What Really Happened To Criss Angel After His TV Show Was Canceled?

The early 2000s, when taking on a dark, edgy, and goth look and persona went mainstream at the same time as provocative Las Vegas culture and cable TV exploded with reality shows, provided the perfect climate for Criss Angel to become one of the most famous people on the planet. From 2005 to 2010, Angel, boasting a uniquely charismatic sensibility and a particular set of skills, starred in the heavily watched A&E series "Criss Angel: Mindfreak." With an act somewhere between stuntman, performance artist, gross-out comedian, and street magician, the illusions of Angel, often perpetuated against unsuspecting passers-by, stunned, delighted, amazed, and unsettled.

It's part of most any entertainer's story, and particularly the story of Criss Angel, that the fame and visibility can disappear just as quickly as it arrived. Angel hasn't been on TV screens for many years now, but he's still working hard to entertain and bewilder both fans and skeptics. Here's what Criss Angel has been up to since the days of "Criss Angel: Mindfreak."

Just three years after the last episodes of "Criss Angel Mindfreak" aired in 2010, the titular magician was already ready to bring his seemingly impossible and extreme feats back to television. In 2013, he jumped from A&E to Spike with "Criss Angel BeLIEve." Centered less on performing magic, the successor series took a reality-documentary approach to Angel, depicting him in the process of designing and executing different projects. "Criss Angel BeLIEve" was canceled after 10 episodes.

It would take another decade to get Angel back on TV, and The CW did it in 2022 with "Criss Angel's Magic with the Stars." Over 10 episodes, Angel and other respected illusionists shared the truth behind famous magic tricks with singers, athletes, actors, and reality TV stars, and helped them stage their feats of wonder in front of audiences. "Criss Angel's Magic with the Stars" was one of the least-watched shows of the 2022-2023 TV season, and it was subsequently canceled.

In the middle of the five-year period in which the TV series "Criss Angel: Mindfreak" made Criss Angel a star, the magician opened the Las Vegas theatrical spectacular "BeLIEve" at the Luxor in October 2008. Initially a joint project with the avant-garde performance troupe Cirque du Soleil, the high-end show evolved over time, eliminating the involvement of Cirque du Soleil and becoming the Angel-dominant "Mindfreak Live!" by 2016. Two years later, that show, one of the most popular on the Las Vegas strip, went dark.

He wasn't gone from the Vegas entertainment scene for long. Just about three months after the closure of "Mindfreak Live!" at the Luxor, Angel started doing stunts on stage again in January 2019 with "Criss Angel: Mindfreak." This time, his theater of residence was the purpose-built Criss Angel Theater at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino. As of 2025, Angel stars in the 75-minute show five nights a week.

Criss Angel performs his complicated magic shows with regularity, and they almost always go according to plan. In the middle of a March 2017 staging of "Mindfreak Live!", Angel briefly lost consciousness. The magician was attempting one of his signature bits, breaking out of two straitjackets while hanging upside down. After Angel suddenly ceased moving, producers brought down a curtain and called off the remainder of the performance. "I remember getting put into the straitjacket, being dragged on the ground and being hoisted into the air and the next thing I remember is waking up to people putting needles in my arms, wires on my chest and cold towels over my body," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "The experience was surreal." But that wasn't the only time something went wrong.

It's a violation of the house rules to use a cell phone during performances of Criss Angel's "MINDFREAK" at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, and when attendee Brandon McDonald was spotted doing just that at a December 2023 show, a security guard ordered him to put the phone away. McDonald then tried to punch the guard, who removed him from the theater to await police, assisted in the task by Angel who came to the theater employee's defense. However, during his brief interaction with Angel, McDonald alleged, the magician violently choked him. McDonald was arrested on battery charges; Angel avoided legal intervention.

Making television takes up a lot of time, and in the decade and a half since production wound down on "Criss Angel: Mindfreak," Criss Angel has had plenty of opportunity to downplay his career in favor of fostering his personal relationships and building a family. After a 2006 divorce and a brief relationship with "The Girls Next Door" reality star Holly Madison, Angel met Sandra Gonzalez and proposed in 2011. They broke up, and in 2012, Angel took up with Shaunyl Benson, a musician and Las Vegas stage performer. Angel and Benson got married in February 2015 but kept the wedding secret for months. The marriage came to a temporary end in 2016, before the couple reconciled, and Angel asked to make things official again, proposing in 2023.

Angel and Benson have three kids together. Son Johnny Crisstopher, born in 2014, received a diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of 2 and received treatments for nearly three years. Angel and Benson's second child, son Xristos Yanni, arrived in January 2019, and a third child, daughter Illusia Angelina, came around in November 2021. Once again, one of Angel's children required medical attention — the baby was born five weeks early and spent the first part of her life in a neonatal intensive care unit.