into a trap, after that Cat tries to get Lindsey to kill them all and Spencer soon tells him that it is not his son but Wilkins', then furious Lindsey surrenders and is arrested by murders. Then in the end Cat really admits defeat by saying that she and Reid deserve each other, and Reid later handcuffs her and walks away.
Season 15[]
Date Night[]
Shortly before her execution, Cat Adams executed one last plan to ruin Reid's life and to get revenge on him for outsmarting her. Under her instructions, her former cellmate, Juliette Weaver, kidnapped the father and sister of Reid's date, Maxine Brenner. In exchange, she would get revenge on her ex-boyfriend. Her last wish is to go on a date with him. Afterward, she and Reid kissed outside his apartment, in which Maxine sees them. Cat attempts to drive a wedge between Reid and Max by telling Max about Reid's actions towards her, including him being falsely responsible for her miscarriage before asking Max if anyone has hurt her. After Max tells them about her abusive ex, she leaves with Prentiss and they save her father and sister. It is later revealed that Max was working with the team into arresting Juliette and saving her father and sister; in which Max admits she made up the part about her ex being abusive to gain Cat's trust. It is also revealed Reid was not responsible for her miscarriage as she miscarried months after the last visit.
Modus Operandi[]
Cat targeted various people through her capacity as a hitwoman, though her favorite target was married fathers who actually hired her to kill their own wives, because they reminded her of her father. Once she had her victims in a highly compromised position, she would kill them by shooting them with a .45-caliber handgun, hence her nickname. She briefly mentioned that she would be so good at manipulating that she could get her targets to kill themselves, though it is unknown if that is indeed the case. During the standoff at Harry & Glenn's Grill and Bar, she held Reid at gunpoint with a .40-caliber Springfield Armory XDM handgun (presumably the same gun she used to kill her victims) and coordinated her actions with Sharon Mayford. Throughout the latter half of Season Twelve, she coordinated her actions with Lindsey Vaughn and Lionel Wilkins.
Trivia[]
- Alongside villains such as Mr. Scratch, The Reaper, Lindsey Vaughn, The Replicator, she is the fourth villain to appear most often in the series, since she made her appearance in season eleven in the episode Entropy, and in the season twelve which was soon after, Green Light and Red Light.