Blindspot Review: Hella Duplicitous (Season 4 Episode 1)
Team Weller is back! Blindspot Season 4 Episode 1, “Hella Duplicitous” launches the audience into a new season of intrigue and complication.
On Blindspot Season 3 Episode 22, “In Memory,” the writers introduced the biggest complication of all, the return of Remi. Jane has now forgotten the last two and a half years of her life but can remember everything before she was dosed with ZIP.
I was a little skeptical about this turn and I wasn’t sure how they were going to pull it off, but watching Jaimie Alexander play the duplicitous Jane Doe is such a delight. It’s elevated Jane to a new level as she maintains her cover, but also works against the FBI in subtle ways.
One of the things that got Blindspot Season 3 into a hole really quickly was how fast the time jump storyline was consumed. While it wasted no time returning us to the action, we very quickly found out where everyone was during those missing two years, and what they were up to.
It left a void as we progressed through the season and as a result the twists and turns just didn’t feel connected.
Blindspot Season 4 doesn’t feel that way at all. While some time has passed, the writer’s are keeping Remy’s secret and they should for a while. While it’s clear that the team is on to her, there is also concern over the fact Jane’s zip poisoning will eventually kill her. The longer this conflict plays out the more the tension will increase.
It’s hard not to compare this series to Revenge in some ways this season. Remy is out for blood and given how little we actually know about Remy it is possible this is going to be an intense ride. Given the Remy seems much more lethal than Emily Thorne was.
Another storyline that “Hella Duplicitous” sets up is Tasha. Tasha was fired at the end of Season 3 and then appeared on a jet with Blake Crawford after Roman’s death.
“Hella Duplicitous” sets up an interesting arc regarding Zapata, but it does so at the expense of Blake. Blake is killed by one of the board members for the Hank Crawford Foundation just when it seems like she’s starting to have some autonomy.
While it wouldn’t be believable to have her evolution happen overnight, Blake seemed ready to take the reigns while still invested in the beauty of the world around her.
Still, her death wasn’t entirely unexpected, the second that Madeline pulled out a bottle of champagne and looked at her watch it seemed obvious that bodies were going to drop. The new dynamic that emerges between Tasha and Madeline is equally as disconcerting as the new developments with Remi.
Despite the dark turn that Zapata’s storyline has taken over the last season, I want to believe that she is currently orchestrating her own duplicity. The timing of Tasha’s firing was very suspicious and I will be watching these scenes with a raised eyebrow this season.
Overall, “Hella Duplicitous” sets up for a great season. Between Jane’s ZIP poisoning, whatever Madeline and Tasha are planning, and the cache of research Roman left behind, the twists and turns are just getting started.
Stray Thoughts:
- That swordfight in the opening act was incredible!
- Best quote of the episode: “What happened? You get hit in the head with a second coconut?”
- Was anyone else happy to see Imaginary Roman? The hallucination scene where Roman saw Remy in Season 3 was spectacularly acted and fed my desire to see more of Remy and Roman. I am very happy that we get to see a little more of what their relationship was like pre-ZIP through this lens.
- Hallucinatory Roman says the plan is break Sheppard out, cure Jane, and kill Kurt. I am happy with two of these ideas, especially getting Michelle Hurd to come back. She was a formidable adversary in Season 2 and I am sure having her at large again will take the action several notches. I just hope the writers don’t wait until the final quarter of the season to make this happen.
- Please tell me Rich Dotcom is going to go back out into the field again? Letting this character loose always makes for amazing scenes, as we saw with the Tokyo opener.
What did you think of this episode of Blindspot? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Blindspot airs Fridays at 8/7c on NBC.
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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.
One thought on “Blindspot Review: Hella Duplicitous (Season 4 Episode 1)”
I 100% disagree with you. Setting Jane down this path is stupid, completely predictable, and this storyline where the good guy turns bad is WAY over used. When she passed out the first time in S3E22, I knew exactly what was going to happen. You said that, at the beginning of season three the writers revealed too quickly where everyone was during those two years but no, they didn’t. The writers did exactly what they should have. I’m barely watching S4E2 and it’s already taking the team WAY too long to catch Jane and for Jane to turn back to the good side of things. The sooner she goes back to the good side, the better this season will be…. otherwise it’s just not worth watching.
Furthermore, the faster this show can be done with this sandstorm arch, the better off they are. It’s being dragged on and this show is becoming boring and predictable. If they wanted to show more of Jane and Roman pre-ZIP through the lense, they should have done that before they killed off Roman. He is dead now and the show needs to keep it that way. As for what the writers and the show runners did with Zapata, that’s another HUGE and predictable mistake. The smart move would have been returning her to the FBI. The CIA turned their backs and her and burned her, not the FBI. Which means that her storyline in this not so good season doesn’t make any sense. As for Sheppard, they need to be done with her too and move on to something new. I just hope that the team gets to Jane way sooner rather than later otherwise this season is going to be a complete bust. So far, nothing good and exciting has happened in this season.
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