Hallmark Mystery Star Joins Hit Crime Series: ‘So Excited’

Fresh off solving her second mystery with Paul Campbell in Hallmark Mystery‘s new movie “The Cases of Mystery Lane: Death is Listening,” actress Aimee Garcia will continue to fight crime on TV, joining the cast of the long-running “Criminal Minds” franchise.

On September 12, 2024, Deadline reported that Garcia has been cast in the third season of “Criminal Minds: Evolution” on Paramount+. She celebrated the news by sharing a screenshot of the story on Instagram, writing, “So excited to join this incredible team! Thank you @criminalminds 🔪🩸”

Aimee Garcia Will Bring Back Character She Played Nearly 20 Years Ago

According to Deadline, Garcia has been cast in a “multiple-episode arc” on the hit series, which is an expansion of the original “Criminal Minds,” which aired for 15 years on CBS, until 2020. She’ll play Dr. Julia Ochoa, the outlet reported, described as “one of the country’s leading neuropsychiatrists who is assigned to help a high-profile patient recover from his injury-induced brain trauma.”

“Criminal Minds: Evolution” chronicles an elite team of criminal profilers in the FBI. Garcia’s character is expected to clash with Luke Alvez, played by Adam Rodriguez on the show. The third season has already begun filming, per TV Insider.

According to Garcia’s IMDb profile, this is a returning character for the franchise, given that Garcia played Dr. Ochoa in an episode of “Criminal Minds” nearly 20 years ago, in 2005.

Garcia is no stranger to crime dramas, having appeared on 80 episodes of FOX’s “Lucifer” from 2016 to 2021, and on 34 episodes of “Dexter” from 2011 to 2013.

Aimee Garcia Loves ‘Quirky’ Bent of Her Crime-Solving on Hallmark Mystery

HallmarkAimee Garcia and Paul Campbell in “The Cases of Mystery Lane: Death is Listening”

Though Hallmark’s “The Cases of Mystery Lane” franchise is also focused on crime-solving, it has a very different feel than the other TV dramas Garcia has been part of — and even other Hallmark mysteries. She and Campbell play married couple Birdie and Alden Case, struggling to connect until a mystery sparks a shared passion for them in the first movie, which premiered in April 2023.

Garcia loved the quirky nature of the initial script, she told “Hallmark Mysteries & More” podcast host Eric Rutin in an episode released on September 11.

“I loved how character-driven it was, how grounded it was,” she of the initial script, which became the first “Cases of Mystery Lane” movie in 2023. “It was goofy, it was quirky, it was a married couple — it wasn’t a meet-cute, which I was used to seeing on Hallmark. It was a little grittier.”

Garcia said that she was relieved when Campbell signed on for the project because she’d loved working with him on a TV pilot 15 years earlier, saying he “always gave good guy vibes” and has a “very trusting spirit.”

“Once we got to shooting it, it just took on a whole other level of magic,” she said on the podcast. “It was a little bit of improvisation, it was really fun, it was collaborative. We really felt as actors that the writers were inviting us to bring our essences into the project and then the network was supportive.”

Campbell added on the podcast that until recently, Hallmark execs shunned “quirky” characters and plotlines for many years, noting that most of its mysteries had the same “tone” and story arcs.