Jennifer Love Hewitt made headlines when she joined Criminal Minds for the CBS drama's tenth season. The actress had been a familiar face on television since her breakout role as Sarah on Fox's Party of Five in the 1990s, and she was becoming part of one of the most popular TV series. Unfortunately, the arrangement didn't last very long.
Criminal Minds fans were surprised when Hewitt's character Kate Callahan was written out in the Season 10 finale. Was her departure just one more example of the show's increasing amount of cast turnover? Or was it the actress deciding that the show wasn't quite what she was looking for after all? Here are the reasons why Jennifer Love Hewitt only lasted one season before disappearing from the Criminal Minds universe, and what happened to her character.
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Special Agent Kate Callahan was introduced to the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) in the Criminal Minds Season 10 premiere. She was the replacement for Alex Blake after Blake's resignation in the Season 9 finale, but Kate would resign herself just a season later. The Season 10 finale, "The Hunt," centered on her character and involved her niece Meg being abducted by human traffickers. Although the BAU was able to recover Meg unharmed, Kate and her husband Chris also discovered that she was pregnant, and so she left her position in order to spend time with her family.
Due to her relatively short run on the show, little was explored about Kate's backstory. She had previously worked for the recurring character of Andi Swann on the Domestic Trafficking Task Force before transferring to the BAU, and had significant undercover experience. Both her sister and brother-in-law were killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks when Meg was just an infant, leaving Kate and Chris to raise her as their adopted daughter. With Season 10 considered one of the show's weakest, the character didn't make a huge impact other than the shock of her leaving so soon.
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Fans were thrown by Hewitt leaving Criminal Minds just as they had gotten used to her character, and they weren't the only ones. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly after the actress' last episode aired, showrunner Erica Messer mentioned that the Season 10 finale had already been planned when the decision was made, and the writers had to change the episode to accommodate her departure. "What wasn't in play was writing her out, by any means," Messer said. But Kate's ending reflected why the character had to leave.
Hewitt chose to depart the series after she found out she was expecting her second child. Messer further explained that since the actress was "taking time off to be a full-time mom. Because she's due in July [2016], when we would start shooting Season 11, timing-wise there was no way for her to do both." Hewitt never returned before Criminal Minds ended with Season 15. She also wasn't one of the cast members announced when Paramount+ ordered the Criminal Minds revival, since the actress is now a series regular on Fox's procedural 9-1-1, so TV viewers have seen the last of Kate Callahan.