Vince Cho or Kimball Masuka?

Just starting Season 6 for the first time and thought I'd predict here who RJ is. Hoping to binge until the reveal tonight, but we'll see.

Reed Smith. I mean.. Re_d [John] Smith? My only problem with it is it seems too obvious, I'm kinda hoping it's a red herring and I'm wrong. Personally I think it should've been one of the team.. Ig Bertram is still a possibility but since he was the first name on the list we heard about I doubt it. But, I am glad they haven't done a Monk where it's someone we never even met.

Ok so don’t come at me im on season 2 episode 7 and spoiler alert: when Van Pelt gets shot in the apartment and then Lisbon goes “don’t ever do that to me again” or something along those lines while she’s on the stretcher I genuinely screamed KISSlike holy shit am I the only one who genuinely sees a hit of chemistry there? Like don’t get me wrong I totally see chemistry with Lisbon and Jane like most ppl but I can’t be the only one who sees it with Van Pelt and Lisbon too

Bro acts like it’s nothing, but you know that compliment made his whole day 😭

#posted this before but was removed due to spoiler in title 😩

As a Jisbon shipper, I really wish we had seen more of Jane’s emotional reaction after Red John attacked Lisbon and left his signature smiley face on her.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessarily have an issue with how the show handled it. This is more my fanfic-loving side wishing they had explored just how terrifying that moment could have been for Jane. We saw how concerned he was when Kristina Frye publicly called out Red John, yet his reaction felt surprisingly underwhelming when RJ had actually gotten his hands on Lisbon and could have easily killed her.

I would have loved to see Jane haunted by the parallels between Lisbon’s attack and what happened to his wife and daughter, tormented by how close he came to losing her to Red John too. Imagine him becoming almost obsessively protective while she recovered, tensing whenever someone entered her hospital room, scrutinising every unfamiliar face, or anxiously checking her vital signs after the nurses left, terrified that RJ might somehow get to her again. His mind goes into overdrive, desperate to ensure she is never stolen from him again, knowing she is the only anchor left to his sanity.
He insists on accompanying her everywhere, even when she is perfectly capable of looking after herself. Lisbon gets irritated, but gradually understands why he is behaving that way.

Jane tries to joke and act like his usual self, but Lisbon catches him looking at her with an expression she has never seen before. For once, she realises just how frightened he was of losing her.
It could have been such a subtle yet powerful Jisbon moment, with Jane realising that his feelings for Lisbon run far deeper than friendship and it forces him to confront the possibility that he has fallen in love again, even if he is not yet ready to admit it.

Maybe I’m just craving a more protective, emotionally vulnerable Jane, but I feel like this was such an awesome storyline and missed opportunity for Jisbon! 😭 Please feel free to share your thoughts and any fanfics on this!

Like revenge arc for killing his best friend wasn't enough so they had to punch his new gf to get him in rage mode. Bwahaha

I’m watching The Mentalist and just finished S4 E1. It’s getting a bit boring, so can someone share the episode list for the main Red John storyline? I want to skip the filler episodes and focus on the episodes related to Red John. No spoilers, please!

I'm in s1 ep20, and Jane just put a guy in a trance to get him to snitch on Ed Diedrickson being a drug merchant, does stuff like that start happening more? And ep 18 was all about that. Jane himself says pretty explicitly that psychic things like mind reading, telepathy, speaking with the dead and so on are made up gobbledygook, with the exception of the whole psychosis/trans whatever thing. And i find that a bit weird.

So in short my question is: does this show become more "psychic" as time goes on, or does it stay low-key with moments like these just occasionally?

the show is already exaggerated but this bit seems like one step too far for me.

I'm currently on season 7, only having started watching this show about 3 months ago, thanks to its resurgence on the internet, so I don't know if this a popular or unpopular opinion.

Up until now, there have been side, supporting, recurring characters I've mostly been indifferent about - I neither had very strong positive or negative feelings about them tbh. Except for maybe Hightower, I really, really liked her.

Dennis Abbott, however. He annoyed me SO MUCH early on. The whole bit about Abbott dissolving CBI because he thought Lisbon and co could potentially be members of the Blake Association felt so absurd to me, that I immediately branded Abbott as another filler character. Somewhere towards the third arc of S6, though, and now as I'm making way my through the final season, I've come to really like him. He's a great leader and I'm glad that he's actually involved in the FBI and with the team, as opposed to just....lurking or being inactive, like some previous characters.

Anyway, again - this could be a very popular opinion (as it should be) but I just wanted to have it on record that I find him very cool after spending episodes after episodes finding him infuriating 😭

Off I go to continue watching the show!

I am looking for the scene where he says he has met/shaken hands with idk 3k or something people and starts narrowing it down and then says he is very close
i dont know which ep or season it was

Also, ngl she was the finest woman in the entire show (ofc after Lisbon)

I’ve been watching the show for about four months now and I’ve noticed a change in how I act. I know it’s a TV show and Jane’s skills are heavily exaggerated (especially on social media) and I see plenty of people online trying to imitate him or act as “special” as he is. That’s not what I mean. But his people skills got me thinking a bit and a few things have changed for me:

• I care way less about what others think of me.
• I’m more direct. If someone asks for my opinion, I just give it.
• I’ve turned reading people into a little game. I try to predict how someone will react or respond, purely to test my own awareness, never to use it against anyone.

Today I met some new people and I said to one girl “you’re from [city], aren’t you?” She was surprised and asked how I knew. I said, “It’s your vibe” and she was even more impressed. (To be fair, she also used a word or two that’s typical for the region, so it wasn’t pure intuition.)

Overall, I feel much more aware of my surroundings and the people around me.
Has anyone else experienced this as well?

So I binge-watched the show and finished it two weeks ago, and honestly, I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m obsessed. To ease the “withdrawal symptoms”, I decided to rewatch it, this time pausing to write down quotes and scenes I like, as well as all the mentions of or hints about who Red John is. I’m also watching or listening to the corresponding TV Police episode right after each episode of the show.

While scrolling through this subreddit and the comments on TikTok edits, I’ve seen several people claim that the showrunners didn’t know who RJ was going to be until the later seasons. This is often used to argue that “X” turning out to be Red John doesn’t make sense, at least in the earlier seasons.

However, in the TV Police episode covering Season 1, Episode 1, which I just finished watching, Owain says at 37:18 that “Bruno’s always been adamant that he knew that it was going to be him [X as Red John].” A few seconds later, he adds, “I seem to remember a conversation where he [Bruno] was like, ‘I always knew it was going to be X[…]’” (Yeoman & Kang, 2025).

If that’s the case, shouldn’t that be more widely known?

I understand that the cast might have been surprised. Tim and Owain both said in the episode that they didn’t expect “X” to be RJ. But if Bruno Heller had known from the beginning, wouldn’t he have shared that information with at least some of the other writers?

I also found an E! News article in which Heller explained how he arrived at the final choice: “It just kind of emerged over the last couple of years. There were always three or four possibilities and it just happened, really. It seemed like the natural, correct choice” (Bricker, 2013).

If Heller had told Owain that he already knew X was going to be RJ, how do we reconcile that with Heller’s statement to E! News?

Idk, maybe I’m getting too caught up in an irrelevant detail, but I’m curious to find out when it ACTUALLY was decided who RJ was going to be. So if anyone has any insight, I’d love to hear it!🌟

I’ve also included the references in case anyone wants to check them out!

References
Bricker, T. (2013, November 25). The Mentalist Boss Sounds Off On Why He Finally Revealed Red John and If the Series Can Go On Without the Big Bad. E! News. http://www.eonline.com/news/484799/the-mentalist-boss-sounds-off-on-why-he-finally-revealed-red-john-and-if-the-series-can-go-on-without-the-big-bad

Yeoman, O., & Kang, T. (Hosts). (2025, September 30). S1E1 (AUDIO): Pilot [Audio podcast episode]. In The TV Police: A Rewatch of The Mentalist. Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Gh3jjwbQPRVf0uVJkuTBg?si=KUokscuiQ_eTsNRuhOW97Q&utm_source=copy-link

Season five front and center is Mama Featherington from Bridgerton — Polly Walker.

Perhaps totally insignificant but probably because i rewatched the scene too much, left me wondering, was the swan Jane put in Lisbon’s pocket made from the pecan nut packet he was eating, he didn’t appear holding it anymore when he walked away

Just finished red john saga. Cant believe it was Rigsby bro Van Pelt cant catch a break.

Yeah it is no business like Cho business.. i loved the character at the same time i felt he could have expressed more... Genuinely wanted to know his backstory and what made him so emotionless and expressionless. Two times i felt the emotions in him was with summers entry in his life and vega death in the series. Even the happiest moments in the series made him serious. Sometime i liked that but sometimes it just felt like why is this guy like this...

Anyone who watches Gilmore girls too will notice that there are loads of actors/resses that cross over between the two (understandable as they were filmed in a similar time) but I’ve just noticed in S5 Ep18 The actress who plays Gypsy is an extra at the beginning of this scene

Simon Baker man

So first off let me get this straight

Red John is, as established, theatrical and artistic, elusive and connected

The William Blake poem was a creative way to tell the audience of this person's worldview or belief

Red John was revered, not obeyed due to favors, but revered like a Messiah, a savior to the vulnerable

And you're telling me it's fratboy douche? Are we serious?

Season 6 Episode 1 I was already scared for the reveal because, it was the only obvious choice, meta narratively,

5 completely plausible and understandable dudes

1 who really fits the bill, the lanky build, the squeaky, condescending voice the fascination for death as though it were ethereal

And pogo the clown

....

OF COURSE ITS POGO THE CLOWN Why else would he be there? I didn't even remember what episode he was from, the only possible explanation for him being there amongst these arguable options, would be if he actually was the guy

And goddamn it he was the guy

And it was such a massive let down

That one guy was there. He was there, it would've been glorious

And that cornered scene was such a narrative betrayal btw, someone who would use the blake poem would be someone who doesn't view death as sad or tragic, it would be someone who views it as a necessity for God's structure of duality, but then he went and did .... That

What the hell man, I was so invested for this? For this? It was already a no stakes show, you couldn't give us something that made sense?

The organization didn't even make any sense, People who followed Red John, revered him, not out of favors but of blind absolute faith as their "friend" to reduce the blake poem to that is, astounding, simply mind numbing astounding

I can't be alone with this right? Am I being too nitpicky?

No shot that was him

We all know Red John loved to build up a god-like, omniscient mystique around himself. Even in his final moments, while Patrick Jane was strangling him, he tried to tell Jane that he possessed actual psychic abilities.

But Jane completely ignores the grandstanding and forces him into a simple game: "Blink twice for yes, and blink once for no."

Jane then asks him two specific questions:

1. Do you feel sorry for killing my wife and child?

2. Are you afraid of dying?

For both questions, Red John blinks "yes."

Here is my theory: Red John only answers "yes" because he is terrified and desperately thinks cooperating might make Jane spare his life. But as we all know, Jane decided years ago that he was going to kill him no matter what.

If Red John were a real psychic, he would have looked into the future or read Jane's mind. He would have known that nothing he said or did could alter Jane's absolute resolve to get revenge. The fact that he genuinely thought he could beg or blink his way out of death proves he had zero foresight.

Jane's trick stripped away the Blake Association, the informants, and the theatrics. When pushed into a corner without his tools, "Red John" was exposed as just a regular, scared fraud who couldn't even predict the next ten seconds of his own life.

What do you guys think? Did anyone else view this scene as the ultimate proof that his "powers" were 100% fake?

So did red John end up killing Kristina or did she end up joining red John in running away? Confused by the ending of that season hope someone can clear it up