BLINDSPOT Mid Season Finale Review: Jane is Revealed to Have Made a Surprising Choice

Of Course You Speak Russian

Tonight’s episode, “Evil Handmade Instrument” started on a sad note, with Patterson sitting in a room with Dr. Borden, reading the cause of death, and all case notes about David. She is clearly distraught, and her pain can be felt through the television screen. Borden tells her he’s going to have to recommend she take some time off to grieve, but Patterson begs him to let her stay. She can’t go back to her apartment, because everything there reminds her of David. Instead, she just wants one day with her team because she knows she can help to solve the case. Borden reluctantly agrees, and watches as Patterson walks away. Mayfair agrees to let Patterson work on the case, and team starts in on finding David’s killer.

After examining the books from the historical society, the team finds a partial fingerprint on one of the books, which belongs to a Russian immigrant, Roger Levkin. With that information, combined with the codes found throughout the books, the team concludes they might be working with Russian spies, who are using old school messaging. Weller decides the only way to know for sure is to go to Roger’s house and question him. However, upon arrival, they see Roger’s wife tied to a chair, and Weller breaks in, shooting Roger in the process. Roger falls to the floor and starts foaming at the mouth, from a probable cyanide pill.

Trying to find any other connection to the books, the team looks around the house, and discovers Roger and his wife are friends with two other Russian immigrants, Olivia and Kate – and Kate just so happens to fit the description of the woman who killed David. Armed with a possible new connection, the team learns Kate’s husband has called in a missing person’s report on her, and they go to question him. He knows nothing, so they move on to finding Olivia, who runs when she sees them. Weller and Jane chase her on motorcycles, and manage to catch up, arresting her to bring in for questioning. In the interrogation room however, Weller can’t seem to get anywhere with her, but Patterson walks in after discovering more codes within the books, and bluffs her way to getting Olivia to confess.

Olivia informs the team that after David was killed, she and her two friends were given orders to eliminate specific targets. Hers was a journalist at the NY Times, who happens to write against Vladimir Putin. The team rushes to find him, only to find him dead on a park bench. The team decides all targets have an anti-Russian agenda, but can’t figure out who the next target will be. Patterson however, is determined to find David’s killer, and manages to find that both Olivia and Roger visited the same website recently. The website contained a live webcam, which just so happened to point towards a flower store, which was selling flowers that contained the same kind of poison Patterson determined ultimately killed Roger. Upon closer inspection, she also found signs in the shop, which corresponded to the three spies’ code numbers she had found earlier in the books from the historical society.

Olivia tells the team she can only decode her own messages, but once Patterson has Olivia’s decoder, she is able to find Kate’s target, who is at a conference. The conference happens to be on an aircraft carrier, and once on board, the team fans out to find Kate. Reade spots her first, but loses her when he is almost shot by one of Kate’s accomplices. Weller takes chase, but it’s ultimately Jane who finds Kate first. The two fight it out, and Jane is losing the battle until Weller catches up and throws Kate overboard.

Patterson arrives shortly after to look at the woman who killed David, but Weller pulls her away, shielding her from the pain. Back at headquarters, Patterson finds Jane in the locker room, and confesses that she had assumed she would feel better after finding David’s killer, but now that she had, she still felt empty. She questioned if Jane felt the same way with her tattoos, and finally understands what Jane has been going through. Patterson continues, and tells Jane she wishes she could go back in time, and not waste the time she had with David.

Inspired by Patterson’s words, Jane shakes her security detail, and waits outside of Weller’s apartment for him. When he arrives, she tells him she “wanted a moment that was just us” and leans in for a kiss. Of course “Jeller” fans everywhere exploded. It seems Weller was just as shocked with the turn of events, and after being interrupted by his nephew, he didn’t even think to either walk Jane home, or call her security detail to walk with her. Instead, she heads off into the dark alone, and is attacked by several men before being thrown into a van.

She wakes up to Carter standing over her, and he promptly starts water-boarding her to find out what she knows. Of course, she can’t tell him anything, but after several drownings of water, Jane has a flashback to her walking past Carter, when he mentions something about Orion. She asks him what Orion is, and he loses it. He pulls out a drill for his next torture instrument, but is interrupted by gunfire. Walking out of the room to see what is going on, Carter gets gunned down, and in walks the man with the tree tattoo. He walks over to Jane, and shows her a video recording of herself, pre-tattoos, and with longer hair. In the video, she tells herself to trust the man. His name is Oscar, and he is here to help. And then, she drops the bomb of the series – because she’s watching this video, everything is going to plan, and that plan was hers. She did this to herself – the tattoos, the memory-wipe, the delivery to Weller – everything.

NEXT: It Was You All Along