Who died in Blindspot season 5 premiere, and are they really dead?

Blindspot killed off a main character in the Blindspot season 5 premiere. Who died in Blindspot season 5, episode 1 and are they gone for good?

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details about Friday’s Blindspot season 5 premiere.

Not everyone got out of that cabin alive. Blindspot killed a major character in Friday’s season premiere, revealing that they died in an FBI-ordered drone strike, and saying goodbye to one of the original cast members. So who died on Blindspot?

The unlucky victim was Edgar Reade, played by Rob Brown.

Viewers got an early hint that Reade was dead when he didn’t show up as the rest of the team reunited at a bunker in Prague. “Guess we’re all here,” his partner-turned-girlfriend Tasha Zapata (Audrey Esparza) said, even though Reade hadn’t arrived.

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The end of “I Came To Sleigh” confirmed his death, though, as the crew had drinks in his memory, accompanied by flashbacks showing Reade in different moments. An understandably crushed Zapata was then glimpsed breaking down, sobbing alone over his loss.

It was the first real death of an FBI team member on the NBC series since Assistant Director Bethany Mayfair (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) was shot and killed near the end of season 1.

Dr. Robert Borden (Ukweli Roach) apparently died in season 2 after being exposed as a mole, but season 3 revealed he’d faked his demise and Blindspot brought him back again as a guest star in season 4.

With that in mind, is Reade dead on Blindspot? Or could we somehow see him also reappear later in the fifth—and final—season? And why was he the character who died?

This is not another fake-out: series creator and showrunner Martin Gero confirmed to TVLine that Reade is “very much dead” although Brown will appear in flashbacks throughout the remainder of the final season.

It was not Brown’s decision to leave the series. Gero revealed that “there were some business reasons why we needed to probably lose a lead character this season.” He added, “Rob couldn’t have been more gracious about it.”

It’s no surprise that Edgar Reade was the character who died on Blindspot. The largest portion of his character arc over the last few seasons was whether or not his partnership and friendship with Zapata would turn into a romance, and then once it did, how they’d handle being together. Reade himself didn’t change as dramatically as the other main characters did.

But that’s also what made his death potentially effective. Reade was also the most stable and the most grounded of the show’s main characters. He almost always had his stuff together, and that made him an anchor, particularly for the reckless and intense Zapata. With him gone, the rest of the characters have just had the floor yanked from under them.

How will they function with Reade not there for them to lean on, especially Tasha? Will this send her into a downward spiral? As much as it’s terrible that he’s gone—and particularly terrible that the series loses Rob Brown, who is such an underrated performer—his absence creates the most potential blowback among the survivors. You get the sense that they will definitely suffer on more than one occasion because of him not being there to finish this final mission.

So now we know who died on Blindspot, but what we don’t know is how much his death will ultimately cost the surviving characters over the remaining ten episodes. The show has a shorter final season, with only 11 episodes instead of 22-24.

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Blindspot airs Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.

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