What Really Drove Criminal Minds Con Artist Colton Grant To A Life Of Crime

Sometimes the villains on "Criminal Minds" take to violence because they can't get what they want, but others use their natural charisma to get everything they could possibly desire. It's the latter category that fits the cult leader and con artist played by Grant Show of "Melrose Place" and the "Dynasty" reboot.

The Season 10 episode "The Forever People" has a lot going on: There's a cult, lead by the "charismatic psychopath" — as Kate (Jennifer Love Hewitt) calls him — Colton Grant, a serial killer he's put in charge of the cult's children, a father infiltrating the cult to find his kid, and JJ (A.J. Cook) associating the whole thing with her own serious trauma.

Viewers learn by the end that while Grant likes to freeze people to induce near death experiences and level them up though his ranks, the killer, Jon (Ptolemy Slocum), apparently enjoys freezing people to death because of some vague issues from his childhood. So, he takes the cult members that want to leave and murders them in his own freezing chamber. Grant, however, has nothing to do with that.

Colton Grant isn't interested in killing people, but controlling them. He promises his cult members that he has special knowledge, but deprives them of protein to keep them from thinking clearly. He also makes them donate money to the cult regularly and calls them his "flock." Plus, he puts them through a near-death experience to invoke a sense of rebirth and adoration. However, once the BAU determines that he isn't responsible for any deaths, it becomes unclear what happens to him and his cult.

"The Forever People" spends more time focused on JJ's trauma from being tortured by Tivon Askari (Faran Tahir) a year prior than on the motivations of the killer or cult leader. You don't learn many particulars about Grant; he's simply presented as a psychopath who manipulates people to his will. He craves the power he holds over the cult members and wants them to look to him as a leader. He's simply using people to get what he wants.

Grant is not the first cult leader who appeared on the series — one of the best "Criminal Minds" episodes is about a different cult — but he doesn't really set himself apart beyond his trick of nearly freezing people to death.