Deadline is reporting that Aimee Garcia will be part of Criminal Minds: Evolution next season, and we couldn’t be happier. Getting the obvious out of the way, Garcia’s a welcome addition to pretty much any cast. As far as major TV fandoms go, we loved her in both Lucifer and Dexter. With that history, she’ll be right at home on yet another one of our favorite procedurals. But it’s this series’ history that makes this news particularly sweet.
Longtime Criminal Minds fans probably don’t need — much less want — a reminder of this since it was a dark time for the fandom, but here we go. Once upon a time, we needed a whole “save the CM ladies” social media campaign because someone, somewhere didn’t understand the value women brought to the show (or, you know, to everything). Back then, they really tried to take Paget Brewster and A.J. Cook away from us, and that was just wrong. Like, imagine thinking women — especially those women — aren’t important enough to keep around. Won’t ever be us. Thankfully, though, the fandom totally won that war.
But look at us now! We had that hilarious, yet somehow still sweet, Jemily scene last season, and Tara and Rebecca reunited too. While we’re at it, who could forget Gold Star’s Jade Waters? Not us. We support women’s rights and women’s wrongs. Not to mention, Season 17 also revealed that a woman — Dr. Jill Gideon — helped create the BAU we see today. (But, of course, she never got any credit for it. Typical in a male-dominated field.) Last, but absolutely never least, our girl Penelope Garcia’s still the BAU’s Black Queen super-hacker slash ball of sunshine. Or. Well. She remains a ball of sunshine except when she’s absolutely destroying keyboards or staring serial killers down to get them to just hush.
And now, we get yet another female character who won’t be a total afterthought because Aimee Garcia will be joining us for multiple episodes. Admittedly, it sounds like she won’t get to stick around forever and, sadly, won’t be joining the BAU family. But we still say this news is still kinda a big deal because as we pointed out above, we’ll never forget how we came way too close to this series just being “a bunch of dudes, plus Penelope as a treat” all those years ago.
So, what’s the scoop on the new character? According to Deadline:
“In a multiple-episode arc, Garcia will portray Dr. Julia Ochoa, one of the country’s leading neuropsychiatrists who is assigned to help a high-profile patient recover from his injury-induced brain trauma. She clashes with Alvez (Adam Rodriguez) who, by contrast, believes in a more aggressive approach than her gentle approach.”
Now, should we start throwing theories out there about who the “high-profile patient” in question could be…especially since Alvez wants to be tough on whoever it is? Because we’d kinda be willing to place bets based on how the finale ended. Just saying. (No, that’s not a hint. If we had intel that we couldn’t reveal, we wouldn’t even go there. And if we had scoop we could give you, we absolutely would. We’re just trying to build a profile here, is all.)
