‘Blindspot’ Showrunner Martin Gero on Those Shocking Reveals and the Show’s Future

     March 22, 2017


After a number of shocking reveals in its latest episode, things are really full steam ahead for the NBC series Blindspot and it promises to be a wild ride. And now that Jane (Jaimie Alexander) and her new flame, Oliver (Jonathan Patrick Moore), find themselves in a dangerous situation that will expose the secrets they’ve both been keeping, everyone’s personal lives are coming back to haunt them, as they hope to get ever closer to stopping Sandstorm before it’s too late.

To preview what’s next for the Blindspot team, showrunner Martin Gero spoke to Collider about the identity reveal of Nas’ (Archie Panjabi) mole, Roman’s (Luke Mitchell) search for absolution, the challenges of shooting such an intense fight scene inside of a car, how the team’s goodness can be used against them, Patterson’s (Ashley Johnson) continued struggle, Reade (Rob Brown) and Zapata (Audrey Esparza), and whether Jane can ever catch a break. Be aware that there are some major spoilers discussed.


Image via NBC

Collider: Why did you want to bring Cade back, and why was now the right time for that?

MARTIN GERO: First of all, we love Tom [Lipinski], who plays Cade. We’ve always loved Tom, and we always knew we were going to do something else with that character. We kept him alive at the end of his last episode. He’s been such an important character. He’s been the most talked about character that wasn’t on screen that much. He was Jane’s cover story, this whole time with Sandstorm, from the early part in the season. It just felt like it would always be a big deal to bring him back, at some point, and when we started talking about the season, it made the most sense that Cade was Nas’ mole, from the beginning. All of his actions at the end of Season 1, you realize now that it was because he was trying to stop Shepherd, so it makes sense that he would be the one. This way, when the mole shows up, it’s someone we know and it’s exciting, as opposed to, “Oh, it’s no one!” This way, it’s a twist, in that moment, as opposed to just being a new character, where you don’t know what their backstory is and why they did it. With Cade, you’re like, “Oh, of course, it’s Cade!”

With Cade coming back and Roman still trying to recover his own memories, Jane is having new memories come back that show her in not the best light. By the end of this season, will the new memories that are surfacing make us change how we feel about her?

GERO: I think that’s right. We all have realized now that Remy, the person Jane was before all of this, was not, in any way, a good person, and was particularly cruel and dangerous. She’s had to reconcile with that. The hope that Roman has is that he was just as bad, if not worse, and Jane has been able to recover from all of this, so he’s searching for that absolution that Jane seems to have found with rebooting her memory.


Image via NBC

There is something extra exciting about fight scenes in tight, enclosed spaces, especially when it comes to being in a car. What are the production challenges of shooting something like that scene with Nas?

GERO: We have an extraordinary fight coordinator, named Airon Armstrong, who does the majority of the choreography. He’s so talented that we just keep trying to come up with harder and harder fights for he and his team to pull off. We were like, could we do a whole fight scene in the back of a car? It was really difficult, and Archie [Panjabi] did a fair amount of that herself. She’s incredibly physically capable. It was a very exciting scene to watch.

Did you ever think about taking Nas out, in that moment, or is it not her time, right now?

GERO: It’s not her time.

Borden asked Patterson to kill him, and some people might have chosen to do so, for closure, but she decides not to, which results in him blowing himself up. Why didn’t she just kill him?

GERO: Because she’s FBI. The difference between her and him is that she’s not willing to take a life with malice. They all do their fair share of taking down people that are firing at them, but she’s not going to murder Borden, in cold blood. She also knows that he’s an enormous resource. She wants him arrested. She wants him in jail. She wants him interrogated, to try to stop this thing. When Weller found out that Patterson was using Orion, which was a giant NSA illegal program, to help them with Sandstorm, he said, “No, we’re better than that. That’s what makes us, us, and what makes them, them. We have a code of ethics.” Their goodness can be used against them, but they’ll not be robbed of it.


Image via NBC

Patterson was seduced, betrayed and left for dead, and on top of it all, she realizes that she’s been bugged, effectively making her the mole on this team. How can she recover from all of that?

GERO: Well, it will take her a second. She’s not going to be all better, in the next episode. She has an extraordinary support system in her team and her friends. Reade is going to go through some healing, and Patterson is gonna get there, too.

Reade got off easy with the results of his drug test, but he was very lucky. Does he genuinely think he’s skated by, or is that still going to blow up in his face?

GERO: At the end of the episode, Zapata goes to Weller to talk to him about Reade, so it’s not over for him. He did not pass her drug test. He’s not going to be very happy about it. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s not got a clear head, at the moment. He’s going to be pretty upset with her.

Jane was left in an interesting spot, at the end of the episode. What can you say to tease who she and Oliver have been taken by, where they are, and why all of this is happening?

GERO: I can’t say too much without giving things away. All I’ll say is that Oliver has got some secrets, as well, as we’ve hinted at, this season. Jane can’t seem to catch a break with people that she wants to trust. It will be tough. It’s hard to talk about without giving away everything.

Blindspot airs on Wednesday nights on NBC.