‘Blindspot’ Creator Dishes on Those Possible Deaths in Season 4’s Finale

Blindspot’s fourth season ended with one heck of a cliffhanger, and the show’s creator is now opening up about the show’s future.

Spoilers ahead for Blindspot’s Season 4 finale, “The Gang Gets Gone.”

At the end of the episode, entitled “The Gang Gets Gone,” Weller (Sullivan Stapleton), Patterson (Ashley Johnson), Reade (Rob Brown) and Zapata (Audrey Esparza) are blown up by villain Madeline Burke (Mary Elizabeth Mastranoio). Jane (Jaimie Alexander) watches the attack, which was carried out via drones, helpless, assuming the worst.

As creator Martin Gero explains, the minds behind Blindspot wanted to make a bold statement as the show went into its fifth and final season.

“We wanted to shake it up and we wanted to end with a bang,literally. We were hoping for a fifth and final season, and we wanted to make sure this was going to be the worst possible series finale so that we would have to do a fifth season,” Gero told Entertainment Tonight. “We’ve never had a bad guy win so hard on the show. Like, she (Madeline) really did it. She had a big success. We thought we had been able to mute her and confine her, but we really underestimated her. She finds herself in an incredible seat of power, looking over the FBI now and essentially neutering Weitz.

He continues, “But that’s not her endgame, right? She’s not like, ‘OK, well done. Now I’m just going to enjoy helping run the FBI.” She has a vision for what she wants her life to be and her plan is about getting more power. And the more power she gets, the more difficult it is for us to come back. The [final] season’s tension really is: How do we stop her before she gets so powerful that it’s just impossible?”

As for who survives the explosion, he did not want to give away too much. However, he did explain an escape route that the characters may or may not have chosen to risk.

“I don’t want to say much. I mean, it’s a pretty big explosion,” he said. “Our smart viewers will realize that there is an escape hatch in that cabin. But it was also said, ‘Don’t go down there. It’s very dangerous.’”

As for what lies ahead in the show’s final 13 episodes, Gero teased a shift in structure. The show will maintain what it truly is at it’s core, but they will focus less on week-to-week action in favor of an overarching story.

“A show like ours, we go out of our way to not be predictable. We try to play with structure a lot. We have characters you feel is unexpected. But for us, could we do that for a whole season? Like, could we literally just change the show? And obviously, we don’t want to change the show so much that our fans feel like, ‘Well wait, this is not why I tuned in every week,’” Gero said. “The procedural engine of how the show fundamentally works in the fifth season is radically different because this isn’t a thing where they’re on the run in the season finale and then by episode two [in season five], they’re back working for the FBI. That’s not it at all for what we’re doing.

He adds, “They are on the run. The fifth and final season is about them clearing their names, trying to take down Madeline and trying to get back home.”

Blindspot is renewed for Season 5, but it is unclear when the show will return.

Photo Credit: NBCUniversal