Crime procedurals never die. Whether they live on in syndication, streaming libraries, or with a full-on reboot, someone with long wavy hair is solving a murder every minute of every day. It took Perry Mason 54 years to be resurrected, but Criminal Minds is getting there much faster. The FBI profiling juggernaut went on for 15 seasons on CBS and is now officially getting ten more episodes on Paramount+. Rather than simply call the series Criminal Minds, according to Variety, Paramount+ has opted to call the upcoming show Criminal Minds: Evolution, which makes sense, because Criminal Minds is evolving, get it? But a colon and a word is not all it’s adding. Zach Gilford will be joining the cast in a recurring guest-star role as Elias Volt, “an operations analyst for a global cyber-security firm who has a dark side and an obsession with death.†Sounds like a potential villain suspect to me!
In addition, a big chunk of the OG cast is returning. Welcome back to crime-solving Joe Mantegna, Kirsten Vangsness, Adam Rodriguez, A.J. Cook, Aisha Tyler, and Paget Brewster. Notably absent from the cast list is Tumblr favorite Matthew Gray Gubler. Criminal Minds had notorious cast-overturn issues, of course, so not everybody is coming back. TikTok star Mandy Patinkin left the show after season two and later said that the show was his greatest mistake. “I thought it was something very different. I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year,†he said in New York. “It was very destructive to my soul and my personality. After that, I didn’t think I would get to work in television again.†Thomas Gibson was fired in 2016. Brewster and Cook were both let go from the show, only to be rehired after CBS got called out for treating the women on the show as disposable. And they’re both headed to Paramount+, so who’s disposable now?
The reboot will debut two of its ten episodes on Thanksgiving Day, because nothing goes with family togetherness like mid-level violence. Episodes will then air weekly through December 15, at which point the show will take a break before resuming on January 12 through to its finale on February 15, according to Deadline.
This post has been updated.