Penelope Garcia is one of the fan-favorite characters in Criminal Minds. The dark web hacker turned FBI agent is extremely skilled at digging out information. She makes connections between seemingly unrelated things, and she’s able to find proof to back up her suspicions. Aside from her skills, Garcia is known for her humor and quirkiness which bring brief smiles to fellow profilers’ faces during their highly stressful job tracking down serial killers.
Garcia makes the decision to exit from the BAU at the end of Criminal Minds. As someone who has dedicated so many years working for the FBI, the decision is quite sudden and leaves fans with many questions. Why did Garcia quit the FBI? The answer has everything to do with her relationship with the bureau.
How Did Penelope Join the BAU?
Unlike the rest of her colleagues, Penelope Garcia didn’t join the FBI by choice. She was working as an anarchist hacker under the code name “the Black Queen.” Due to her skills and criminal activities, the FBI opened a case against her. Garcia was once an unknown subject (Unsub) until Aaron Hotchner and his fellow profilers caught her. Garcia was offered a choice: to serve her sentence in jail or to work for the FBI. With the lack of a better choice, Garcia chose the latter and utilized her skills to help the bureau catch more criminals. Though chasing serial killers has many downsides, Garcia eventually was able to settle into her job. Her tolerance of explicit scenes and violence got higher over the years.
Garcia’s time at the FBI resulted in her being an irreplaceable member of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. When JJ left for a different job, Garcia filled in her space and picked up some of the duties as a liaison. She brought cases to the team while offering technical aid to each case. However, it seems clear from the beginning that she doesn’t necessarily enjoy a job that deals with murders and gruesome details that much. Even in the first season, Garcia had a bigger reaction than others to the explicit details of crime scenes. Unlike other agents on the team, she’s not entirely immune to the bad things she sees on a daily basis. Because of that, she starts wearing brighter clothes and surrounds herself with things that she likes. Though she has stuck with the FBI throughout the years until the show’s end, it’s obvious that if given the chance, she would consider leaving.
Why Did Penelope Garcia Quit Criminal Minds?
Garcia leaves the show in the Season 15 finale. She got a job offer at a non-profit organization. Compared to the work she does at the BAU, her new job is less stressful and demanding. At the same time, Garcia gets to do what she enjoys doing by helping others. At the time, her exit from the BAU made sense from the show’s perspective. In an interview with TV Insider, Garcia’s actor Kirsten Vangsness confirmed her character’s exit at the end of Season 15. She co-wrote the episode with Showrunner Erica Messer. They both agreed that it was only fitting for Garcia to leave the job since she represented the viewers’ perspective. Her exit also served as a needed farewell to Criminal Minds. Vangsness explained:
She’s the eyes of the audience, really. She’s the empath. She’s the one who usually says if something’s gross or good or bad, so if we’re writing the series finale, and we want to show this show is something that goes on and on and on, the good guys are still out there helping, we want the audience to pull away. Since Garcia’s the eyes of the audience, you pull her away, that makes more sense.
Vangsness felt that it was the right time to let Garcia leave the FBI. “The timing was right,” she added, even though “it was incredibly hard.” However, the final decision also helped her to understand her character better. The actor revealed that Garcia had a moment of clarity that really pushed the character into the direction of making the decision for herself. It’s the conversation with Diana in the hospital when Garcia looked back at times when they’d been injured, according to Vangsness:
Those things don’t come without a cost, and you always have to replenish yourself after you get done doing something really emotionally draining like that, and that’s something Garcia realizes. ‘Oh yeah, I don’t think I can do this particular thing just straight every year forever. I need a little break.’
Garcia Needed to Leave the FBI
Over fifteen seasons, Garcia became a central character in Criminal Minds. With the final and 15th season, the show was building up each character’s farewell. Rossi was contemplating retirement after a tough case. Spencer Reid took a more active role in teaching. Emily was getting promoted. For Garcia, who never had a real chance to choose her job, allowing her to decide for herself was important. It’s an interesting question: would Garcia choose to work for the FBI if she had a choice? The truth is, probably not. Serial murder is simply not her thing.
It makes sense for Garcia’s departure from the show to be one from the FBI as well. She deserved a chance to choose her own destiny instead of being forced to stay. However, her relationship with the FBI is also a complicated one. Garcia didn’t choose the job. The job chose her. The FBI needed her. This was always what defined her relationship with her work at the FBI. The team needed Garcia’s skills, and because Garcia is an empath who can’t stop herself from putting others first, she gets pulled deeper and deeper into a job that’s hurting her emotionally. It’s obvious that working for the FBI had an effect on her. Garcia’s life was in danger a few times and she had to go through situations when people she cared about were hurt.
How Does Penelope Garcia Return to Criminal Minds: Evolution?
There’s simply no replacement for Garcia. No one else has the same skill set as her; they need her for the team to function. In contrast, Mandy Patinkin’s Jason Gideon can be replaced by David Rossi, who acts as a seasoned profiler with more experience to guide the team as a mentor. Hotchner is the leader of the group and can be replaced by another leader. Although Reid has a very particular skill, the team can still function without him, just at a slower pace. However, Garcia is the person who glues the team together. Without her, things were simply not the same.
The good thing is that Criminal Minds: Evolution brought Penelope Garcia back. Since she wouldn’t likely choose to return to the team herself, someone from the team needed to go to her with a case. The case happens to be a Bethesda teenage girl’s abduction, and Luke Alvez is the agent who brings the case to her. By then, Garcia had built a balanced new life. She wanted to help, but she also diddn’t want to sacrifice herself. Criminal Minds: Evolution really dives deeper into why Garcia left in the first place. She didn’t regret her choice; instead, it made her see that she had made the right decision for herself.
Garcia realized that she had been burnt out the entire time. She was giving more than she could for the job to the point that she was allowing bad things to happen to her. The lack of self-care and boundaries was at the core of her problems, so this time, when Garcia came back to work with the BAU, she made sure that she would take care of herself as well. She also didn’t allow Rossi to take his anger out on her. Garcia also did miss her old team and working on cases. After helping Luke with the first one, she was roped into solving the network of serial killers. From there, Garcia kept helping the profilers track down leads. It eventually turned into a full-time gig again because of how much she had missed working with the rest of the team. Though Garcia didn’t choose to be a profiler, the FBI is where she needs to be.