Filming on Criminal Minds Season 19 Has Begun: Who Is Definitely Back?

“The BAU is back on the case,” the Criminal Minds Instagram announced on Friday afternoon, along with a BTS photo signaling that filming on Season 19 has begun.

The news comes almost midway through Season 18, which is dropping new episodes every Thursday on Paramount+. (Season 19 was greenlit back on March 5, more than two months ahead of the current season’s premiere.)

“The BAU is back on the case!” the crime drama’s IG trumpets. “A new season of Criminal Minds: Evolution has officially started filming.”

To look at the clapboard photo above, Joe Mantegna, Aisha Tyler, Kirsten Vangsness, Adam Rodriguez, A.J. Cook, Paget Brewster and Ryan-James Hatanaka will be back as series regulars for next season — meaning, David, Tara, Penelope, JJ, Emily and Tyler all are safe to buy some green bananas.

Might the slippery Sicarius aka Elias Voit (played by Zach Gilford) make it out of this season alive, to taunt the BAU for a fourth straight time? That remains TBD.

Season 18 of Criminal Minds: Evolution kicked off on May 8 and picked up six months after prisoners attacked the notorious Sicarius, leading the serial killer’s restless followers on the dark web to begin wreaking havoc all over the country. In order to stop this group from killing more innocents, the BAU has been forced to work alongside an increasingly unpredictable — and seemingly amnesic? — Voit, who surely is harboring his own sinister agenda.

Other Season 18 cast includes Lucifer alum Aimee Garcia as Dr. Julia Ochoa, a leading neuropsychiatrist assigned to help Voit recover from his injury-induced brain trauma, while franchise vet Matthew Gray Gubler recently made his first Evolution appearance as Dr. Spencer Reid.