Criminal Minds Gets Renewed for the 12th Season, the Storm Arrives in Criminal Minds Season 11 Finale!

The hugely popular US procedural Criminal Minds has been renewed for a 22 episode 12th season. The 11th run just ended stateside and it remains one of the most popular shows. It is also the third most successful series on the CBS network, only lagging behind NCIS and The Big Bang Theory.

Thomas Gibson and Joe Mantegna of Criminal Minds focus on the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) based out of Quantico, Virginia and he can track and catch via behavioral profiling. The renewal was probably delayed due to financial issues but reports indicate that leaner license fee helped in the negotiation for the long-running drama.

Season 11 of Criminal Minds continues on Sunday on RTÉ2. You will get to see BAU returning to Florida in this week’s episode when two people are discovered dead as a result of gruesome medical experiments.

They are pitted against a killer with a deadly obsession. Garcia, in the meantime, believes that she is losing her mind while Hotch keeps working around the clock in order to dismantle the threat against her.

Season 11 finale of Criminal Minds didn’t end with anyone’s life in the balance nor did any BAU member decide to depart. However, the team found themselves getting prepared head to head with some skeletons from the past. The tone of the series is set by an ominous message that Hotch supposedly sent in to 911.

The team had no idea until it was too late. Hotch’s door is kicked in and he is taken away to DOJ under suspicion of taking part in nefarious activities. The team quickly came together in order to prove their leader’s innocence and find out the true culprit behind what is really happening.

The team gathers enough evidence with Reed and Garcia’s help in order to prove that the 911 left by Hotchner was spliced together by making use of footage from Hotch’s reports over the years.  How did the DOJ get the information to retain him even though he was framed? Hotch was ratted out for being dangerous by Peter Lewis a.k.a Mr. Scratch.

In a video testimony he states that the world needs to know what kind of a man Hotchner really is. The evidence stacked against Hotch is a little suspicious even though Hotch wants to know why the DOJ or FBI would believe anything a serial killer has to say.

They have receipts of Hotch buying materials to prepare a bomb. However, they also know that he was exposed to the dissociative drug used by Mr. Scratch on his victims and Hotch just happened to leave that off his report.

The series writers do a great little callback to some of the big moments from this series. This further includes the fact that Ross did nothing when Gideon killer’s Donnie was shot by Rossi.

At the same time, he allowed Ellie to resign after she had shot an unsub. This was all done in order to prove that Hotch’s judgment has been clouded since his wife’s death. Now, Hotch is quite adamant about maintaining his innocence and demands to see the case against him.

On the other hand, the team is already making waves regarding who decided to frame him in the first place. Reid recollects the fact that Antonia, the former unsub warned Hotch that a storm was coming while JJ rushed down in order to threaten her into talking.