Blindspot finale recap: This. Changes. Everything. 

Man, oh, man. Are you done yelling at your TV? Did you throw it out the window? Were those screams of joy or anger? I watched the season finale yesterday and I still don’t think I’ve recovered—and I definitely can’t figure out how I feel about it. But that’s why we’re all here. Let’s process this whole crazy thing together, and boy, is there a lot to process.

Before we get to the craziness of the final few minutes of “In Memory,” let’s recap everything else leading up to it. For the most part, it’s a pretty standard episode of

. It’s fun and thrilling and nicely ties up a lot of the season’s overarching stories…and then blows a lot of things up in the last few minutes. Depending on your capacity for accepting very random swerves, you either hated the final stretch or loved it. Either way, “In Memory” certainly goes all out in making an impact.

As the episode begins, Roman is basking in the sun, making a phone call to someone. “It was all leading to this,” he says, cryptically. Does this mean he had his showdown with Jane? Did Crawford catch up to him? We have to wait to find out, as the episode flashes back a few hours. It’s the morning after Reade and Zapata’s first night together, and things are a little awkward. Not because of the sex, but because Reade learns of a break in the tattoo cases and he can’t talk to Zapata about it because she’s no longer a government agent.

Heading into work, Rich and Patterson have all their material prepared for Reade and the rest of the team. They’ve dissected Roman’s video clue and determined that he’s quoting

. After a hilarious “who’s on first?” situation involving a misunderstanding about a clue in the words “what three words,” the team finds a website that includes a map of the entire world divided up into 3×3 squares. Punch in a set of three words and you get a corresponding part on the map. It looks like Roman is pointing them to a location, perhaps Crawford’s. They just need to know what three words from the book Roman is talking about to punch into the map.

While Crawford traces a call from Roman, baiting and switching the FBI as he gets himself to the airport to go find the man who’s betrayed him, the team finds some hidden numbers in two of Jane’s tattoos that likely point to page and word numbers in

. The problem is that they need a rare first edition of the original French book. It turns out it’s not much of a problem for Rich, who finds a copy on the Dark Web and refuses to tell Reade how much the government had to pay to obtain it.

The three words end up being “Thousand Life King,” which corresponds to Cape Town, South Africa on the map. That’s where Roman and Jane grew up, and suddenly everything is coming full circle. The team heads to Cape Town, while Rich mopes about never getting to go on the fun trips, searching for some sign of Roman or Crawford. They find both of them, as Roman has once again flipped sides, turning on Crawford and bringing him to the orphanage in Cape Town where his trauma, and Jane’s, first began.

You see, it was Crawford who built the orphanage. It was a test run of sorts for his plan to build an army of soldiers that weren’t loyal to any country. Of course, all that lead to was abuse and torture and a man disguised as Tom Jakeman wanting him dead. Roman has him tied to a chair, and he runs through all of Crawford’s horrible misdeeds. Crawford tries to manipulate the situation, telling Roman to go finish what he started, this time with Blake and the truth out in the open. They don’t have much time to discuss the details though, as the FBI shows up. Roman narrowly escapes, and makes his way to Blake, while Jane gets her moment of vindication. She shoots Crawford in the chest, killing the man she didn’t know was responsible for so much of the pain in her life.