Blindspot boss dissects those new major mysteries

Warning: This story contains major spoilers from the season 3 premiere of Blindspot. Read at your own risk!

Blindspot kicked off a new chapter in its third season premiere, not only adding more tattoos to Jane Doe’s body, but raising a number of questions about the supposed good guys she’s surrounded herself with.

The season opens on Jane and Weller’s wedding, their subsequent move from New York to Colorado, and their conversations about having kids of their own, and for a moment you almost think this is the type of show that includes happy endings. But it doesn’t last long before every assassin in the world is hunting Jane, the result of an angry Sandstorm loyalist putting a bounty on her head. Though Weller wants to go on the run with her, she ghosts him to protect his life, which is why she was MIA when the show jumped ahead 18 months in the finale flash-forward.

But when Reade, Zapata, and Patterson are abducted, Hirst brings Weller back into the FBI fold to find Jane, and the two uncover the new bioluminescent tats that Roman (Luke Mitchell) has put on her body — he’s seeking vengeance on Jane in a Count of Monte Cristo-esque revenge plan. They’re ultimately able to lift the bounty on Jane’s head and rescue the team, all of whom decide to stick around, but all of whom are also hiding secrets from each other. EW turned to executive producer Martin Gero to get the scoop on what’s next.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The tattoos point to the people Jane is working with, so how many secrets are going to be coming out about our own team?
MARTIN GERO: There are lots. Every single cast member has at least one pretty giant secret, and they all come out this season — and for many of them, early. We hinted at that in that around-the-horn toward the end of the episode, but everyone has been real busy in the past two years, and not everything they’ve done has been totally above board.

We don’t know much about what Jane’s been up to, so is she keeping a number of secrets of her own from the team?
Yeah, yes she is. I will say, hers come out probably the quickest because it’s Jane and she’s in love with Weller and doesn’t want to keep things from him. What’s going on with Jane and what she’s been up to in the past couple years comes up pretty much right away in the next episode.

Roman actually helps Jane in the premiere. Are they unlikely allies in certain ways this season? What is he after?
That’s a great question. Jane is no good to him dead, certainly. He wants the bounty off her head because he’s got this plan, this game he wants her to play, essentially. The tattoos are certainly somewhat punitive. He wants her to realize that she chose wrong, she should’ve chosen Roman over the team. He wants her back in the service of the FBI and he wants to show her that all these people are not exactly what she thinks they are — everyone from Patterson to Weller. But his motives are constantly being questioned by us and are not really clear until a little bit later in the season, because as always, these tattoos are taking down really bad people, corrupt people, so once again the tattoos are doing good in spite of a potential end that could be bad. But with everything that happened with Sandstorm and Shepherd, we’re a lot more careful this year.

Are these all tattoos connected in a way that are pointing at a Sandstorm-esque big bad?
They are all connected, but what the target is will come into clarity for us a lot sooner than it did with the original tattoos.

Jane says there were parts of her that awoke when she was on the run. Will we see those memories coming back to her?
Yes, you will. Jane is a much less passive person. She knows things about the world now. She’s been around for two years. It was a trope for us for Jane to always be like, “What does that mean?” because she lost her memory and didn’t know stuff. But now she’s not that. She’s taking her own initiative a lot of times. She wants to drive how problems are solved. Yeah, she had a very empowering 18 months away from Weller, but I think is really happy to be back together with him.

How much will some of those things that you’re describing affect her relationship with Weller?
Some of the things will greatly affect her relationship with Weller, but we’ll get there when we get there.

The CIA and FBI are going to be working a joint task force. How difficult will that be?
It’ll work pretty well, actually. This year, the CIA is not an enemy. Keaton was really helpful in bringing Sandstorm down last year. This year, Zapata is full CIA, she has bought into their doctrine and their way of doing things. So if anything, some of how the CIA plays the game is folded into how the team works through Zapata being there. Also, they have access to some information that usually the FBI wouldn’t have access to. The partnership does work, at least for the early part of the season.

Clearly one of those tattoos points at the CIA, something Zapata is worried about.
Certainly Zapata and Keaton have been working on something that, for whatever reason, they do not want the rest of the FBI team to know. Like many that have come before them, they feel like, “Well, we know it’s there, so many we can obfuscate this away from the team finding out.” Doing that usually blows up in people’s faces.

Patterson says she’ll only be sticking around initially. Can you tease how and why that may change?
I don’t know if you caught it at the end, but the second she sees that Rich and Stuart are running the lab, she’s like, “Forget it, I’m in 100 percent, I’m not going back to California, I can’t let these guys run point on this.” She’s here to stay now, but her past with Rich is definitely a lot more shaded than we initially thought. They may be playing up that they don’t like each other, which I think will be real interesting for the audience to get to the bottom of.

What came with the decision to pair Rich and Patterson?
When we were brainstorming ideas for — Rich is in the show for 10 episodes this year, and we wanted him to have a tattoo as well that pointed at him. When we were talking about, “Well, what do we think Patterson’s been up to in those two years?” Our idea for that made sense to involve Rich, that’s really all I can say. Plus: Those two actors are phenomenal together. We just really thought that dynamic would be a really, really fun one, and we were right. Their secret gets unveiled as early as episode 3, and it’s a great episode. Watching those two together is a lot of fun. We were worried bringing Rich in, would his skill set and personality step on what Patterson does at the FBI? But we’re happy to report that it really augments both of the characters. They’ve become this amazing duo that is a lot of fun to watch.

Hirst mentions to Reade that he can’t assume he still knows these people. How will that complicate things? What does that look like as they’re trying to get reacquainted?
There are definitely some growing pains, even as early as the next episode. Weller is used to being in charge and now Reade runs the office, so that’s going to take an adjustment. Reade will struggle in his relationship with Zapata. As a point of leadership, Weller and Jane need to find a balance for each other. Everyone is going to have some very initial growing pains, but it will get back to the team feeling like the team pretty quickly. On top of that, Reade feels an incredible allegiance toward Hirst because Hirst is a mentor of his since Quantico. She’s been around, and everyone else left these past two years, but Hirst has been a constant for Reade. I think she’s trying to play that role of a mentor and caution him that this is not going to go back to normal right away.

We see Jane hiding away money. Is she always the person that has an exit plan of sorts, or is there something very specific behind this plan?
I think that’s right. We’ll get to that money right away in the next episode, but she’s been on the run for 18 months, so she hasn’t been used to trusting people. This money is part of that.

Roman basically blackmails Weller for help with the tattoos or he’ll tell Jane what happened in Berlin. What can you tease about what help he needs and what happened in Berlin?
We’ll get to this in the next episode as well, but the tattoos are very specific this year, and they have a specific order he would like for them to go. He occasionally will need to nudge them in the right way, like give them a piece of information that unlocks a tattoo at the right moment, so he wants some help from the inside. Weller doesn’t want to be that guy. He remembers what happened when Jane was that person for Oscar, so he’s very reluctant, but what Roman has over him is incredibly powerful information, so Weller has no choice but to at least go along with it until he can figure out another plan.

Blindspot airs Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.