The next season of “Criminal Minds” will be its last as the FBI drama gets ready to wind down after 15 seasons and 325 episodes on CBS.
With production on the current season about to wrap, Joe Mantegna and the rest of the cast and crew have agreed to stick around this spring and shoot 10 more concluding episodes to air later in 2019 or in 2020.
“We are going out still with stories to tell, and we’re not on life support,” executive producer Erica Messer told Deadline. “We’re not a show that got moved from night, to night, to night. I’m not talking ill of any of those shows, but all those signs that you usually see before a show is gone, we didn’t have any of that.”
The team of profilers who anticipate the behavior of bad guys debuted in 2005, with an ensemble led by Mandy Patinkin and Thomas Gibson. Patinkin left after two seasons, dismayed by the show’s gruesome content, and was replaced by Mantegna, a fellow Chicago native. Gibson was fired in 2016 after an altercation on set with a writer.
Among the cast veterans are Matthew Gray Gubler (as socially awkward genius Spencer Reid), A.J. Cook media liaison turned profiler Jennifer Jareau) and Kristen Vangsness (computer whiz Penelope Garcia).
