‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ to Start Filming New Season in January

We’re finally going to see what’s next in that interrogation room on Criminal Minds: Evolution.

“We start filming mid January at a break neck pace to get episodes to you ASAP!” series star Paget Brewster (who plays Emily Prentiss) revealed on X (formerly known as Twitter). “We all hope you will watch and love them!” (Originally, they were going to start filming in April, as Kirsten Vangsness told TV Insider, but it got pushed with the possibility of a strike; there were two, writers starting in May then actors in July, and both are now over.)

Criminal Minds, after airing for 15 seasons on CBS, returned with Evolution on Paramount+ in 2022. The first season of the revival saw the BAU — Brewster, Vangsness (Penelope Garcia), Joe Mantegna (David Rossi), A.J. Cook (Jennifer “JJ” Jareau), Aisha Tyler (Dr. Tara Lewis), and Adam Rodriguez (Luke Alvez) returned —tracking down Elias Voit/Sicarius (Zach Gilford), who had created a network of serial killers. In the finale, they took him into custody — during which he uttered the mysterious phrase “Gold Star” — and at the end, Voit was brought into an interrogation room, uncuffed, and then someone walked in.

“Our plan is Season 17 opens with Voit looking at who walked in the door,” showrunner Erica Messer told us. “We purposefully wanted to leave that cliffhanger feel of who could it be. Is it somebody we’ve never met before? Is it somebody who’s — we’ve never met the director of the FBI, we’ve only met the deputy director. So we have a plan and we hope the plan works, but we also have a lot of backup ideas that we’re talking about right now that we’re all super excited about.”

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The plan was, then, to continue to see Voit as well going forward. “We’re planning on using him almost the way Hannibal Lecter was used in Silence of the Lambs, that we have this brilliant mind, twisted profiler in custody and we don’t wanna talk to him. We don’t feel like we need his help, but because of the Gold Star of it all, we’re gonna need to talk to him a little bit more than we ever thought we would,” Messer said.

The main cast from the first season of Evolution is set to return, but missing were Dr. Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) and Matt Simmons (Daniel Henney), both said to be on assignment. Hearing more about those assignments as well as potentially seeing one or both might very well depend on scheduling.

Criminal Minds: Evolution, Return, TBA, Paramount+