“Criminal Minds” adds a Desperate Housewives to its cast: Felicity Huffman is indeed preparing to join the Paramount+ series next season.
Warning, spoilers! The following article reveals key plot elements of “Criminal Minds (2022)”.
Since 2022, Esprits Criminels has reinvented itself. After a two-year hiatus, the flagship CBS series, renamed “Criminal Minds: Evolution” for the occasion in English, has indeed returned to streaming and directly to Paramount+ this time.
And for its second online season, the show is betting big and adding to its cast a face known from the small screen: that of Felicity Huffman who, after her legal setbacks in 2019, has become rare on television. In 2023, in addition to an appearance in an episode of Good Doctor and then in a TV movie, the Desperate Housewife and interpreter of the iconic Lynette, winner of an Emmy and nominated for an Oscar, will now be back in a role which therefore seems more substantial in the upcoming season of the cult detective series.
According to TVLine, the actress has been cast as Dr. Jill Gideon, a brilliant biological psychiatrist who ends up helping the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit investigate a murder conspiracy theory.
At first, Jill will be reluctant to help them, given her complicated history with David Rossi (Joe Mantegna) and her late ex-husband, one Jason Gideon (played in the first seasons of Criminal Minds by Mandy Patinkin), but she will quickly realize that their skills could help them uncover another clue to the elusive mystery of the “Gold Star” that began in season 1.
Still according to TVLine, filming for the new season would have taken place in mid-January: no premiere date has yet been set.
A tense first season
The first season of this new version saw the elite profilers of the Department of Behavioral Sciences “DSC” – or “BAU” for Behavioral Analysis Unit in English – come up against “their biggest threat yet”: Elias Voit , an UnSub (short for “UNknown SUBject” used during an investigation that can be translated into French as “the unknown author of a crime”) who had spent the COVID pandemic cultivating a network of killers in series.
The team consisted of franchise veterans such as Joe Mantegna (David Rossi), Paget Brewster (Emily Prentiss), AJ Cook (Jennifer Jareau), Kirsten Vangsness (Penelope Garcia), Aisha Tyler (Dr. Tara Lewis) and Adam Rodriguez (Luke Alvez), while Friday Night alum Zach Gilford Lights, played that aforementioned Elias Voit.
CBS
For the new season, they will all be back – just like Ryan-James Hatanaka (Tyler Green). Joe Mantegna, AJ Cook, Aisha Tyler, Adam Rodriguez And Zach Gilford will also direct episodes.
As for Josh Stewart, also a long-time recurring character, he shared on X (formerly Twitter) last January that Will LaMontagne Jr. would not return.
“No, unfortunately my days of playing Will LaMontagne Jr. are over. You were the best”, he wrote.
When the new seasonCriminal minds will begin, only two weeks will have passed since Voit’s capture, showrunner Erica Messer shared with TVLine last February, giving Prentiss only a little time to “figure out what’s going on with this Gold Star mystery that she believes has something to do with the death of the [directeur adjoint du FBI] Doug Bailey.”
“She feels a bit of survivor’s guilt”, implied the showrunner. “She has a lot of trouble with this.”
To be continued later this year.
In the meantime, Criminal Minds can be found on Paramount+.