Criminal Minds boss Erica Messer has hinted at plans for Season 12.
The procedural has yet to be formally picked up for the 2016-17 season by CBS, but in a new TVGuide interview Messer envisions the theme of the would-be 12th season:
When you look at the FBI version of that, it is unusual to have this team of people be the only ones to do this job for 11 years. Obviously we’ve had people come and go, but as a whole, that team has been intact, and that’s amazing and wonderful. But the realistic version is people would come and go and consult, maybe run their own field office in another city or whatever. That’s what I want Season 12 to be about if we get picked up — sort of embracing that idea of “We were so lucky to have 11 years of that and now it will look a little different, but we’ll be OK.”
Asked whether she would consider replacing Shemar Moore in Season 12, Messer said there are no plans at the moment, while leaving the possibility open for his character to return “once in a while” on a consultancy basis:
It’s such a bigger conversation with the network and executives. I would really love to lean into this idea of having people come in to consult. How great if we could get Shemar to consult once in a while? Paget [Brewster] is back next week. It was so great to have her back. We’d like to make more of those creative choices. The challenge is if they have other projects, it’s more difficult to make that happen. This year, we were hoping to have Paget in the premiere, but she was doing Grandfathered. Grandfathered wrapped in February and we grabbed her and had her play with us for a week. But I don’t really know. There is no replacing Derek Morgan by any means. We’ll need to see who might come play for a while. It’s hard to be the new kid and we’ve seen it a lot. We’ve seen a few characters come and go. It’s a hard gig. I think Aisha’s done an amazing job this season. So it’s a conversation that we have not really pursued any further. Now that everyone knows, we can sort of all be on the same page and settle in to that for a minute before we figure out what we’re doing for Season 12 — fingers crossed since we still don’t have a pickup for that.
Stay tuned as we continue to monitor the status of Criminal Minds Season 12…
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