Criminal Minds had to eventually part ways with Shemar Moore, who didn’t even return for the series finale. Although the long-running procedural left the door open for his return, Moore initially thought his character would have a more devastating ending.

How ‘Criminal Minds’ came up with Shemar Moore’s ending

Moore felt he’d given enough of his life to Criminal Minds after 11 years of being on the police procedural crime drama. The show had been good to him and was responsible for a good chunk of Moore’s shocking net worth. But the real reason Moore left Criminal Minds involved exploring new opportunities without the show’s limiting schedule interfering with his goals.

“And yes, I am wanting to see what else is out there for me and what else I’m capable of in my career and also in my personal life. I’m looking for balance. I want to fall in love, get married, have kids, travel. I want to walk my dogs more. Just get some balance,” Moore once said in an interview with E! News.

Initially, however, Moore felt there was a good chance that showrunners would kill off his character Derek Morgan. Although Moore had some creative control over his character, he was willing to accept Morgan’s demise if the script called for it. In that case, his only request was for Morgan to go out with a bang. But showrunner Erica Messer had other plans for the agent.

“I’ve had a lot of say in what’s happened with Derek Morgan, but my job’s to say the words. They write and produce it, and I show up and memorize it. I internalize it, and then my job is to bring it to life. I’m not that guy. But I said, ‘If you kill me, let’s do it in grand fashion.’ But she said, ‘No, we’re not killing you,’” he recalled.

Her decision led to a more peaceful ending for Morgan, leaving room for his return.

“And then we collaborated, trying to figure out — to develop the story. It came out of her mind. She wanted to know the heart of Derek Morgan, what I felt was important after 11 years of being Derek Morgan, what were the poignant messages we wanted to send in [episode] 18, so we brainstormed. And she wrote a draft, and wrote a draft, and wrote a draft, and it became ‘A Beautiful Disaster,’” Moore recalled.

Shemar Moore called his ‘Criminal Minds’ sendoff brutal

Leaving the set he’d spent over a decade working wasn’t easy for Moore. But his cast and crew only made his exit harder. His last days on set caused his team to have mixed emotions.

“They were excited, they were stressed, they were sad, they were mad, they were shocked. Some were sad and crying, ‘I can’t stop crying. This is not OK! Shemar Moore, eff you. This is not OK! How can you do this to me? I’ve been watching you since I was nine years old. This is not OK!’ Even though they were yelling and screaming, it made me emotional because I knew it was all out of love and it was out of 11 years being together,” Moore said.

In part 2 of his interview with E! News, Moore elaborated that both he and his character were essentially leaving their families behind. But his departure made for a story that lived up to the episode’s title.

“My final day was brutal. I mean, it was beautiful, but — again, I love that the episode’s called ‘A Beautiful Disaster.’ My final day was hard because it wasn’t just Derek Morgan walking off into the sunset,” Moore said. “It was me, Shemar, who hates goodbyes. There’s, you know 360-some odd people that it takes to make that machine work, and 11 years, it’s really like a family. We spend more time together than we see our own families, and I don’t have children, I don’t have a wife yet, but many, many of them do and they have to sacrifice and juggle to make that work to spend that much time together.”

The good news was that Morgan’s fate meant Moore could return to Criminal Minds as a guest star, which he would for a few episodes after he left.

“What I’ve been saying wherever I go, any interview I do or what have you, I need my fans, homies, and baby girls to just know that it’s not goodbye. Derek did not die. Those elevator doors closed,” he said.