Yes, Mr. Carter: We Don’t Know what happened, and we also know that in showbusiness anything goes. And since Mr. Gibson was never known for being a trouble-maker in his 30-years-old-career, I believe him…
So yes, they could and should have handled it all better. They should have kept quiet about the details of Mr. Gibson’s firing, and about Hotch, they should have done it way, WAAAY better. They used such a basic, lame and poor explanation to say goodbye to such an important and beloved character that they only enraged the fans even more! I’m a writer, and I read fanfiction, and let me tell you that I’ve read fanfics that made more sense that what they showed in the series, therefore, I KNOW that more interesting, plausible solutions to explain his disappearance exist. The WP explanation made the writers come across as lazy, mediocre, and showed that they just wanted people to forget Hotch really soon, cause if you analize it, it’s ludicrous and unfair that Gideon had one entire episode devoted to explain his “death” (7 years after his exit!), and they showed respect to the character even when the actor dumped the production and talked so badly about the show, and in return, Hotch disappeared to fade in the nothing in 8 or 9 sentences at most, the team didn’t mourn the loss of their 11 year boss for even five minutes!! and now they all act like if he never existed, like he and his son weren’t still in danger, (considering that Mr. Scratch it’s free and has the powers of Zeus All-Mighty)

Mr. Gibson never missed one episode, he carried the show when producers wanted to cancel it after Mr. Patinkin dumped them, supported the writers in the strike, supported AJ and Paget until they were rehired, supported Rachel Nichols when the fans HATED her, supported his friends and their causes (like when he supported Shemar with his events raising funds for the disease his mom has) and in return, he has being treated so badly that it’s just unbelievable.
Both he and Hotch deserved better; we fans deserved better! And if they wanted people to forget about him with that unbelievable quick fix, they managed to obtain the opposite: it’s been almost a year now and while Netflix offers SXII, more fans than ever say (or keep saying after all this time) that they want him back…

I loved the show, I really did, but I’m really exigent in my criteria, I know what I want to watch, and I won’t waste my time in getting bored in front of the tv watching CM just because one day it was so good or because I feel sympathy for others in the remaining-shrinking-expanding cast. The quality was not what it was in the beggining, the current writers had let me down since season 9 or 10, and as a writer I know that you can’t survive if you just vanish such a crutial character in the team’s dynamic without giving a proper closure and if you don’t create another character that can sustain the team and the show. I wont watch just cause I feel sorry for the crew, really, I feel bad for them, but I wont waste my time, especially not now that so many other tv shows have such an incredible level of quality.
#NoHotchNoWatch

Tweets can’t destroy a show! Criminal Minds it’s a TVshow, and therefore, it’s mission it’s To Entertain, and most of the people that stopped watching doesn’t even know about the #NoHotchNoWatch movement, they just got BORED (check Criminal Minds facebook page, read thousands of comments of people admitting they fell asleep while watching, and that they skipped parts cause they couldn’t stand one episode complete!)
People got bored to death with S12, that’s why they lost over 2 million viewers, that’s why they got the 10pm slot, and that’s why the producers keep doing changes in the cast, cause Paget as chief and the mix of agents combined with the awful non-sense of Reid in jail plotline Didn’t worked.
The chemistry was wounded when Morgan walked away, and died when they fired Thomas, and firing and hiring random people it’s not going to improve that whatsoever, specially with such poorly written episodes and when the current group of writers has proved to be unable to develop new characters in an interesting, believable way.
So, if CM it’s dying, and if /when get’s cancelled, it will only be the producers fault, cause they made it BORING!

This is my view on it: I’m super-bummed about what happened with Hotch. I wish there was a better way it could’ve been handled, but I understand that it was a tough position. I can’t judge what happened with Gibson because I wasn’t there. I do love a lot of the characters there so I’m happily still watching, but I can’t tell any other fans what to do and I know there are plenty of people upset over it. I get where their passion comes from.

Thomas Gibson/Aaron Hotchner is missing a lot. Why did the show change to the 10:00 PM? Simply because the show has no more audience.