Is ‘Criminal Minds’ season 11 new tonight on CBS? The waiting game

For everyone out there who loves “Criminal Minds,” we certainly understand you having a little bit of a desire to see more of the show this season … especially when you consider the episode count.

There is no new episode tonight, and that is largely unusual just because typically this show has anywhere between 23 and 24 episodes a season. This season, for whatever reason, only had 22 including last week’s finale. This is the smallest order for the show since season 3, which was shortened thanks in part to the writers’ strike that happened in the middle of the 2007-08 season.

Will season 12 return with a larger order? It’s far too early to really start speculating on that one way or another. What we do know is that there will probably be a continuation of the story set up in the finale whenever the show returns, and that revolves squarely around the manhunt for some of the escaped UnSubs. Mr. Scratch is one of them, and hopefully we’ll find out more about some of the others over the course of the months ahead.

One other thing that you can probably expect is a new character or two to surface at some point in the early going. While we’re not going to say that the show is replacing Shemar Moore per se (that’s not really fair to whoever the eventual replacement is), they are going to find someone else to fill his void in the team. Hopefully, we’re also going to get more in the process of Aisha Tyler as Dr. Tara Lewis, but time will tell there.

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