Criminal Minds fans look back to its early days featuring Mandy Patinkin’s Jason Gideon and ponder why he left the series so early.
Known for his work on classic films like The Princess Bride and Dick Tracy, Patinkin enjoyed a short run as the leading man on CBS’ hit procedural drama Criminal Minds.
His character was Senior Supervisory Agent (SSA) Jason Gideon of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). His work involved getting in the heads of the worst criminals known to man, taking a psychological approach to crime-fighting as his team protected the country from serial killers, terrorists, and more.
Gideon’s Last Criminal Minds Episode Recap
Mandy Patinkin made his final on-screen appearance as SSA Jason Gideon on CBS’ Criminal Minds in Season 3, Episode 2, which aired on October 3, 2007.
Titled “In Name and Blood,” this episode saw the BAU in a panic after Gideon went MIA.
Gideon was supposed to meet Matthew Gray Gubler’s Dr. Spencer Reid in Gideon’s office for a chess game. However, Reid falls asleep and wakes up the next day realizing Gideon never showed up.
The team has to go on to work a case in Milwaukee, Wisconsin while dealing with even more turmoil outside of Gideon’s absence. Paget Brewster’s Emily Prentiss has turned in her resignation, Thomas Gibson’s Aaron Hotchner (Hotch) is close to being reassigned, and the rest of the team goes into panic mode during the case.
While they eventually solve the case and find a man who has been abducting women and cutting out their hearts, the answer to the Gideon mystery comes in the episode’s closing minutes.
What Did Gideon’s Letter to Reid on Criminal Minds Say?
After the case, Reid goes to Gideon’s private cabin and discovers he’s not there. When he gets to the house, he finds a note left specifically for him, as Gideon knew it would be Reid who would go out to look for him.
He admits that he never meant to cause Reid or the team any pain, bluntly saying he had lost his grip on life and the job itself due to the cruelty he saw daily.
This came to a head after his friend, Sarah, was brutally murdered and he worked her case. The next case after that was on a college campus, which reminded him of Sarah after they met in college.
Working this job, he realized he could not look at anybody in his life without imagining how they would die, leading to him losing faith in the idea of happy endings. After somebody so close to him was killed, all he saw was Sarah in the following cases he jumped into, and he lost all trust in himself.
He blamed himself for what happened to the most recent victims and the team and apologized to Reid for not having a better explanation for his decision to leave.
Closing with a statement that he would be looking for a way to make sense of the world again, he left the team for good at the end of the episode.
Does Gideon Die on Criminal Minds?
While Season 3, Episode 2 of Criminal Minds marks Mandy Patinkin’s last official appearance as Jason Gideon, he became one of the team’s new victims seven years after his exit.
Season 10, Episode 13 (titled “Nelson’s Sparrow) opened with the BAU team hearing from Hotch that Gideon was murdered. The news deeply affects all of them, although Reid takes it the hardest due to their close relationship, while Joe Mantegna’s SSA David Rossi asks how many more of his friends have to die.
Working with Gideon’s son, Steven, the BAU dives into a case that pulls them to their emotional brink as they eventually find Gideon’s killer, Donnie Mallick.
This comes amidst a few flashbacks of Gideon and Rossi’s early days working together, with young Gideon being played by Ben Savage. These flashbacks give fans new insight into what made Gideon the person and agent he was.
Gideon then made one more appearance in a flashback from Criminal Minds’ final season, Season 15. The show’s final two episodes utilize flashbacks for many of the characters seen across its entire 15-year run, including Savage and Patinkin as Gideon and Thomas Gibson as Hotch.
Why Did Mandy Patinkin Leave Gideon Role on Criminal Minds?
Variety reported in July 2007 that Patinkin had left his role on Criminal Minds due to “creative differences” in a statement released by his representatives.
In that statement, he wished the cast and crew “continued success in all of their endeavors” and looked forward to “continuing to work with the Disney and CBS companies” in a new capacity at a later date.
Executive producer Ed Bernero surprisingly revealed in an interview with the Criminal Minds Fanatic website that Patinkin did not show up for work on the first day of shooting for Season 3.
He provided “no advance notice” and gave the studio no chance to “find a way to make the loss of this character work.” This even led to the first seven scripts of the season being rewritten to remove him, leaving the team in a “proverbial lurch.”
“He gave us no advance notice that anything was wrong, no opportunity to find a way to make the loss of this character work, no indication that we should be looking for someone else, no warning that we might have to rewrite the first seven scripts (which is how far ahead we try to work) without the central character in them. He left us completely in the proverbial lurch.”
In 2012, Patinkin broke his silence with New York Magazine, explaining his decision to leave the series.
He admitted the biggest mistake he made was that he “chose to do Criminal Minds in the first place,” believing it would be something quite different. He did not expect to see the level of violence he saw every day, calling it “destructive to [his] soul and [his] personality” seeing those events so regularly:
“The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do ‘Criminal Minds’ in the first place… I thought it was something very different. I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year. It was very destructive to my soul and my personality. After that, I didn’t think I would get to work in television again.”
While Criminal Minds has continued into a new series following its run on CBS (Paramount+’s Criminal Minds: Evolution), Gideon has not returned in any capacity.
All 15 seasons of Criminal Minds and both seasons of Criminal Minds: Evolution are streaming on Paramount+.