Blindspot Season Finale Review: Why Await Life’s End (Season 1 Episode 23)
Just a second, we’re still picking our jaws up off the floor. Blindspot’s freshman season ends with a spectacular finale that ties so many threads of earlier episodes together and leaves us wanting more.
“Why Await Life’s End” returns to the Jane Doe plot. After a few case-driven cases that seemed completely unrelated to Jane, it’s good to see Blindspot get back to the heart of the show.
Last week’s episode ended with Kurt’s father giving a deathbed confession. He killed Taylor Shaw and buried her under a fort.
Kurt spends this episode trying to figure out if his father was telling the truth and when he ultimately realizes that his dad meant an old campsite he finds Taylor’s remains.
Jane Doe’s identity has always been in question, but now both Kurt and Jane know that she isn’t Taylor Shaw. It’s just part of the narrative she came up with.
Sending Jane to the FBI, letting her believe she was Taylor Shaw was all so that she could get close to Weller. They picked Weller to replace Mayfair and figured, with Taylor Shaw by his side, he would be easy to control.
In what felt like a really compressed narrative, Jane gets a lot of her memories back. Most of them have to do with Oscar and a conversation about someone called Shepherd.
Oscar drops a few hints about Shepherd this episode, including Shepherd bringing Jane back to life, Shepherd being the leader, even the name itself, that could all point to their involvement in some sort of militant cult.
The blurry figure that enters the room in one of the flashbacks seems to be wearing a clerical collar.
Other than the reveal of Shepherd, you can sum up what Oscar reveals to Jane in one word: anarchists.
When Oscar lays out the second phase of the plan he says that the goal is to burn the country to the ground so they can start over.
Oscar isn’t winning any points here! Not only is he talking about destroying an institution that Jane has developed an allegiance too, but he is also planning to inject her with more ZIP.
Since Jane kills him in this episode, we have to say it one last time: Oscar was an untrustworthy snake. We’ve always taken every bit of information that comes out of his mouth with a grain of salt, but since he was planning to wipe her mind again, we assume there was no filter needed.
Why censor yourself when the person you’re talking to is just going to forget anyway? Oh, and with this new information, the ultimatum he gives Jane at the end of Episode 14 seems just cruel and proves he toyed with her to get her cooperation.
Of course, maybe Blindspot will find a way to turn everything that Oscar said on its head. Maybe this was all part of the plan too.
We are glad to see this chapter of Jane Doe’s story come to an end, but this is just the beginning of her troubles.
Kurt knows Jane is not Taylor Shaw and he’s not happy. He views every memory Jane confirmed remembering as a lie, which it was—although really that was all Oscar’s fault since he confirmed her identity as Taylor.
The episode ends with a scene that parallels the first episode. Jane Doe kneeling with her hands behind her head as Kurt arrests her. Seem shocking similar to what happened after she crawled out of that bag in Times Square?
She’s on her knees, with her hands behind her head, and she’s scared. Everything she knew about her identity has once again been stripped away from her. She lost the trust she’s earned from the FBI.
In short, she’s back where she started–but with a few more memories.
Long story short, things are not looking up for Jane Doe and Team Weller. Fortunately, Blindspot has already been renewed for Season 2 so we will have another season of tattoos and puzzles to solve.
Afterall, we still need to know what Orion is all about. They’ve been teasing about that since the start of the series.
Unfortunately, that is one answer we don’t get. Patterson, Reade, and Zapata get some insight in the form of a USB drive left in a safe by Mayfair.
The drive serves as her confession and contains data on Daylight, Orion, and a third file that bears an alphanumeric sequence as its final name. While the team looks at it the contents aren’t shown on screen.
The only impression we get–it’s big.
This episode is breaking my heart. ? ? ? #ImSorry #BlindspotFinale #Blindspot pic.twitter.com/F9wPr6c4qF
— Blindspot Writers (@BlindspotRoom) May 24, 2016
We’ll just have to eagerly away Season 2, so that we can find out what Orion is, who Shepherd is, and Jane Doe’s real identity.
It’s going to be a long summer.
What did you think of this episode of Blindspot? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Blindspot returns this fall Wednesdays at 8/7c on NBC.
Lauren Busser
Lauren Busser is an Associate Editor at Tell-Tale TV. She is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose work has appeared in Bitch Media, Popshot Quarterly, Brain Mill Press Voices, and The Hartford Courant.