Season Ten

Season Ten. On March 13th, 2014 CBS announced the renewal of Criminal Minds for the 2014-2015 TV season, with a standard initial order of 23 episodes. The season premiered on October 1, 2014.

Ratings
No ratings information is available at this time.

Cast

 * Joe Mantegna - David Rossi
 * Thomas Gibson - Aaron Hotchner
 * Shemar Moore - Derek Morgan
 * Matthew Gray Gubler - Dr. Spencer Reid
 * A.J. Cook - Jennifer Jareau
 * Kirsten Vangsness - Penelope Garcia
 * Jennifer Love Hewitt - Kate Callahan

Highlights
During the season, the BAU's ranks will be joined by Kate Callahan, a former undercover FBI agent who has a prior friendship with the team. It was hinted that additional members may join the team around mid-season. The team pursues, among many other criminals, a delusional unsub who is obsessed with collecting human limbs, a traumatized unsub who works as a high-school English teacher, and a highly attractive female unsub who leads a successful personal life but is emotional and prone to rages.

Garcia also feels guilt over her shooting an unsub in the Season Nine finale Demons, which she tries to remedy by returning to Texas to visit the unsub. Reid will also be traumatized after being shot in the neck by a suspect during a shootout in Angels, which he is also still physically recovering from. In addition, the story-arcs of Beth Clemmons and Savannah Hayes, the love interests of Hotch and Morgan, respectively, are further explored. Mid-season, there was a commemorative episode called Nelson's Sparrow, which celebrated the show's ten-year history, which "will have many callbacks and possibly old faces from the last nine years". This episode featured flashbacks of a younger Rossi and Gideon working on a case.

Joe Mantegna directed an episode called Anonymous, which concluded the story arc of Harrison Scott, whose actor (and Mantegna's best friend) Meshach Taylor died from lung cancer a few months after his latest appearance on the show; the episode will be made as a tribute for Taylor. The season's third episode A Thousand Suns involved "the largest mass-casualty event" the BAU have ever seen, later revealed to be a plane crash. The ninth episode Fate featured Rossi's second ex-wife in a flashback that was set in 1994. The nineteenth episode will serve as the backdoor pilot for the show's second spin-off after the short-lived Suspect Behavior.

Also, it was hinted by A.J. Cook that Demons "will directly impact [this season]", with any plot-holes in Season Nine being concluded in this season as well, and also that "something big" will happen during the season. It was later confirmed that JJ will still be recovering from her abduction that occurred in 200. In addition, Erica Messer confirmed that there will be a recurring unsub featured in this season, who will first become prominent midway into the season. There have also been many assumptions that Jane Lynch, the actress who portrays Reid's mother Diana, might reprise her role for the season.