reboots

Fox Relaunches America’s Most Wanted With Elizabeth Vargas Stepping In for John Walsh

Photo: Roy Rochlin/WireImage

It’s been nearly a decade since America’s Most Wanted last challenged the nation’s populace to find the country’s most dangerous and elusive criminals, but apparently they’ve realized what a big help we can be, so Fox is relaunching the long-running reality crime show in March. According to Deadline, the reboot will reportedly utilize “a team of experts representing law enforcement units such as the FBI, U.S. Marshall’s Office and Secret Service” and “state-of-the-art crime-fighting technology” like augmented reality and advanced age-progression “avatars” to help viewers identify fugitives and missing persons.

20/20 and Good Morning America alumna Elizabeth Vargas will step in to present the newly relaunched series, assuming the role from John Walsh, who hosted the show from 1988 to 2011, then again in 2012 during the series’s brief revival on Lifetime. A victims rights advocate following the 1981 kidnapping and murder of his son Adam, Walsh followed up America’s Most Wanted with CNN’s The Hunt With John Walsh and Investigation Discovery’s In Pursuit With John Walsh, which premiered on the network in 2019.

“Capturing dangerous fugitives, bringing justice to victims, and finding missing children is my lifetime’s work,” Walsh said of the reboot. “I am so excited to hear America’s Most Wanted is coming back and I support its return. God bless.” We don’t know if asking viewers to locate people immediately after spending a year and change solely looking at the same handful of faces is the most effective way to find these fugitives, but seeing as how the original series helped locate over 1,186 alleged criminals and 43 missing children, it’s probably worth a shot.

Fox Reboots America’s Most Wanted With Host Elizabeth Vargas