Potential spoilers for Blindspot are below, but the headline should have told you that.
Blindspot opened its narrative with a mysterious woman with no memory, and while we spent most of the first season believing that Jamie Alexander was playing a woman named Taylor Shaw - somebody who had been missing since childhood - we learned by the end of Season 1 that this was not the case. So who is Jane Doe? We think we might know the answer. We think her name is Alice Kruger.
Who is Alice Kruger? That's the part we honestly don't have a clue about. As far as we know, it's just a name, but that doesn't mean it came out of thin air. We've got some evidence that is supported by information the show's producers have provided. EW recently posted a story with a puzzle inside it, which they promise will reveal Jane Doe's real name. The puzzle, in the form of a poem, looks like this:
To uncover Jane's nameWe have devised a game:Be sure to take great pains,For there are capital gains.In "Spoilers" they're concealed,Here their meanings revealed:A wolf in language of old;Locked up, dank and cold;Stank to the heavens for days;And one with criminal ways.Put these four in the mix,And Jane's name you will fix.
So, here's how it all came together. EW has a regular weekly feature called "Spoiler Room" in which they answer readers' TV-related questions. Our TV editor Nick Venable had noticed that over the past few weeks, there had been a couple of Blindspot related spoilers that seemed to have random capital letters spread throughout them. This is where the "capital gains" were "concealed."
In point of fact, there has been a Blindspot related spoiler every week for the past five weeks. If you line up all the capital letters as they appear in order, and find the appropriate word breaks, you will find the "meanings revealed."
CANIS/JAILED/REEK/ROGUE
So, now that we have them all, it's time to put them "in the mix." If you know Blindspot, then you know that word puzzles have been a big part of the plot. Patterson, the show's requisite tech nerd, loves them and is very good at them. Anagrams have been a staple of the puzzles, so it makes sense that this is what is meant by "mix."
The problem is, there's a lot of bloody letters here. Too many to be able to pull a random name out of, and proper anagrams don't leave letters out. However, the answer isn't simply the name, it's the answer to the puzzle. When you remove the letters needed to spell JANE DOE IS, you're left with few enough letters to work with, C,A,L,I,R,E,E,K, R,G,U. The best name that we can build with what's left is our answer:
JANE DOE IS ALICE KRUGER
Are we sure we have this figured out? Not exactly. However, the fact that we got an answer that fits sensibly makes us feel like we're certainly on the right track. It's possible we got some letters mixed up. For the record, you can also make the name Carrie Kugel with the same letters, so maybe that's the answer, though we like Kruger better as a last name. Alice Kruger sounds like a character in a show like Blindspot. Or A Nightmare on Elm Street.
The name doesn't mean anything to us, but since Jane Doe is supposed to be a mystery, we wouldn't expect it to. Her name isn't actually that important, since Season 2 is supposed to broaden its focus to center on trust and family. But it does matter who she's been working for, and exactly what it is they're trying to accomplish. Things we expect to learn when the series returns. And while we can't guarantee that this is the right answer, we'll hold our heads up high if it ends up being right.
Blindspot Season 2 premieres Wednesday, September 14. To see when everything else is coming to the small screen later this year, check out our fall premiere schedule.
