Paramount+ to End ‘Criminal Minds: Evolution’ With Season 20
The final season arrives in 2027. It will be the fifth season of the Paramount+ revival and the 20th season of the franchise overall.
Paramount+ will end Criminal Minds: Evolution with Season 20. The streamer announced the decision Friday, alongside first-look photos from the final season, which is set to arrive in 2027.
Season 20 will be the fifth season of the revival and the 20th season of the franchise overall. The original series ran for 15 seasons on CBS, from 2005 to 2020, before Paramount+ brought it back in 2022 under the Evolution title.
Joe Mantegna, A.J. Cook, Kirsten Vangsness, Aisha Tyler, RJ Hatanaka, Adam Rodriguez and Paget Brewster are all set to return for the final run. Zach Gilford will not be back. Season 19 ended with his character, Elias Voit, locked up in an undisclosed high-security federal prison.
The ending was not planned in advance. Season 20 had already finished filming earlier this fall when the decision was made, according to Deadline. The episodes were not written as a series finale.
Showrunner and executive producer Erica Messer addressed the end in a statement Friday. “We’re looking forward to sharing Season 20 with everyone, and celebrating the legacy of this special show we’ve all built together,” she said.
Deadline reported that the decision was made recently under the new Skydance-led Paramount team, headed on the streaming side by co-chair and chief content officer Casey Bloys. It is the first official cancellation under that team. Deadline also reported that the previous regime had already recommended bringing the series to a close, even though it had renewed the show for Season 20 in March, before Season 19 aired.
The show was not fading when the call came. Reports noted it still ranked in Paramount+’s top ten. Season 19 aired from May to July of this year.
The series follows the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, a team of profilers who study killers to stop them before they strike again. On CBS it ran mostly as a case-of-the-week procedural, with 22 or more episodes a season. The Paramount+ revival switched to shorter, 10-episode seasons built around a single story arc.
It is the second time the show has ended. CBS closed the original run after Season 15 in 2020. Two years later, Paramount+ revived it. The revival brought back most of the core cast and leaned harder into serialized storytelling, including a network of killers built during the pandemic and led by Voit.
The series is produced by 20th Television and CBS Studios. All 19 seasons so far are available to stream on Paramount+ ahead of the final season in 2027. No exact premiere date has been announced.
