Blindspot Review: Head Games (Season 5 Episode 5)

Picking up from where the previous episode left off Blindspot Season 5 Episode 5, “Head Games,” presents longtime viewers with an interesting retrospective inside the mind of Kurt Weller.

Originally, I was a little nervous about the premise of “Head Games” since we were dealing with Jane being shot as well. Ivy Sands’s preferred method of torture could have easily turned this episode into torture porn with lots of screaming. 

However, the contrast of Kurt under truth serum and Jane having to talk Zapata and Patterson through surgery made for an interesting dichotomy that balances the episode.

That’s not to say that the time Kurt spends with Ivy isn’t traumatic. (It is!) It just has a deeper and more emotional toll than having his finger nails ripped out. 

The two phantoms that visit Kurt, in the form of Weller and his father, are good totems from the first season.

Oscar feels like a weird person to come up at first blush, but when you think back to Season 1, he’s the perfect character to sow fear and doubt into Kurt’s mind. 

Back during Blindspot Season 1, Jane and Oscar’s interactions always had the feeling that she was being spoonfed selective information. Given that Jane knew nothing about who she was at the time, we couldn’t trust what he was telling her and she shouldn’t trust what he was telling her.

In those early seasons Jane’s identity was being manufactured and manipulated to suit whoever she was talking to. As Jane went through the seasons, and got to know her past and the team she became her own person. 

When Oscar says that what Kurt has with Jane isn’t real, it’s completely baseless. Kurt has the ability to see the longview of what he and Jane have been through and he knows that they are a good match.

ZIP changed Jane’s life. She went from being Remy to having a fresh start, and she decided what she would make of it with those around her. Phantom-Oscar cannot rewrite that! 

Kurt’s father is a harder pill to swallow. Going back to the first season, one of the big questions was if Jane was the missing Taylor Shaw. Kurt later discovered Taylor’s body and that his father had killed her. 

Sullivan Stapleton’s childlike interactions during this sequence are what make it interesting to watch. Weller tends to have a very calm and leveled demeanor in most situations and seeing him go from a jubulent child to the horrifying realization that he’s killed so many people is what sells his terror here. 

Watching him interact with his dad feels a bit like closure, but it also brings out his insecurities about those he hasn’t been able to protect. Since these comments are coming from his father they hit below the belt and they do hurt.

The last and hardest apparition to come to terms with is Bethany. 

Bethany is the common thread in these fears, and the deepest one. While Bethany is with Ally and they’re on the run, he has been feeling guilt over not being with his daughter for a few episodes now. 

Writer Brendan Gall does exceptionally well teasing out the reveal that the blonde-haired guard Weller is seeing is his future daughter. The moment when she looks Kurt in the eye and says that she wanted to be like him is terrifying, and it speaks to why Kurt is so driven to clear their names. 

He doesn’t want his daughter to live her life thinking he was a terrorist, and this was the perfect way to illustrate that. 

Meanwhile, in the bunker Jane is walking Patterson and Zapata through field surgery. It’s a badass thing to do and definitely within Jane’s character. 

These scenes have much more adrenaline behind them than Weller’s. There’s a ticking clock with how much blood Jane is losing, and that makes for the perfect balance of action and character-driven story for the episode. 

Zapata’s pregnancy also comes out on this episode, and it’s sweet and touching as well as a little sad. The team is happy, but at the same time living in a bunker isn’t exactly the ideal place to have a baby.

They will make it work if they need to, but until then they have seven months to clear their names and stop Madeline. 

As a whole, “Head Games” feels like a transitory episode that is meant to pay lip service to longtime fans. That’s part of its strength, but its also hard to believe that either of the characters is really in danger.

There’s never a question of if they’re going to find Weller, and killing off Jane wouldn’t carry nearly as much weight since the team isn’t solving tattoo cases-of-the-week at the moment. Her death would just fuel Weller, and they can’t lose her because she has the guerilla fighting tactics they need. 

Blindspot is shining this season because it’s paying so much attention to the stories they’ve established and the plot threads they’ve been nurturing for seasons.

While this may not be the most action-packed episode of the series, it has the connections the viewers are invested in, and sets up for the rest of the season to finish strong. 

What did you think of this episode of Blindspot? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Blindspot airs Thursdays at 9/8c on NBC.

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