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Played by: Matthew Gray Gubler.

New: Add photos of Reid in action here!

Rank: Supervisory Special Agent (SSA), Profiler

Vitals: Reid is a genius who graduated from a public high school at age twelve and went to Cal Tech (with Yale as his safety school) at thirteen where he earned three doctorates in Mathematics, Chemistry and Engineering by the age of twenty one. In addition he holds undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Sociology and is currently working on another degree in Philosophy (4x08 "Masterpiece"). He has an IQ of 187, an eidetic memory, and can read 20,000 words per minute. It has also been stated that while in high school he suffered severe bullying at the hands of his classmates, including an incident when he was tricked into going to meet a girl he liked behind the school field house, where the entire football team was waiting for him. They stripped him naked and tied him to a goal post. He was humiliated and said nothing until he told Morgan (3x16 "Elephant's Memory"). In his youth, his father left him and his mother, no longer able to deal with the paranoid schizophrenia of Reid's mother, Diana. Reid grew up learning nearly everything he knows from books, with his mother often reading to him. Still, Reid knew the way his mother was living wasn't healthy. When he was eighteen, he had his mother placed in a mental institution, Bennington Sanitarium. She is still there, and Reid has stated that although he sends letters every day, he is afraid to visit her up until season four when we see him visit her to learn about his father. Reid is also worried about the fact that his mother's illness can be passed on genetically; he once told Morgan that "I know what it's like to be afraid of your own mind". He grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada and is very adept at all card games.

Spencer Reid is the youngest member of the B.A.U., and has yet to reach his thirtieth birthday. He has had to shoot and kill two UnSub's during his assignment to the BAU. He has also been held hostage, drugged, and tortured at the hands of an UnSub with multiple personality disorder.

It is made clear that the rest of the team is aware of Reid's drug addiction problem that he obtained after being drugged while he was held hostage, but he seems to have improved over the following episodes, and he apparently has been clean for ten months at the end of season three ("Elephant's Memory").

Key episodes:
1x02 "Compulsion",
1x06 "L.D.S.K.",
1x04 "Plain Sight"
1x09 "Derailed,"
1x10 "The Popular Kids",
1x18 "Somebody's Watching,"
1x22 "The Fisher King (Part 1),"
2x01 "The Fisher King (Part 2),"
2x06 "The Boogeyman,"
2x11 "Sex, Birth, Death,"
2x14 "The Big Game,"
2x15 "Revelations,"
2x17 "Distress,"
2x18 "Jones."
3x12 "3rd Life"
3x16 "Elephant's Memory"
4x03 "Minimal Loss"
4x07 "Memoriam"
4x20 "Conflicted"
4x24 Amplification

Who is Reid? Discuss his character development by season.

Season 1	Episode 1x01, "Extreme Aggressor," Spencer Reid is introduced as the youngest member of the BAU. He has a student/mentor relationship with Agent Gideon, his former boss who has taken a leave of absence from the BAU. Episode 1x02, "Compulsion," Gideon challenges Reid to "think outside the box" on their current case, which involves a series of fires on college campus. Reid is the one who figures out that the unsub isn't obsessed with fire - he (she as it turns out) is obsessive compulsive. She must always do things in a pattern of threes - revealed when Reid notices that she turned the doorknob three times as she set a room on fire. Episode 1x04, "Plain Sight," Reid is ambushed with an office party to celebrate his 24th birthday. The younger members of the team tease him, with JJ coming to his rescue. Reid gleefully informs Gideon that she is the only person in the world who calls him "Spence", hinting at a possible crush on his part. Later, Gideon gives Reid tickets to a Redskins game, JJ's favourite team. At Gideon's prompting, Reid nervously asks JJ to the game and in the next episode when Morgan and Reid are walking in a hallway and Morgan asks him about it he uses the response "Top Secret". Aside from that, the date is never talked about again. Episode 1x06, "L.D.S.K.," we learn that Reid has failed his gun qualification, which makes him feel like less of a serious team member. He seeks Hotch's help in learning how to shoot properly. Reid later confides in Gideon that without the gun he feels more like a "teacher's assistant" than an FBI agent. Reid and Hotch then become involved in a hostage situation, held at gunpoint by UnSub Philip Dowd. Hotch pretends to blame Reid for it, tauntingly calling him "boy genius" and asking Dowd's permission to "kick the snot out of" Reid. Hotch kicks him repeatedly, allowing Reid to grab his gun from his ankle holster and shoot Dowd in the head, killing him. We learn that Reid has been with the BAU for 3 years, and that he attended a Las Vegas public high school at the age of 12. Episode 1x07, "The Fox," Gideon sends Reid on his first solo interview with a suspect. Reid is nervous and the suspect gets upset and goes for Reid, but they restrain him as Reid speaks about the man's past. The man had been physically abused by his biological parents and sexually abused by his next home and Reid asks him if he continued the behavior with his own children. Episode 1x09, "Derailed," Reid enters a train being held hostage by a paranoid schizophrenic, Theodore Briar, who believes that all of the passengers (including Elle) are FBI agents assigned to follow him, and that he has a microchip in his arm. Reid uses sleight-of-hand learned during the breaks after exams in college to make Briar believe that he has taken the chip out of his arm. Later, he talks Briar down, saying, "I know what the voices are like." It's fairly clear that he is speaking from experience, though not necessarily his own. Despite this, he denies any personal connection with schizophrenia when Elle asks. Episode 1x10, "The Popular Kids," Reid reveals to Morgan that he's been having nightmares. Morgan goes behind his back and tells Hotch and Gideon. At the end of the episode, Gideon talks with Reid about focusing on the people they've saved, and not the ones who they can't get to. He gives Reid a photo of a girl he saved in the eighties, and the episode ends on a shot of Reid, eyes closed, looking like he's about to sleep. Episode 1x18, "Somebody's Watching," When Reid meets up with a former high school classmate, Parker Dunley, we learn that Reid graduated from high school at 12 years old. Reid develops a relationship with a stalking victim whose case they're working on, a starlet whose popularity is growing quickly. He is uncomfortable and unsure of how to deal with what's going on. (In this episode, Reid once again manages to peacefully take down a mentally unstable UnSub). Episode 1x22, "The Fisher King (Part 1)," Reid goes to Bennington Sanitarium in Nevada, where his mother is a patient. We learn she is schizophrenic as Reid talks to Dr. Jesson, who sought him out when she heard he was there. She tells him what makes his mother happiest is writing in her journals and receiving his daily letters, and she is going to be so excited he is there. She tells him Diana (his mother) is "exceptionally proud" of him and her journals are full of stories of his cases. Viewers learn his mother was also once a professor of 15th century literature. Reid tells Dr. Jesson he would prefer to let his mother rest that day and return tomorrow. He asks the doctor to give his mother a book he brought her - Marjorie Kemp - his mother's favorite author.
Season 2	Episode 2x01, "The Fisher King (Part 2)," We see Reid's mother in full for the first time and the type of relationship he has with her. Reid confides in Garcia about his reluctance to visit his mother, and his fear of one day inheriting schizophrenia. Episode 2x06, "Boogeyman," Reid tells Morgan about how he talked to Elle before she shot William Lee and that she was drinking. He blames himself for not saying anything to someone. Morgan tells him that Elle made her own choice, and that it's on her and not him. We also learn that Reid doesn't like eating spinach and that he is afraid of the dark. Episode 2x11, "Sex, Birth, Death," Reid is sought out by a young man, named Nathan Harris, who shows the warning signs of one day becoming a serial killer. At the end of the episode, Nathan cuts his wrists while with a prostitute, leaving Reid's business card on a table beside him. The prostitute calls Reid's number and he and Garcia arrive in time to save Nathan's life. Another great moment between Gideon and Reid - what if Nathan does become a serial killer? "Then you catch him." Episode 2x14, "The Big Game," Reid and JJ go to the house of a suspect, Tobias Hankel, and split up. Reid goes behind the barn and into a cornfield where he overhears Tobias talking to himself. He is hit over the head, captured and held hostage by Tobias. Episode 2x15, "Revelations," Reid is held hostage and drugged by Tobias as the rest of the team races to find him. Footage of Reid being tortured is placed on the Internet. During dilaudid-induced unconsciousness, Reid sees scenes from his childhood and this causes him to confess to Tobias that he had sent his schizophrenic mother away. Tobias drags Reid out and forces him to dig his own grave. Reid gets a hold of Tobias' gun and shoots him. Reid takes some dilaudid off of Tobias' dead body. Episode 2x17, "Distress," Still dealing with the trauma of Georgia, Reid focuses his anger on Prentiss, repeatedly snapping at her throughout their search for an UnSub suffering from severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Reid himself continues to display some possible symptoms of PTSD, most notably his irritable reaction to the loud noise of the city-wide construction around them. Episode 2x19, "Ashes and Dust," During a briefing, Reid likens the arsonist to a drug addict, saying that "it would be almost impossible for him to quit without help." The comment draws stares from Gideon, Hotch, and Morgan, making Reid uncomfortable.
Season 3	Episode 3x02, "In Name and Blood," Reid worries about Gideon and goes to his cabin to check up on him. The cabin is empty, except for Gideon's gun, badge, and letter. The letter is addressed to Reid, apologising for his actions. It is also in this episode that Reid's possible drug addiction is mentioned again, when Hotch tells Prentiss "another [agent] might have a serious drug problem which I didn't report." Episode 3x03, "Scared to Death," Reid and the team wonder why Gideon left the letter for him specifically. Episode 3x05, "Seven Seconds," Reid helps Morgan interview Katie's (the missing girl) cousin. He was the last person to see her before she went missing. Reid does a great job interviewing the boy and in the last interview reveals some of his personal life to the boy. He talks about when he first started noticing girls at 13 in an effort to get the boy to open up. He also shows empathy at the end when he tells the boy whose parents have both been arrested that they (the team) will make sure he is okay. Episode 3x12, "3rd Life," At the end of this episode, Reid goes to the high school where the father is going to kill the UnSub. The father shoots the UnSub in spite of Reid's efforts to talk him down, leaving Reid standing in shock as the father (a State's witness), walks away without being charged. Episode 3x16, "Elephant's Memory," In this episode, Reid identifies with the UnSub, Owen Savage on all levels. Reid admits to Morgan that when he was a high school freshmen, a girl, Harper Hillman, approached him in the library and told him the most gorgeous girl, Alexa Lisbon, wanted to meet him behind the field house. When he arrived, Alexa was there with the entire football team. They stripped him naked and tied him to a goal post. Everyone there laughed at him and he begged them to help but nobody did. He finally got free and went home at midnight to find his mother having an episode, so he never told anyone what had happened. Morgan is the first person he's ever told. Reid also tells Hotch that being the smartest kid in school also meant being the loneliest.
Season 4	Episode 4x03, "Minimal Loss," Reid and Prentiss go undercover to a cult ranch where they are held captive. Press leak that an FBI agent is in the compound, prompting action from the cult leader, Benjamin Cyrus, who first suspects Reid. However Prentiss willingly gives herself up as the agent and is subsequently beaten by him. Feeling responsible, a regretting Reid is later assured by Emily that what Cyrus did wasn't his fault and that it was her decision to reveal herself as the agent, helping Reid regain his peace of mind. Episode 4x07, "Memoriam," Reid meets his father after 17 years. He discovers his father worked only 10 minutes away from him. Reid has Garcia hack his father's computer and he learns his father has collected all articles and information on Reid since he left him and his mother. Believing his father to be involved in the murder of a young boy named Riley Jenkins - who had been on the same softball team as Reid - Reid undergoes hypnotherapy and recovers memories of his father burning bloody clothes. He interrogates his father, leading Morgan and Rossi to believe he's taking out his personal frustrations. Diana Reid reveals that the real murderer was likely a ********* named Gary Brendan Michaels who had approached a then-four-year-old Reid while playing chess, causing Diana to become suspicious. She had informed Riley's dad, who then murdered Michaels while Diana was outside. Diana returned home where William Reid helped cover it up. William admits that the knowledge of what had transpired had become too big of a burden for him to stay with Reid and his mom. When Reid asks why he didn't come back, William admits he had lost his confidence and didn't know how to handle Reid any longer. At the end of the episode, Reid returns home to discover JJ has given birth to baby Henry, and he is asked by JJ to be the godfather. Episode 4x20, "Conflicted," Reid remembers his abduction by Tobias Hankel when dealing with another UnSub with multiple personalities, and he feels guilty for not being able to notice it in time to save Adam (the submissive personality) and the other victims. At the end of the episode, he is shown helping Amanda (Adam) to find Adam´s personality. Episode 4x24, "Amplification," Reid risks his life to save innocent victims after a deadly strain of Anthrax is released into the air. He refuses to let the doctor give him any narcotics because of his past drug addiction to dilaudid, and suffers through the pain. He has Garcia record a goodbye message for his mom in case anything happens to him. He helps solve the case while trapped inside the house the Anthrax was found in, and is later seen in an ambulance, suffering from aphasia (inability to speak properly), and coughing blood - all symptoms of the Anthrax. At the end, he is seen in a hospital bed while Morgan eats his Jell-O.

Trivia
No main characters, except for Gideon and JJ, have called him by his first name in normal conversation. The only other person to call him Spencer is his mother.	In all seasons, Reid is often portrayed as wearing his watch over his shirt sleeve, regardless of whether it is a light shirt or a thick sweater. This is a typical gifted trait - gifteds are often oddly sensitive to things like clothing tags and jewelry against their skin.	Reid read the book Empty Planet, by Ursula Kent when he was six. He remarks that it would take him ten minutes to buy and reread.

Reid is the statistical expert of the team. In "Ashes and Dust" Prentiss asked him if he had a percentage of arsonists that are caught. He had to admit he did, although he tried to be vague by saying "few" in an effort to be conversational. It didn't work.	Reid has also proven himself to be a magician, a Star Trek nerd and a coffee (with plenty of sugar) addict.	Spencer Reid wears mismatched socks. So does Matthew in real life.
Reid's favorite movie as a kid was 'Babar'.	Reid prefers Mozart over Beethoven.	Reid is very freaked out by baby kicks.
The topic of his dissertation in engineering was "Identifying Non-obvious relationship factors using cluster weighted modeling and geographic regression"	His doctorates are in Mathematics, Chemistry, and Engineering. He also has BAs in Psychology and Sociology, and is working towards a Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy.	During the episode 4.07 'Memoriam', Garcia tells Reid that his father stores in his computer everything ever published online about Reid. The four stories below are the transcripts of the ones who appeared on her screen while she said that.
One Down, Two to Go A year ago I wrote a story on young Spencer Reid who had just graduated college... at the age of sixteen! It is rare for such a young student to fulfill their undergraduate but to go on the following year and achieve his doctorate degree in Mathematics the next is a bit unheard of. "I'm thinking this next year I'll go for either Chemistry or Engineering. I haven't decided where I want to focus my energy just yet," says the young super-genius. When I ask why he chose Cal Tech over MIT and Stanford, he quickly runs down a list of Professors he had a desire to study with. He makes no mention of the weather or girls. "There was a week or two where I thought I might go to Yale to study the Classics," he says. "But then I realized I've already read everything they teach in the curriculum." Sound absurd? It is, until you remember he can read 20,000 words per minute. How does that skill translate to math equations, I ask. "Surprisingly well," he says. "Once you've taught one part of your brain to concentrate to focus, it frees up energy in another part of your brain which can give you a certain lucidity. Time begins to stand still relatively, of course."	BAU's Newest Member By Paul Milworth It's not everyday the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI accepts a new member to their elite team. Even more rare is the addition of a 22 year-old to the team. "Agent Spencer Reid has a gifted mind," said team leader Special Supervisory Agent Jason Gideon, whose own resume dates back to the very beginning of the BAU. "He is young, and while he has never served in law enforcement, I see him as an integral part of the future of the BAU." Others in the FBI community are surprised such a young man would be named to the FBI's elite, but when asked, Agent Reid had this to say. "My age is not the issue. Certainly, when dealing with an emotional situation it can be difficult to accept bad news. It's one of the reasons logic needs to become a more prominent state of being. Logically speaking, I'm the most qualified for the job." Indeed, with three doctorate degrees from Cal Tech already, and a staggering IQ of 187 (higher than Einstein's, reportedly) as well as an eidetic memory, there is no psycho-logical exam or test the FBI could put in front of him he could not ace inside of an hour. But what about the social aspect of the job? Knowing how to talk to victims' families and dealing with local police are two facets law enforcement types will tell you are impossible to learn from a book. "It's one of the reasons I have brought him aboard," said Gideon. "With a little tutelage and some field experience there will be nothing Agent Reid will not be able to accomplish with this team."	Fed Saves Railroad Passengers By Rose Tamlyn USNTNews.com One Security Officer had already been shot and killed. The FBI Agent, who happened to be on the train, was handcuffed to her chair. The stand-off, which took place yesterday in a train car in Texas, could have ended far worse, authorities say. "I only went in because I felt I had the best understanding of the suspect," said Special Supervisory Agent Spencer Reid. "In these situations, you have to first of all understand who it is you're dealing with in order to save as many people as you can. Fortunately for us, we were able to save almost everyone." When asked how he handled things once inside the train, Reid said simply, "Delicately." Doctor Ted Bryar, a physics professor in the midst of a psychological break, was put into custody after being rushed to the hospital, suffering a gunshot wound from another passenger. The passenger, whose name is being withheld by the FBI, had brought the gun on board, and waited for what he judged to be the opportune time to use the weapon. "We do not condone the actions of the passenger who shot Doctor [Note: The text is not entirely shown.]
FBI 'Crucial' in Finding Madison Child Killer By Stanley Hartdale Four children were dead. A fifth had gone missing. The small town of Madison locked all its doors, windows and even cancelled little league games. The Sheriff was exhausted. The Deputies were stressed and at a loss for things to say to members of the community who just wanted to know when they're children would be safe again. "I called in the FBI because I felt I had done everything within my own abilities to put an end to all this," said Sheriff Donalds. "When our help on the case was requested I was handed the file so that I could do a routine assessment of the case," said Supervisory Special Agent Spencer Reid. "It became clear to me, about half way through the file; this was a serial and it wasn't going to stop any time soon. So we came out to Madison and we were able to help." Help indeed. Before they were even here. Agent Reid was on the phone with Sheriff Donalds warning him of another abduction. Sure enough, about an hour later he received a call that another child had gone missing. Normal protocol was thrown out the door. "Normally we wait a few hours, but given the prior kidnappings and the advice from Agent Reid we were on the case immediately. He gave us ideas of how to differentiate a missing child from one who had just wandered off for a few hours. By the time they got here, they were half way to solving the case." The parents of the recovered child, who asked to remain anonymous, expressed their gratitude to Agent Reid and his team. "Without you we would be lost without our child." Agent Reid dismissed their thanks amiably, adding, "It's our job to help when we see fit. This was one of those times the threat was imminent and we acted. It's a win for us."