‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ Boss on Reid & Simmons Updates, Plus Who’s Returning for Season 17
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 16 finale, “Dead End.”]
Criminal Minds: Evolution might have ended its 16th season with the FBI suffering a loss — Deputy Director Bailey (Nicholas D’Agosto), we were just starting to like you! — but every member of the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) — David Rossi (Joe Mantegna), Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster), Jennifer “J.J.” Jareau (A.J. Cook), Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness), Dr. Tara Lewis (Aisha Tyler), and Luke Alvez (Adam Rodriguez) — survived. And the good news is they’ll all be back for Season 17 (picked up in January).
“The main cast members are all coming back,” showrunner Erica Messer confirms to TV Insider. “And then deals are still being made for some of the other faces you saw this year.”
But what about the two profilers with the BAU at the end of the original run (2005-2020 on CBS) we didn’t see but only heard tidbits about in Season 16, Dr. Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) and Matt Simmons (Daniel Henney)?
“I really can’t say anything because we don’t exactly know when we’re shooting this. And the problem with a 10-episode season is you have such a short window to shoot it, and Daniel and Matthew are doing their other projects, and so I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to get them back,” Messer shares. “I would love to say we could have them back, but I can’t promise that.”
Michael Yarish /Paramount+
In the Season 16 premiere, Bailey told Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster) he wasn’t “at liberty to discuss” Reid and Simmons’ assignments, adding, “if and when they return is entirely up to them. Sadly, we don’t have a say.” We barely heard about either character after that.
“I also feel like until I know that, I don’t really wanna bring up their secret missions because I just don’t want to promise something that we can’t deliver,” Messer admits.
The showrunner had said earlier this season that those assignments could come into play next year, so might they be tied to Gold Star, the mystery introduced in the finale? “That would be a dream if we could do that,” she says.
We don’t know much about Gold Star other than just the utterance of those words got UnSub Elias Voit/Sicarius (Zach Gilford) first a face-to-face with Bailey (which ended with him killing the deputy director) and then, once he was in FBI custody, the BAU floor cleared out so someone could join him in an interrogation room. We’ll have to wait until the beginning of Season 17 to find out who that person is, why Voit knows about Gold Star, what it is, and pretty much everything else related to those two words.
So while Reid and Simmons returning to work with the BAU on whatever Gold Star and the mix of a recurring UnSub and standalone cases might be up in the air, what about anyone else from the original run coming back? “I’ll never say never, but there’s nothing in the works right now for that,” according to Messer.
For now, let’s just be glad the BAU survived (Round 1 of?) Voit.
Criminal Minds: Evolution, Season 17, TBA, Paramount+
Criminal Minds: Evolution where to stream
