WARNING: This article contains spoilers for The Mentalist “Red John” episode. If you have not seen the episode yet and don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading now and come back after watching it.

It all comes down to this for the Red John saga that has been haunting Patrick Jane for six seasons of The Mentalist. We now know that the mastermind behind the name was Sheriff Thomas McAllister (Xander Berkeley) all along.

Recently, creator and executive producer Bruno Heller and series star Simon Baker (aka Patrick Jane), took part in a conference call to answer questions about this pivotal “Red John” episode and the future of the show post-Red John. I already shared some of their answers in this previous article and now it’s time to find out everything else they talked about.

On what was most important in creating/performing the finale episode?
Bruno Heller explained that he wanted to give “a real pleasing emotional closure to that story. He added, “For me it was about giving [Patrick] Jane exactly what he has hunted for all these years, I didn’t think it was a moment for cleverness or moral ambivalence.” He finished with, “He wanted revenge and he got it.”

As for Simon Baker her shared that he “did feel this sense of pleasure and sense of pressure because we’ve been working towards this for many years.” He continued, “It’s also the one moment in the life of the character where he is stepping out into the unknown and he’s been talking about it and made a commitment to do that for such a long period of time.”

Baker also addressed the way they decided to kill Red John by explaining, “Also the way we did it was important because I felt like to pull the trigger is just pulling the trigger and the gun does the killing but to actually grapple with someone and kill them with your hands is far more intimate.”

Heller also added that “how that last scene between the two of them went is very much written and directed by Simon [Baker].” He described it as a “really beautiful intimate killing” and that he thought it was hard to watch.

On how personal this story is for Simon Baker
Baker explained that it did “feel incredibly personal” to him. He shared that he has “always been very invested in what [his] character does and how he reacts to his personal story, which is the Red John story.” He wanted to make sure that the direction they would take with this episode would best serve the story while staying true to the character. He wanted to serve the story in “a real way” versus having the character react “a certain way to move the story forward.”
He concluded, “The challenge and the most difficult part of working on this show all along was playing this tragic character that has a very raw and unprotected emotional side to him but has this whimsical sort of tap dancery thing going on with a sense of humorous bravado. To dance between the two tones of the show has always been very challenging for me and complicated. [He] gets very protective of the personal stuff with that character.”

On when Xander Berkeley was told he was Red John
Heller shared: “At the very last moment and he was thrilled.”

On whether he ever considered an alternate ending
Heller explained, “certainly I never considered any other endings.”

On when Patrick Jane put the pigeon in his pocket
Heller said “just before lisbon arrived in that park. When Jane is feeding those pigeons. It is in my mind that's when it happened.”

On whether Red John really is a psychic
Heller shared, “I will leave that thread dangling.” He added, “Any and all answers to that question are correct, it depends entirely on your point of view about the existence or non existence of those sort of powers.”

On how things are going to evolve from there for Patrick Jane
He explained, “what this fresh version of the show is about is what happens afterwards. In a very real sense Jane is a happier person, a weight has been taken off his shoulders and to that degree a weight has been taken off the show, so it’s gonna be the same show to some degree but it’s gonna be a show with less darkness at the edges and more freedom to roam. Jane has more freedom and more kind of a sense of possibility and liberty.” He added, “Moving forward he now has a bit more leeway and he can make his own decisions about who’s a friend and who’s a colleague.”

Baker added, “I think you can’t avoid that when Red John dies, there is a large part of Jane that dies in that moment as well.” He continued “and it takes a little time for him to get back on his feet again, but if you really look at it, he doesn’t have a wife and kids, he doesn’t have any relationship with anyone other than the people he works with at the CBI and this perverse obsession/relationship with Red John that’s now over. So he doesn’t have a lot other than the CBI people.”

On what this conclusion to the Red John story means for other characters
Heller described the CBI team as “children of divorce.” He explained, “they have been enthralled into somebody else’s mission and now that mission is gone. They were in a world they didn’t choose and now they are in a world that is changing around them again not of their own volition.” He shared that while Jane has some big questions to answer, Lisbon, Cho, Rigsby and Van Pelt also have to answer those same questions for themselves.

On whether Jane will face any legal ramifications for his actions
Heller said that Jane would definitely be facing some of kind ramification for what happened with Red John.

On whether Patrick Jane will want to continue working in law enforcement
Baker shared, “Not immediately.”
Heller clarified, “he’s done something highly illegal, what he does in the future is not solely going to be up to himself.”

Baker teased, “One door closes and another one opens. Once the dust settles he starts to realize who’s important to whom and where they fit in.”

On The Blake Association and a possible retaliation from Red John’s disciples
Heller shared that The Blake association was a part of the story for him from very early on. He added, “I wouldn’t say I had that element from the start but it was from quite early on an important aspect of the show, because it gives you a legitimate logical coherent reason for Red John’s immense power that is not down to him being actually a supernatural being of some kind or having supernatural powers.”

As for the retaliation, it might not come anytime soon, Heller explained, “I think the audience and the story demands that we step away from that trope for a while. The trouble with these sort of stories where you’re playing tricks on the audience with “who is it” mysteries is that you can get way too mysterious. There are a lot of people who said all the way along that Patrick Jane is Red John and when you’ve got that kind of elaborate thinking out there, it’s dangerous to come back to stories unless you’re coming back to that story with full force because people will start thinking “oh, maybe Red John is not dead.” RJ is dead past that point in terms of the narrative of the story.”

On whether we’ll hear about Red John in future episodes
Heller was adamant in saying that they wouldn’t be going back. He explained, “Once the curtain in drawn back from these kind of evil wizard of oz characters they tend to not be very interesting dinner companions. They tend to be ego maniacal one trick mind guys. As Jane says “the rest is detail.”

He continued, “there are a lot of questions about motivation and what he was doing when and how, and how does that connect to this, but that makes for a great internet follow but it’s not very entertaining for the weekly TV audience.”

Baker even shared that they originally had a line in the next episode that referenced Red John, but that he was adamant about removing it. Because that name had been said so many times before, he wanted to step away from it in that episode.

On whether Simon Baker was satisfied with the reveal of Red John
Baker shared, “I was eventually satisfied with the way I killed him, how about that?” He continued, “I always felt what was scary was the fact that it could be the guy that you see every day on your way to work that is watering his lawn two blocks away. I like the normalcy of it. […] That was always my leaning. So when we found out it was who it was, that fulfilled that category, but I think ultimately with anything like this there is a level of disappointment because like anything when it’s mystery, you paint the picture in your head of what it’s gonna be and particularly when it’s a mystery that holds you under water for so long, the mystery of who it is, is mythical.”

Heller added, “Ideally, you want it to turn out to be Sean Connery with horns and a tail in a cave, but that doesn’t exist.”

On whether the show will be returning to the weekly crime solving
Heller shared that yes, they would be returning to crime solving, however it might not necessarily be the same kind of crime solving.

On whether they are free from having a “Red” reference in the episode titles.
Heller confirmed that they are in fact free from that and are very happy about it.

On what the most surprising part of his journey with The Mentalist has been so far
Heller shared, “I guess the most surprising thing dealing with the story narrative is how much over the year, the characters and the situations and the story become almost real. It’s not that anyone here thinks that they are engaged in a hunt for a serial killer or solving crimes in the CBI, but the relationship and the reality of the show becomes semi real. When we knocked down the CBI set it was actually a sort of sad and sentimental moment, and it’s just slacks on a stage but it had acquired the semblance of real life over the years.”

Lisbon Picked Jane Over The CBI

During The Mentalist’s hundred plus episodes, there have been numerous instances in which our main supporting character Teresa Lisbon has stood her ground in support of Jane when it comes to following procedures and/ or dealing with her bosses. She unquestionably has the consultant’s back, but that doesn’t mean she’s overtly defied orders that many times. In fact, her main objective is usually to get Jane to work just within the bounds of the rules enough to keep everyone happy.

Forced to pick between the man she cares for so much (and obviously loves) and the job that’s her entire life, she puts her foot down and chooses Jane. In essence, she sacrifices the rest of her career and her good name in law enforcement to let Patrick step outside the law and do the only thing he cares about doing. He has to know how hard that was for her, and as viewers, it’s nice to see just how committed she has become to aiding our hero in his vengeful goal.

Red John’s Identity Makes Sense

Let’s face it. Deep down, all of us had some kind of crazy pet theory about who may have been Red John. Like many people, I was convinced it was Partridge, but in the end, Sheriff McAllister makes a lot more sense. Jane has spent his entire time at CBI obsessing over Red John. It doesn’t make any sense that he could have worked with the man and not realized it. He’s always on the lookout for clues. Up in wine country, however, Sheriff McAllister had enough of a buffer.

Plus, McAllister was in the second episode of the entire series, which offers a nice cyclical arrangement. He also has a very menacing voice, is the right age to have committed all of the murders and is very convincing as a sociopath once he gets rid of his cloak of secrecy and confronts Jane as himself for the first time inside the church. He might not be as sexy of an answer as some of the other choices might have been, but sexy and surprising any necessarily always in a series’ best interests.

The Way Red John Died Was Right

Jane has never been the world’s biggest fan of guns. He’ll carry one if he absolutely needs to, but in general, he’s not overly comfortable. Plus, shooting someone, apart from poisoning, is probably the most impersonal way you could possibly do someone in. It takes away the intimacy of murder and in some ways, the passion. Consequently, it makes a whole lot of sense that Jane would eventually take Red John down with his bare hands. That’s the most personal way possible to kill someone, and no doubt it would have been the most satisfying to Jane too.

As a viewer, it’s also nice to be able to live vicariously through Jane and stretch out the satisfaction of Red John dying a little bit longer. At times, this hunt felt endless. It went on for five-and-a-half years and even had one false ending. If it suddenly ended with a bullet, it may not have offered that prolonged satisfaction. This choke hold did.

There Were The Right Number Of Twists And Turns

We needed to be surprised. We needed to see a whole lot of layers, and we needed to get a few headfake psych-outs. Red John demonstrated way too many freakish displays of power over the years for a straight line to ultimately lead right to him. There had to be some kind of misdirections, and we get those thanks to the Sheriff’s fake death and the nonsense with Bertram just getting up and shot like some random redshirt. Besides, more twists isn’t necessarily better.

At some point, all of the craziness and all of the tricks had to stop. We needed to clear away the smoke and let Red John and Jane just talk. That’s what we’ve all been waiting to see all along, and the episode actually spaces itself well in allowing the final act to just be the two men inside the church and later in a full-on sprint through the park. From a writing perspective, there’s no way that balance was easy to find.

The Series Could Go Anywhere Moving Forward

Unlike the last time Red John supposedly died, this ending doesn’t necessarily guarantee Jane will find himself in court. He could disappear. He could stand trial. He could be immediately cleared of any wrongdoing because of the dangerous nature of the confrontation. We don’t know, and for the first time ever, the show is no longer angling toward the conclusion of one story arc. The options are totally open, and that’s liberating for viewers. It’s nice to be able to just breathe.

Episode descriptions seem to indicate we’re in for a very large jump in time starting next week. The show will apparently pick up in two years, but what exactly anyone involved will be doing at that point is unclear. Bravo to creator Bruno Heller and company for leaving the roads open. I can’t wait to watch, with full curiosity, as to what’s ahead.

Author: Mack Rawden

"When you achieve your objective, then what happens?" Baker says of the aftermath. "Now what do I have to live for and where do I go from here? Was it that gratifying for Jane? There are all of those questions. We deal with that in a lot of ways in the next episode afterward."
[Warning: Major spoilers ahead from Sunday's episode, "Red John." Do not proceed if you have not watched.]

The Mentalist's Red John case is now closed.
After putting the Red John spotlight on California Bureau of Investigation Director Gale Bertram (Michael Gaston), he turned out not to be the madman Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) had been searching for the past several years. Who was Red John? He was Sheriff Tom McAllister (Xander Berkeley), who had been one of the three who presumably died in the blast during "Fire and Brimstone."

It was a cat-and-mouse game after the reveal -- in the same cathedral where Jane was seen at the end of "The Great Red Dragon" -- but Jane and McAllister would meet again, this time at a local park. With McAllister pinned down to the ground after being weakened by a gunshot wound in the abdomen, he pleaded with Jane to spare his life. But for Jane, his sole mission in life was to end Red John for good. And so he put his hand on McAllister's neck and suffocated him until he was dead.

It was important to "give a real emotional, pleasing end to that story," creator-showrunner Bruno Heller told reporters, admitting that the ultimate Red John identity slowly "emerged" over the last few seasons. "For me it was about giving Patrick Jane exactly what he's wanted for all these years. He wanted revenge and he got it. I think that's what the audience wanted, so that's what we gave them."

"I did feel a sense of pressure, because we've been working toward this for so many years and it was something that had pushed the character from the very beginning [since] 2008. Somehow I had to live up to that in that one moment -- the one moment in the life of the character where he's stepping out into the unknown," Baker acknowledged. "The way we did it was important, because I felt like to pull the trigger is just pulling a trigger, but to actually wrestle with someone is far more kismet."

With the Red John mystery behind them (and the show making a big two-year time jump next week), Heller and Baker discussed the repercussions of Jane's actions, where this leaves the rest of the former CBI members and the new conflicts that will arise in the post-Red John era.

On Jane's future now that he's gotten what he's wanted
Bruno Heller: Jane is this tragic figure who has gotten his heart's desires and found the grail -- this evil grail he's been chasing all these years. It's very much a question of what does that do to him as a person. Can he begin a new life? What kind of life does he want for himself, and how will he define himself now that that part of his life is over?

Simon Baker: When you achieve your objective, then what happens? A lot of the time you focus all your energy on trying to achieve your objective, but you don't consider how it leaves you standing afterward. My favorite part of that is the transition out of it. Now what do I have to live for and where do I go from here? Was it that gratifying for Jane? There are all of those questions. We deal with that in a lot of ways in the next episode afterward.

On Jane killing Red John
Baker: The character has made a decision that he was going to kill Red John from the first time we ever saw him. He made that decision and then he said that was going to happen. What we didn't know was how he was going to react and whether or not he could go through with it and in what fashion. To me, that was just jumping off a cliff, really, and jumping off a cliff so it's like -- he's got what he wants and what he's wanted for so long. The idea of what drama is sets out to achieve an objective but doesn't quite achieve it, and they'd have to change tactics and approach. This is interesting because he's got Red John within his grasp, he doesn't take a moment to hesitate. And I think there was a line in there where he said, "I'm not hesitating, I'm just going to stay in the moment" in the church. When he's on top of him, it's the idea of shutting him up. Jane just wants to get on with the job, and from that moment on, you gotta try to be there and be alive in the moment.

On how Jane is affected by Red John's death
Baker: When Red John dies, a part of Jane dies in that moment as well. It takes a while for him to get back on his feet. And if you look at it, he doesn't have a wife and kid; he doesn't have any relationships other than the people he's been at work with at the CBI and his perverse obsession/relationship with Red John. He doesn't have a lot other than the CBI people.

On the option of Jane not killing Red John
Heller: Certainly I never considered any other ending. I always hated those heist movies where they didn't get away with the heist or revenge movies where they didn't reap their revenge. It would've been almost dishonest not to take that as the conclusion of that particular chapter.

On Jane's potential legal ramifications
Heller: Yes [there will be legal ramifications for killing Red John]. You can't go around killing people willy nilly without some ramifications. Very much so.

On the likelihood of Jane's return to law enforcement
Baker: Not immediately.

Heller: He's going to be placed in a position where his personal desires on that level are not the point. He's done something highly illegal. What he does in the future won't be entirely up to him. … His life as he knows it is over, but it's the beginning of a new life.

Baker: Once the dust settles, you start to see who's important to who and how each person sees themselves and who they care about.

On Jane and Lisbon's bond
Baker: I think absolutely. I think even stronger.

Heller: Now Jane and Lisbon have a chance to take a breath and think about each other in a way they haven't before.

On how the Red John wrap-up affects Lisbon and the others
Heller: For the other characters, it's a little like children of divorce. They've been involved with somebody else's mission and now that mission is gone. They were in a world they didn't choose, and now they're in a world that's changing around them -- again, not of their own volition. What is this going to be for these characters growing up and leaving home? Jane has big questions about what he's going to do with himself and Lisbon, Van Pelt, Cho and Rigsby also have to make those choices.

On whether Red John's disciples will take action
Heller: Never say never, but I would say the audience and the story demands that we step away from that trope for a while. The trouble with these stories where you're playing tricks on the audience with "Who is it?" mysteries is that you can get way too mysterious. And there were a lot of people who said all the way along that Patrick Jane was Red John. When you've got that kind of elaborate thinking out there, it's dangerous to come back to stories unless you're coming back to that story with full force, because people will start thinking "Red John is not dead!" Red John is dead.

On if Red John will still be part of the fabric of the show's future episodes
Heller: We won't be going back. One of the things you discover when one of these figures of great evil are unmasked … once the curtain is drawn back from these evil Wizard of Oz characters, they tend to not be very interesting companions.

On whether The Mentalist will go back to cases of the week
Heller: What this fresh version of the show is about is what happens afterward. In a very real sense, Jane is a happier person. A weight has been taken off his shoulders, and to that degree, a weight has been taken off the show. Jane has more freedom and more of a sense of possibility and liberty. … We'll return to crime-solving.

On worries about The Mentalist losing steam without Red John
Heller: [I'm] not really concerned. If it can't, then that's what happens. It felt to all of us that that chapter of the story was done. Frankly I think the great asset and value of the show is in Baker's head and what he does. Red John never even appears as a character physically in the last episode. It was a feeling in the show and a sort of objective. But in terms of moment by moment pleasures of the show, those are delivered by Simon Baker and his people, not by Red John. Frankly I don't know but I don't mind. But I think it's going to be a great show after Red John. Then it's up to the audience to decide if they like it or not.