'Blindspot' Postmortem: 'No One Gets to Be Happy on This Show,' says Creator

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Feb. 29 episode of Blindspot

Tattooed amnesiac Jane Doe just had her already-fragile understanding of the world turned on its head in the winter premiere of NBC’s hit action series Blindspot. After being nabbed by the CIA at the tail end of the fall finale, Jane (Jaimie Alexander) was rescued by a mystery man bearing a cell phone video recorded by none other than…herself. Not only that, but the man holding the phone turned out to be her former fiancée, Oscar (Francois Arnaud), who she deliberately wiped from her memory along with the rest of her past. It was a Total Recall-style twist that set the stage for this first episode back, where Jane learned that the next phase of this apparently self-approved mission involves her playing double agent within her FBI unit, pursuing her own private missions even as she helps in the case of the week. Naturally, the revelation that she used to be engaged also puts the brakes on a the burgeoning romance between her and strapping Special Agent Kurt Weller (Sullivan Stapleton), which was sealed with a kiss in the previous episode.

Related: Head to Toe: Every ‘Blindspot’ Tattoo So Far

Jane may be feeling shaky, but her creator, Martin Gero, says that Blindspot couldn’t be on firmer narrative ground. “We started writing the show with Episode 23 and worked backwards,” he tells Yahoo TV. “We knew where we were going to be at the season’s midpoint. We try to stick to a firm plan, and that allows us to move the show’s storylines as fast as we can, because we’re not worried about painting ourselves into corners.” Gero filled us in on how the winter premiere fits into that plan and what it means for #Jeller shippers.

As if Jane’s life isn’t complicated enough, after tonight she’s facing the prospect of having missions-within-missions.
Yeah, I think these shows need to changes gears every now and again. We don’t want the audience to feel like there’s a typical episode of Blindspot. Obviously, we’ll always have the same characters, procedural aspect and mythology, but it’s fun to change the engine every once and again so we can take ourselves in different directions. The first half of the season, Jane didn’t have any secrets. And now she’s essentially a double agent and not an enthusiastic one either! I think she’s willing to play Oscar’s game if she feels no one’s going to get hurt. But it can only last so long before she starts to push back.

Oscar’s not in a hurry to provide her with any backstory about their history together, or her life as Taylor Shaw.
They have a powerful, but uneasy relationship. She doesn’t know if he can trust him or what he’s saying. She remembers him, so there’s some foundational ground, but she finds it very hard to reconcile who she was with who she is and that’s kind of what the back half of the season is about. Just because I was this person then, is that who I am now?

Jane and Weller shared a kiss in the fall finale. How does Oscar’s intel affect that fledgling relationship?
It becomes a bit of a triangle, and not just a romantic one. Jane really is struggling with who to trust. She feels so connected to Kurt in the present, but has this connection to Oscar in the past. So she feels the pull between these two guys. She and Kurt have this intense relationship and amazing chemistry together, so it was only a matter of time until the passion bubbled over and they kissed. Now that Jane realizes she may be some Trojan horse inside the FBI, she’s going to start putting a little distance between him and everyone else. It’s like she’s protecting them from herself.

Are you prepared to hear from Jane/Weller shippers?
Oh yeah, hashtag #Jeller! [Laughs] The fans are so happy when those moments happen, but they also know it means that it can’t last forever. It’s a build up and release. We had a big release when they had a kiss and acknowledged that #Jeller is a thing, but now we have to add some complications because we’re a dramatic TV show and nothing goes smoothly. There will be some viewers who are disappointed by her pulling back from him a little bit, but no one gets to be happy on this show! The moment when everything is going great, that’s when everyone should be like, “Oh…wait a second.”

Patterson went through the romantic wringer when her boyfriend, David, was killed during the first half of the season. How will that affect her going forward?
Patterson’s loss is a big part of the rest of the season. It’s a balance for us, because she’s such a fun character to write; she’s witty and funny, and that’s an important aspect for our show, which can sometimes be so serious and explosive-y. So it’s important for that part of her personality to not go away. The bad thing for Patterson and the good thing for us is she wants to pretend like everything’s fine, and goes back to work. But David is a psychic presence throughout the back half of the season.

We see that Zapata’s plan to resign is put on hold as well.
She wanted to resign because of her interactions with CIA deputy director, Tom Carter, who — as we saw in the fall finale — isn’t going to be a problem anymore. But his death isn’t going to solve her problems when it comes to her transgressions with him. That’s part of her season long arc, dealing with the mistakes she made with Carter and what that costs her. What’s great is that we’ve gone from Blindspot being a show about Jane and Weller to it growing into an ensemble piece. The actors are all so great, and the audience cares about these characters, which allows us to maintain and sustain their own story arcs.

You’ve made New York another character in the show by using so many real-world locations. Do you have any major set-pieces coming up?
We got to shoot at NASDAQ — although we weren’t allowed to call it that — which is pretty amazing. And we just shot a great sequence in Koreatown. So many shows shoot in New York, but don’t actually take place there, so it’s great to be able to show the city off. There are also some huge fights coming later in the season. The thing about doing a show in its first season is that there’s a learning curve in terms of how to maximize the production value. As you see in this premiere, I think we’ve figured out how to make these episodes feel giant.

With this episode, you send the characters overseas to Turkey. Will there be more international travel going forward?
We won’t see a ton of it this season, but that’s the direction the show will go in, maybe more in the second year than the first.

Are you planning to play around with the structure of the episodes as well?
Short answer: yes. The incredible gift we were given by having an early Season 2 pick is experimenting with the structure of the episodes. There will be episodes coming up that are almost entirely character-based with very little case. We’re being very adventurous because don’t want the show to ever feel stale.

Was the missing plane in this episode inspired by the Malaysia Airlines case?
We don’t want to feel like the show is torn from the headlines, but it definitely needs to feel [familiar.] I was so obsessed when that plane went missing, so you’re brain as a storyteller starts to go down so many roads. We were looking to do something spectacular for the midseason premiere, and we thought that would be a huge case for them. This might be the first episode of Blindspot some people watch, so in a lot of ways it’s like a new pilot. We took something in the back of everyone’s mind and connected it to this story.

Last question: The sequence where Jane lands the plan is suitably intense, but please tell me there’s an outtake where someone drops a “Don’t Call Me Shirley” reference.
Look for the DVD special features! [Laughs]

Blindspot airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on NBC