Is ‘Criminal Minds’ season 12, episode 7 new tonight? Prepare for big Spencer Reid episode

For those wondering, CBS is airing at least somewhat of a new lineup tonight, given that you are going to have a chance to see two new hours of “Survivor” on the air.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that you are also going to get a chance to check out a new episode of “Criminal Minds” in the slightest. There is no new installment of the show airing on the network tonight, largely for the reason that the network doesn’t want to ruin the ratings of the show by putting an episode on at a time that’ll be detrimental to it. “Survivor” has a fixed number of episodes that it needs to get on the air before its finale, while “Criminal Minds” has a lot more flexibility.

What we do want to pass along to go along with this news is a note on a bit upcoming episode for Spencer Reid. Per co-executive producer Harry Bring (see the tweet below), the upcoming 13th episode of the show is entitled “Spencer,” and is being co-written by showrunner Erica Messer and star Kirsten Vangsness. These two last wrote an episode together for “A Beautiful Disaster,” otherwise known as the last episode to feature Shemar Moore as a series regular.

For those pressing their nearest panic button, don’t: Just because the episode is named after Spencer doesn’t mean that Matthew Gray Gubler is leaving the show. All it really means is that this will be most likely a key hour for his character. Remember that there are several different possibilities for what this could be, especially given that we know Jane Lynch is returning at some point this season as his mother, and there is a lot of story emotionally that we could end up seeing whenever the two do have an opportunity to share a little bit of screen time.

Interested in some further updates regarding “Criminal Minds”? Then our suggestion is to head over to the link here right away! We’ll have some other scoop pertaining to the show once it is officially available.