Criminal Minds – Picture: ViacomCBS
Criminal Minds took the crown as being the most-watched show on Netflix in the United States in 2021. That may come as a surprise given the show is effectively waiting to be removed from the service at this point. Below, we’ll take a look at the future of Criminal Minds on Netflix, how many seasons are available where it’s streaming and why seasons 13, 14, and 15 aren’t on Netflix.
The police procedural series is among CBS’s greatest series in their library. The US show ran for over 324 episodes across 15 seasons with two spin-offs but really has come to popularity since hitting streaming services.
How many seasons of Criminal Minds are on Netflix?
The rights to Criminal Minds is a little tricky which is partly why the streaming landscape for the show is why it is. In the United States, CBS Television Distribution carries the rights while outside the US, it’s owned by Disney (more on this in a second).
As of January 2022, Netflix US has access to seasons 1 to 12 of Criminal Minds. It does not have access to either Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour or Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders which both remain unavailable on an SVOD service in the United States.
Why Criminal Minds isn’t on Netflix outside of the United States
Outside the United States, the show is distributed wholly by Disney. Netflix has never carried Criminal Minds internationally but upon the release of the Star tab on Disney+, that’s where the streaming home for Criminal Minds is.
Not only is Disney+ streaming all 15 seasons of the main show, it’s also streaming the respective spin-offs Suspect Behaviour and Beyond Borders too.
Will Seasons 13-15 of Criminal Minds ever be on Netflix?
Season 13 aired between September 2017 and April 2018 but failed to ever arrive on Netflix.
Instead, new seasons have only been made available on Hulu (who holds seasons 13 through 15) and Paramount+ which at the moment is the only streamer with access to the entire collection.
Given we’re now four years on, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see these newer seasons join Netflix.
Despite not having the full library, it still pulls in huge numbers for Netflix beating out CoComelon and Grey’s Anatomy for the top spot.
This half and half approach also applies to NCIS which stopped getting updates around the same time as Criminal Minds. It too was a major title for Netflix in 2021 coming in as the 4th most-watched acquired title in 2021.
Will Criminal Minds leave Netflix in 2022?
A while back we predicted we may see the series leave in 2020 and we got that wrong. The likelihood is we will eventually see both Criminal Minds and NCIS leave Netflix for good to be a staple on Paramount+ but when that will be is still up in the air.
For now, although we’ve got no data to support it, it’s likely that leveraging Netflix (something ViacomCBS has done successfully with the likes of iCarly) is getting people to move over to Paramount+ for the later seasons.
With that said, the streaming rights will eventually come up for renewal and in all likelihood, Netflix will lose them. When that is could be a matter of months or years. We don’t just don’t know for sure.
Are you sad Netflix didn’t get newer seasons of Criminal Minds? Let us know in the comments.