‘Criminal Minds’ season 12: A (previous) plan for Thomas Gibson’s Hotch

The news at this point for Thomas Gibson and “Criminal Minds” is pretty much crystal clear: He’s off the show, and it certainly doesn’t look like he is coming back.

Yet, at the same time there are certainly questions regarding how in the world his character is written out of the show. We know that he is in the first two installments of the season, and after that, you have to prepare to say goodbye. TV Guide reports that the original plan was to have Hotch on temporary duty back when Gibson was suspended from the show as opposed to fire. We imagine that the plan from here may have been to slowly work on introducing him back into the world of the show, and you could argue that Hotch was simply struggling under the wait of all of the escaped UnSubs, especially one in Mr. Scratch that was especially personal for him.

As for what the show does now, that’s more of anyone’s guess. It’s possible you kill the character off, if for no other reason than that it is particular hard to write this character off in another way that makes sense to who Hotch his. He loved his colleagues at the BAU, and we’ve seen over the years that he would do quite a bit for them.

The site also reports that Paget Brewster will be appearing in at least six episodes over the course of the season, and his first turn as Emily will come during the same third episode that will not feature Gibson.

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