| “ | For twelve years, I've studied these men after they were caught. Now I want to catch them. | ” |
— Tara in "The Job"
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Dr. Tara Elizabeth Lewis is an FBI forensic psychologist and Supervisory Special Agent who first appears in Season Eleven of Criminal Minds as a recurring character. She joined the BAU following the departure of Kate Callahan at the end of Season Ten. She reappeared in Season Twelve as a main character.
Background
As a child, Lewis had to travel around the world because of her father Albert's service in the U.S. Army. She also had a mother who died of breast cancer and a brother named Gabriel. As a child, she and her family moved to Germany. There, she was harassed by a bully named Martin Gumbel, who made fun of her name and drew a swastika on her locker. When Gabriel reported it to the school administration, Gumbel and his friends sought revenge by beating him up. As a result of the incident, Lewis admired her brother for always standing up for her while he started calling her "T".
As an adult, she had high intelligence alongside Gabriel, though Gabriel forsaked it to get rich while she went to Dartmouth College. Lewis eventually had to help Gabriel through the aftermath of one of his scams and tried to get him to change his ways, but her efforts were unsuccessful, leading to an estrangement between them. During her collegiate years, she was briefly married to Daryl Wright when she was a professor and a graduate student. He began taking pills, thus causing a change in behavior for the worst and their ultimate separation. Later, She joined the FBI as a forensic psychologist, who extensively interviewed several psychopathic criminals to determine whether they were fit for trial or not. She has seen many depraved minds up close and personal through her job. Before joining the BAU, she came from the San Francisco FBI field office. More recently, she was engaged to a man named Doug Fuller, which caused her some personal distress after other women began flirting with him. However, he dumped her when she proved incapable of handling their relationship and the wedding and went back to Seattle.
Season Eleven
She joins the team in "The Job" after aiding them and assisting with the arrest of the unsub.
In "Pariahville", Tara receives a job opportunity that may take her away from the team, but by the episode's end, Tara gets to stay with the team and take the opportunity. During this episode, she fatally shoots an unsub who has a hostage.
Season Twelve
In "Mirror Image", Gabriel is abducted by Peter Lewis, who brainwashes a man named Desmond Holt to take Gabriel's place. Upon realizing this, Lewis is able to profile where Gabriel is located and saves him, narrowly escaping Peter's trap in the process.
In "True North", while Reid is in prison on a false murder charge, Lewis is given an opportunity to visit him and act as his psychiatrist. Lewis gives Reid a cognitive interview, during which he reveals he stabbed the victim, Nadie Ramos to death. However, she later tells Emily Prentiss that she believes he manufactured the memory in a desperate attempt to find an answer to his circumstances. She resumes the interview the next day, and Reid seems to remember the murder a little more clearly, recalling someone spraying a fine mist in his face while he was in a hotel room with Ramos. This matched the M.O. of Peter Lewis, the BAU's prime suspect. However, when Lewis presses further, Reid remembers that the person who was in the hotel with him and Ramos was not Peter Lewis, but a woman.
In the season finale "Red Light", the team gets a new lead on Peter's current location. However, their SUVs were disabled by spike-strips and struck by a semi-truck.
Season Thirteen
In the adjacent episode, "Wheels Up," the SUV Lewis was in took most of the impact, and as a result, she nearly went into shock due to the internal bleeding. Despite this, she witnessed Scratch drugging Prentiss before abducting her.
Tara does not appear in "Dust and Bones" as she heads to Bridgewater to assist in Floyd Feylinn Ferell's criminal trial and finishes up in "Neon Terror".
In "False Flag", Tara took a special interest in the unsub, and was deeply upset when she tells Tara that she believes the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was staged.
In "Annihilator", much like the rest of the team, Tara does not like Assistant Director Linda Barnes overseeing the team in their case. After she and Simmons are told to withhold information about a suspect's death by Barnes, Tara warns Barnes not to ever give her an order like that again.
In "Last Gasp", Barnes reassigns Tara to be a psychologist to FBI agents.
In "Mixed Signals", on the plane ride home after finishing a case, Tara reveals to Luke Alvez that before she was engaged two years earlier, she was briefly married but divorced due to her ex-husband's drug addiction.
Season Fourteen
In "Broken Wing", her ex-husband, Daryl Wright returns into her life and is asked by him to look into a series of overdoses.
Season Fifteen
In "Ghost", she, along with Alvez and Simmons, is ambushed and blinded with a flashbang grenade by The Rolling Devils but is spared and left behind as she wasn't an intended target. However, she does witness the gang kidnap Alvez and Simmons.
Evolution
In "Just Getting Started" Its shown that Tara has been working in the field during the pandemic, often sleeping in motels and her car, which has intensified her devotion to the work.
In "Sicarius" Its reveled that Tara is in a relationship with Rebecca Wilson from the DOJ, which affects her life in specific and surprising ways as the season progresses.
In “Moose” Tara faces the challenge of the BAU being shut down and having to work with limited resources. She collaborates with Rebecca from the DOJ to identify a suspect.
In “Oedipus Wrecks” Tara’s relationship with Rebecca is tested as they move in together, and they face a significant case that puts a strain on their relationship.
In “True Conviction” Tara is forced to make a difficult choice between her personal and professional life, which leads to tensions in her relationship with Rebecca. The episode also reveals that Rebecca’s career is under scrutiny, which affects their relationship. However, her orientation is brought into an interview with a wrongfully convicted suspect, when it's determined he's gay and he took the fall for murder because his partner was threatened with being murdered.
In “What Doesn't Kill Us” Tara is dealing with the aftermath of a bad breakup, which affects her focus. Rossi assigns her to investigate the origin of a microchip found on a shipping container, leading her to a significant clue about the serial killer Sicarius.
In “Forget Me Knots” Tara continues to work closely with the team to track down Sicarius, while also navigating her personal issues.
In “Memento Mori” Tara’s expertise is crucial as the team deals with a case that has ties to her past investigations. Her insights into the criminal mind help the BAU get closer to apprehending Sicarius.
In “Dead End” Tara faces a critical moment when the team’s investigation leads them to a dangerous confrontation with Sicarius. Her psychological profiling skills are put to the test as they try to outmaneuver the killer.
Notes
- Her sidearm is a Glock 19. However, she occasionally is seen using a SIG Sauer P226R, which she used to shoot and kill an unsub in one episode and, again, shot and killed another in a later episode, along with JJ.
- She interviewed Loren Herzog, one of the Speed Freak Killers. ("The Job")
- She interviewed Archie Sutton, a.k.a. "The Truck Stop Strangler", an infamous serial killer whose mother was coincidentally the elementary school classmate of Lewis's own mother. ("The Witness")
- Her father Albert owns an auto repair shop and taught her how to repair old cars. ("Drive")
- She is the same blood type as Savannah Hayes. ("A Beautiful Disaster")
- She speaks German ("Devil's Backbone") and French. ("The Storm")
- She was present in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and provided counseling to the parents of the shooter's victims. She also saw the victims' bodies, which severely traumatized her. This is a reference to the fact that, in real life, among the first responders of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, one was a FBI agent indeed. ("False Flag")
- She is pansexual[1], and she has been in relationships with both men (Daryl Wright and Doug Fuller) and is currently dating a woman (Rebecca Wilson); in the same episode, she admitted to having dated other women before in the past but has stated her relationship with Rebecca "...is the first [she's] been this happy." ("Sicarius")
- She met Rebecca Wilson at an Al-Anon meeting in May 2022. ("Memento Mori")
Trivia
- Aisha Tyler, the actress who portrays Lewis, previous co-starred in the leading cast of Ghost Whisperer with leading actress Jennifer Love Hewitt, who portrays Agent Kate Callahan.
Appearances
Criminal Minds / Evolution
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Appearances |
Episode | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | Total | |||
| Season 11 | 18 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Season 12 | 18 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Season 13 | 20 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Season 14 | 15 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Season 15 | 10 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Season 16 | 10 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Season 17 | 10 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Season 18 | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders
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Appearances |
Episode | |||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | Total | ||||
| Season 2 | 0 | |||||||||||||||||
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