Blindspot creator Martin Gero reveals secrets of the series finale

Martin Gero discusses Blindspot’s explosive series finale.

Thursday’s Blindspot finale brought the NBC series all the way back around to its very first episode—while also setting the course toward an equally mind-blowing future. But how? And why? And what exactly was going on with that final scene?

SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains major spoilers for the Blindspot series finale, “Innue Ennui.”

To answer the most burning questions, Precinct TV reconnected with Blindspot creator Martin Gero, who also served as writer and director of the final episode. Martin explained everything that fans need to know about the show’s conclusion.

If you missed the first part of our two-part interview, you can find it here.

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Precinct TV: Let’s start with the most important question, which is how do fans interpret that final scene? Did Jane die or is she just thinking about how she might have died?

Martin Gero: There are multiple ways to interpret it. What we wanted for it to be was a bit of a Rorschach test. And 50 percent of the people that watch it are like, “Oh, I’m so glad she’s happy and she’s got a happy ending.” And 50 percent of the people that watch it are like, “Oh, how gut-wrenching that she died.”

We, as the writers, we decided to not comment either way. Definitely, if you want to go through it, I think there are hints as to how we feel about it. But part of it was we wanted people to have the ending that they felt [was right]. And I think what is surprisingly effective about it is, it feels certain to both of those camps.

PTV: Through Jane’s hallucinations you brought back just about every major person in the Blindspot universe in the finale—including actors like Lou Diamond Phillips and Jordana Spiro, who haven’t been on the show in a long time. Where did that idea come from?

MG: We had that idea midway through Season 4, basically. As we started talking about what we wanted the finale to be, we kind of put [together] a list of all of the things that we would want to see and that we thought the fans would want to see, with the idea that we would pick and choose the best ones.

Blindspot is a work of maximalism, and so I was like well, what if we just did all of this? What if we had our cake and ate it too? What if we tried to put as many of these pieces into the finale as humanly possible? How do you get four weddings in there in a way that works? Then once we figured out the structure, Jane’s tenuous grip on reality blew the doors off of what was possible.

It took about a year to put together. I just called everybody and said hey, would you come do one last day on Blindspot, please? And I think it’s a great credit to the crew that everyone that had been through our doors immediately said yeah, absolutely. When do you need me?

PTV: How difficult were the logistics of getting them all into the same episode?

MG: It was a scheduling nightmare. (laughs) This episode actually took us two and a half months to film, largely because we did it on and off, a day here and a day there, just to accommodate everyone’s schedule. If someone like Archie Panjabi is like well, I can do this day and this day, you’re like okay, don’t worry about it. We’ll figure it out. That’s not what we’re shooting, but we’ll make it happen.

It’s just a great ode to our production team that the show feels seamless, even though it was shot over months and months.

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PTV: Did that include your cameo as David and Patterson’s wedding officiant? How did Martin Gero end up making a Blindspot appearance?

MG: It’s funny because on my last show, The L.A. Complex, I did a cameo in what we thought was our season finale, and the show got canceled. So I’ve taken that as like well, I shouldn’t ever do cameos because that’ll be the last episode of the show.

But with this, we knew it was the last episode of the show. Joe Dinicol, who plays David, is actually a close friend and was the officiant at my marriage. I thought it was kind of a fun link to what he was able to do for me if I was the officiant at his marriage.

PTV: Something important about not just the Blindspot finale, but all of Blindspot season 5, was the presence of Rob Brown. Even though you killed off Reade, you kept him around so that Rob was a part of the show to the very end. How did that come about?

MG: Rob was around for a lot of the season, and that was critically important. Rob was such a huge, huge part of the show, and we couldn’t have done a finale without him. And to his credit, it was something he insisted on. He wanted to be around for everything, and we were so lucky to have him in the beginning, middle and end.

PTV: The cast was really key to the success of the show, in that everyone left such distinct fingerprints on the roles that they played. How much did the actors you had, main or guest, end up influencing their characters?

MG: Television, when it’s working, is a collective amongst a group of artists. For us, we always well exceeded our expectations for who we were able to cast. And then when you have someone like Luke Mitchell, when you have someone like David Morse, when you have someone like Mary Stuart Masterson and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio—even back at the beginning, when we were able to get Marianne Jean-Baptiste, [we were] thrilled at having this caliber of actor coming to a show like this and making sure we gave them the material that they deserve.

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio’s bad guy, for the past few years, has been so fun to watch and write for. Just so incredible to watch one of the nicest people I’ve ever met lean into this truly evil, joyously evil character in a way that never felt cartoony. Having Archie in season two, the second you get somebody of that caliber, you really just make sure that you write to the edges of what the show is capable of.

And our main cast—obviously as you grow, you find their strengths and you find their special abilities, and you write towards them, so the characters organically grow toward the cast.

Next. Blindspot's epic sendoff for Kurt Weller. dark

All five seasons of Blindspot are available to stream on Amazon Video. You can join the cast and crew in supporting film and TV workers affected by COVID-19 at actorsfund.org/blindspot.

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