Why is prentiss leaving

It took eight years for flirtatious workaholic Morgan to find a steady girlfriend. An attempt at setting the two up was made, but ultimately, romance never blossomed. Cut to the finale episode of season Garcia eventually becomes involved with an old flame, Sam. With Greenaway's departure, the BAU had no women field agents, and relied upon communications liaison Jennifer Jareau and technical analyst Penelope Garcia as the only female team members.

Prentiss' arrival was a step in the right direction for women's representation on the team. But Prentiss wasn't initially accepted by all team members.

As a result, she had to prove her profiling competence and join on a probationary basis while slowly earning the trust of other BAU agents. Despite Prentiss quickly becoming a fan-favorite character, Brewster was asked to continue in a reduced capacity for Season 6.

The in-story reason was Prentiss' Interpol past catching up to her when escaped international arms dealer Ian Doyle tracked her down to find his son. During her subsequent kidnapping and torture, Doyle stabs Prentiss with a broken table leg, a wound which most of the BAU believe leads to her death. Prentiss' drama-heavy send-off masked a murkier, behind-the-seasons reason. Cook's Jennifer Jareau had already been written off the show to save money, and the reduction of Prentiss' role was a further cost-saving measure.

The uncertainty in Prentiss' future on Criminal Minds led Brewster to consider other acting possibilities, including filming a pilot for another show. The result was CBS working to get rid of two women cast members under the guise of reducing costs. Despite the death of her character, her pursuit of other opportunities, and what she called the "scummy" behavior of the network in writing off the women characters, Brewster returned to Criminal Minds in the seventh season.

Fans were livid at the loss of both J. While unhappy with how CBS handled the situation, Brewster still appreciated the fan support and her Criminal Minds community. Upon her return, Section Chief Strauss remarks that neither Prentiss, Hotch, nor the rest of the team would be able to climb the ladder to the top because of all this, thus putting an end to some of Prentiss's future ambitions.

In " Seven Seconds ", Prentiss figures out that the aunt of the victim was the unsub, whom she kidnapped to protect her husband , who was molesting her and interrogates her for the victim's location.

In " 3rd Life ", she implied to Hotch that when she was an adolescent, she smoked and dressed inappropriately as a way to rebel against her parents.

In " Tabula Rasa ", a high school photo reveals that Emily was a goth. In the season finale " Lo-Fi ", she shoots and kills an armed suspect after the suspect shoots a New York police officer. In the episode " Minimal Loss ", she and Reid are held hostage by a religious cult.

When the cult leader finds out that one of them is an FBI agent, Prentiss admits her identity, partially to protect Reid, and ends up getting beaten by the leader. Prentiss antagonizes the leader by twice repeating "I can take it" to keep the rest of the team from coming in, knowing that they are listening via bugs and that it would put everyone inside of the building in danger.

Later, Prentiss reassures Reid that it was not his fault and asks him not to feel guilty. In " Demonology ", more of Prentiss' childhood is revealed after hearing and learning from an old friend that their childhood friend died, prompting her and the rest of the team to investigate a series of deaths involving exorcisms. In " Nameless, Faceless ," Prentiss is the first to discover that Hotch is missing. She first tells Garcia and then Reid first but not before promising them not to tell the others working on their current case.

She stays with him the entire time he's at the hospital after Foyet stabs him nine times, even when the rest of the team go to retrieve his ex-wife and son, Haley and Jack. In " Outfoxed ", Prentiss and Hotch visit Karl Arnold in prison to ask for his input on a current case ; Prentiss even flirts to Karl to get more out of him.

After the interrogation, Karl reveals that he has received communications from Foyet and that he is planning to return to make a final stand against Hotch. Karl reveals several notes featuring Foyet's signature symbol, The Eye of Providence. In " ," Prentiss began tearing up as she heard Haley being shot three times by Foyet.

She's shocked to see Hotch has beaten Foyet to death. She became repeatedly disturbed by how the victims were forced to live their final moments in fear and insecurity by the unsub. She personally kicked him to the ground and as she puts her gun to his head, she tells him that when an inmate tries to have his way with him, just play along, as he forced his victims to do.

In " Retaliation ", Prentiss is in a car accident while transporting a prisoner to the local police station. Despite sustaining severe injuries, Prentiss manages to escape the police cruiser via the windshield and fire on the fleeing suspects as they escape. Morgan finds Prentiss on the roadside and she is taken to the hospital where she is treated for a concussion and several cuts and contusions.

She insists on quickly returning to the job and plays an instrumental role in solving the case. She is almost killed by the unsub but Rawson, who was using a sniper rifle from another rooftop, manages to shot the unsub twice and kills him. In " Exit Wounds ", Prentiss is debating on whether she should call Rawson or get a cat.

She eventually gets a black cat named Sergio. In " Compromising Positions ", she risks her life and is nearly killed while going undercover in order to dissuade a mentally-unstable unsub who is in the company of numerous bar patrons and employees, all in danger of being gunned down. When she accidentally gets one of the unsub's facts wrong, he is provoked into shooting her, but she shoots him first, firing her pistol hidden in a purse.

Prentiss then watches as he dies. In " The Thirteenth Step ", Prentiss learns from a former colleague at Interpol, Sean McAllister , that Ian Doyle , an apparently highly dangerous criminal, has escaped from his North Korean prison and gone off the grid and apparently killed a man and stole his car.

Sean warned her that he might come after her and that everyone is in danger. At the beginning of " Sense Memory ", in her apartment, when the phone rings and the caller ID is unknown, Prentiss lets it go to message and listens to the recording. The caller, presumably Doyle, is completely silent and hangs up. In response, Prentiss sets up some noise-traps near all entrances and exits in the apartment, sits down in the hallway with a gun, turns off the lights, and waits.

When Prentiss returns to her apartment after a case, she finds a package by her door. When she opens the package, it turns out to contain a small, purple-white flower. There is a flashback to some time earlier when she is working in a flowerbed filled with the same flowers, apparently by a mansion somewhere in France.

When authorities, presumably Interpol, arrive and drive away with her, Doyle watches her from a balcony. He calls someone and tells the other person to "stay on on top of [it]". As he is arrested by English-speaking authorities, he looks down at one of the flowers that Prentiss dropped. In " Coda ", Doyle resurfaced in D. Soon after in " Valhalla ", he began killing people connected to his case as well as their families. During the investigation, he kills one of Prentiss's former colleagues, Tsia Mosely.

It is also revealed that Prentiss, Sean, Tsia, and two other colleagues were part of a team assembled by Interpol that profiled terrorists and helped apprehend them, codenamed JTF In " Lauren ", Prentiss goes after him alone. As she holds a submachine gun at his men, he flanks her and shoots her in the abdomen. She survives, wearing a bulletproof vest, and is abducted and taken to the group's HQ. She is tortured and beaten as Doyle recounts what happened after his arrest: he was taken to a prison in North Korea, where he resisted in interrogation for two years, hoping to see his son, Declan, again.

When he was shown a series of pictures of Declan and his legal guardian being executed by a mostly unseen figure, he broke down completely and would remain there for another five years. Unbeknownst to him, the pictures were actually staged by Prentiss in order to save Declan from his father's life. The BAU , having found the photos, notices that the nails of the hand holding the gun are completely bitten down; Prentiss was a compulsive nail biter when nervous.

Obtaining the address of the house, they conduct a stealth raid on it, killing all of Doyle's men. As Doyle, furious to learn how he was deceived by Prentiss, begins furiously beating her. She gets the upper hand and knocks him to the floor with a wooden stick. Once she drops it, Doyle grabs it and stabs it into her abdomen. Hearing the gunfire approach, he escapes and isn't seen for the rest of the episode.

The BAU arrive and take Prentiss to a hospital, where they are told that she didn't survive. They all attend Prentiss' funeral.