Criminal Minds season 13: Can the BAU get itself back together?

Following tonight’s Criminal Minds season 13 episode, will Reid, Garcia, and Rossi eventually return to the BAU? At the moment, it’s certainly understandable to be freaking out given that Linda Barnes (THE WORST) decided that she was going to gut the unit with the approval of the director. Rossi’s been forced into retirement, many other people have been reassigned, and Reid has been put on permanent professorial duty. JJ is still the unit chief, but she’s unable to make decisions to the full extent of what she wants.

So, is this really the end for the BAU at the moment? Don’t count on it.

First of all, remember this: Criminal Minds is a show about the extended BAU family. there have been many departures over the years but completely severing the team at this point just doesn’t feel like something the writers would do.

Beyond just that, if everyone was leaving they wouldn’t be doing it right now. With few exceptions here and there, you’re not going to lose so many characters in the middle of the season. Like with Paget Brewster tonight many of these characters are going to continue to have roles — it’s largely a question at this point of how they are going to be included and what are the best ways for it to make some sense. We envision that someone — it may be JJ — is going to push hard to get Linda Barnes out of power and get the team back together.

As much as it may be easy to push the panic button right now, we actually do think that this is exciting — tonight’s Criminal Minds was actually one of the best in a long time, and one of the reasons was that there was a story beyond just the UnSub to be really invested in. Not only that, but it’s involving almost every single character on the series. While we liked Matthew Gray Gubler’s performance in Reid’s prison arc last year, the big criticism of it was that he was separated from everyone for a while.

Related – Read our review of tonight’s episode

What did you think about Wednesday night’s Criminal Minds episode, and do you think that we’ll be able to see some of our favorites again back with the BAU? Share below!

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