So Jane deciding to go undercover as Remi with a dark, gothic style made me smile, because she already has memories of when she used to be Remi, and her makeup was actually pretty understated (as seen in the last pic).
Not sure if this is Jane overcompensating by using her makeup and nails to emphasise that ‘Remi was evil but I’m not’, or whether Remi as she appears in season four will start to adopt a darker style. Maybe Remi will overcompensate for what she sees as Jane’s goody-two-shoes personality by wearing pink or something.
Ermanda's Inner Sanctum: Blindspot 2.12 "Devil Never Even Lived" drabble
I think the biggest message in this episode is that love is a powerful starting point and a blindspot.
Starting Point Parallels: Kurt Weller for Jane & Remi/Jane for Roman
When Jane arrived at the FBI with Kurt Weller’s name tattooed on her back and her memory wiped, she had a hard time understanding her purpose. Then, the story of Taylor Shaw provided a means for Kurt and Jane to bond and trust one another. Her regard for his safety mobilized her to be a double agent even though she felt inadequate with a limited memory bank. That is why the truth about Taylor Shaw was hard for Kurt to handle and separated them for some time. Now, Remi/Jane has taken that role for Roman after wiping his memory. She wants him to have a chance at a better life, but his capacity for love and affection is harder to attain given all of Shepherd’s manipulation. But their sibling bond is helping Roman see a time when he was more than a cold, calculated soldier. Remi/Jane’s faith in him, the same faith Kurt had in her, pushes her to hope for the best and trust him to a fault at times. The question is, “will Roman be understanding when he finds out that Remi/Jane wiped his memory and lied to him about it?”
Blindspot Parallels: Markos & Jane/Remi, Roman & Kat, and Kurt & Nas
Roman has a potential for good as seen in the memory from this episode. His relationship with Kat almost turned him away from Remi and Shepherd. Learning that he left her to join his foster mother and sister is a small glimpse into the difficulty to break familial bonds. But at the end of the day, he planned on making the decision to leave everything he knew in order to live a less complicated life with his lady love. That’s very telling! The same is true of Remi and her relationship with Markos. She had a different relationship with him than she did with Oscar. Their relationship reflected a similar dilemma - a plan to fight, them against the world (or likely Sandstorm or the US government, in this case). In fact, Markos first reappeared in her memories after her memory wipe. Before Oscar shot him dead in front of her, he warned her not to trust “them.” That moment kept her cautiously aware, but her struggles with the lack of information and her desire to save Weller from Oscar’s threats kept things muddled. I think this is an interesting sibling parallel that reveals Shepherd is not as masterfully manipulative as she thinks and that nature and nurture work together to explain how someone can flip like this given a particular stimulus.
A similar issue occurs between Kurt and Nas. While they might not have a deep love connection, they came together as two people struggling to understand Sandstorm’s role in their lives. Of course, Kurt’s emotional distresses over Jane, Allie, and his unborn child pushed him to commit his greatest vice: using companionship and sexual gratification to run away from his problems. And now that decisions he and Nas made in this recent mission were outside their better judgment, they realized that it would be better for them to separate and focus solely on that which brought them together in the first place. I think it is very interesting that Nas initiated this, not Kurt. Kurt still has some work to do on himself.
Side note: Is Dr. Thornton (formerly Borden) trying to implode things from within? Did his relationship with Patterson leave a considerable impact?
