The Red John Chronicles, Part 1: Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright

Hi.  Red John here.  You think you know who I am, but you don’t.  You have seen me, but you won’t know who I am until I want you to know.  It was great to watch you all fall for my latest ruse at the end of last season.  Did you really think I would be stupid or careless enough to show myself in that cluster of people at the end of last season?

Red John Smiley Face 300x300 The Red John Chronicles, Part 1: Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright

Red John

I might have been there all along, but not as Red John.  You will all know who I really am when I want you to, and not a second sooner.  This season, I will continue to have fun tormenting Patrick Jane, both from within and from without.  And I will be here, at this website, to laugh at all of you, to give you enough bread crumbs to think you have a trail, just like I do for Jane. 

So, why do I enjoy tormenting Patrick Jane so much?  It started long ago, when Jane was a two-bit “psychic” and grifter.  Jane made the worst assumption that anyone could make: that he was more intelligent than I am.  I made him pay for his insolence by taking away what he loved the most.  So now, he hunts for me. 

Patrick Jane already rues the day he decided to speak my name in public.  And now, he relentlessly pursues me.  But is Jane really the hunter, or is he just the hunted?  Patrick Jane thinks he is smarter than I am; he is wrong.  Patrick Jane thinks he is better than I am; he is wrong.  Most of all, Patrick Jane thinks that he can control the evil within his soul better than I can; he is wrong.

Over the last four seasons, you have seen me bring out some of Patrick Jane’s innate evil.  This season, you will see it happen even more.  This brings me to another thing you are all probably wondering about: why the apparent fascination with William Blake?

In an irony that Blake himself would appreciate, Blake and his poetry are merely metaphors for my greatness.  William Blake was the greatest of his era, but his greatness wasn’t truly acknowledged in his own lifetime.  Blake is seen as a “pre-romantic era” poet, but his work foretold the romantic era and predated it.  In other words, William Blake was ahead of his time.

Blake’s poetry was among the finest ever written, but he was also a painter and an engraver.  His visual art was every bit as stunning as his poetry.  William Blake was a genius, but the world at large thought he was crazy, because he didn’t see the same things everybody else did.  In other words, William Blake was just like me. 

I am ahead of my time, like Blake was.  I am an artist, just like Blake was.  And my aspiring contemporaries, like Patrick Jane, don’t recognize my greatness because, deep down, they are jealous of my talent.  I won’t write poetry like Blake, nor will I ever be mistaken for being a great painter.  But I have no true peers in the arts of murder and manipulation. 

 People are my words, my brush, and my etching tools.  I exist alongside of them, on the fringes of their lives.  Not only do they not notice me, but they don’t notice that they are doing my bidding, solely on the strength of my superior intellect.  My art isn’t the crime scenes, or even the murders themselves; my art and my genius are my ability to manipulate the process. 

So, why did I choose the poem “The Tyger” to torment Patrick Jane?  I will talk about it more in later posts.  For right now, let it suffice to say that I am going to bring out the “Tyger” in Patrick Jane this season.  At the end of Season 3, you all saw what Patrick Jane is capable of doing.  Before he made the mistake of engaging me in battle, Patrick Jane was weak and lazy.  He was a person who was almost as good at manipulating others as I am, but he didn’t truly know the “Tyger” within. 

Before Patrick Jane thought he met me in that mall at the end of Season 3, and pulled the trigger, he thought he could claim higher moral ground.  Now, though, Jane knows, deep in his soul, that he is no more “moral” than I am. 

This season, I am going to help Jane find the Tyger within his own soul.  Patrick Jane has turned out to be a worthy adversary.  He is not quite as intelligent as I am, but he has surprised me with his ability to find the clues I leave for him, and to follow up on them.  In time, I could develop Jane into a worthy contemporary.  The question is whether Jane will ever see that we have more in common than he thinks we do. 

Consequently, Season 5 should be subtitled, “The Continuing Education of Patrick Jane,” because I am going to continue to show Jane his dark side this season.  Sometimes I will use violence, but sometimes I will use seduction, as I did with Lorelei.  Jane thinks he is getting closer to me, but in reality, he will only get as close as I allow him to.

After Lorelei made it out of FBI custody in Episode 1, it is obvious to Jane that I was telling the truth about having “friends” in the FBI.   Soon, though, Jane will figure out that I have “friends” a lot closer to him than the FBI.  When he does, I will strip him of any faith he may have in the “system,” and bring him one crucial step closer to fulfilling his true potential.

By the end of this season, Jane’s dark side will have many of you wondering about him.  Most of all, though, Jane’s dark side will have him questioning himself.   

The more questions he asks of himself, the closer he will get to finding his true essence: the” Tyger” within.

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Could Brett Stiles be Red John?

Brett Stiles is another person who can say he is “one up” on Patrick Jane.  He is the quintessential “teflon man:” nothing sticks to him.  He is the leader of a multimillion dollar church called the “Visualize Self-realization Center.”  He is charismatic, driven, and extremely intelligent.  Though it hasn’t been “proven” yet, it is obvious that he is also quite dishonest, and may or may not believe in his own doctrine.

He knew about Red John, and told Jane that he may have information about Red John that Jane doesn’t.  This appears to be a great setup for a repeat appearance somewhere down the line.

click2play6 Could Brett Stiles be Red John?

Brett Stiles - Could He Be Red John?

Most of all, Stiles appears to be amoral.  Amoral people are incapable of discerning right from wrong, because they don’t feel any sense of boundaries on what is right and what is wrong.  Stiles is also very powerful, and would have plenty of resources to have people working for him.

Stiles manages to have a high profile without anyone actually knowing anything about him.  He has shown the capacity to be ruthless.  And he knows all about Red John.  Most of all, he has a very capable presence.  If we see him come back this year, the chances are very good that he is, indeed, Red John.

How does Brett Stiles know so much about Red John and about Jane?

This is one of the most puzzling aspects of The Mentalist.  Is Stiles just someone who knows everything, or does he have some kind of connection to Red John?  We covered this earlier in the Britt Stiles post, but he does always seem to be a step ahead of Jane.   Even when Jane thwarts whatever Stiles has planned, Stiles has an exit strategy ready.  Given the Moriarity theory, this makes it look possible that Stiles could even be Red John, but we see him as a classic “red herring.”  This, of course, is quite fitting.

Chances of Brett Stiles being Red John: 7.5 out of 10.

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Who Is Red John?

Red John the ‘nickname’ of the serial killer and principal antagonist from the prime time television show The Mentalist.  He (or she) has been linked to the murders of sixteen women and eight men as of the time of this writing. The victims include the television show’s protagonist’s (Patrick Jane) wife and daughter, a crime set five years before the television show’s pilot episode.  It is unknown exactly how many victims Red John is guilty of or exactly when the killing spree began, but it is suspected to begin sometime around the year 1998.  Click Here To See Latest Red John Theories

Red John‘ is known not to work alone, although the accomplices have a tendency to end up dead as soon as they become liabilities.  The oldest known sidekick is Orville Tanner, the father of Dumar Tanner. The ‘famed’ psychic Patrick Jane was enlisted by the California police to try to get a profile of Red John to help track the killer down and bring the guilty party to justice, but Jane made the mistake of belittling the killer on television and paid for his ‘disrespect’ with the loss of his wife and daughter. His search for Red John has become his obsession, and he makes no claims that he will arrest the killer when discovered, as we can see in this conversation with Agent Teresa Lisbon:

click2play1 Who Is Red John?

Patrick Jane Declares Intentions Against Red John

Red John remains unseen, his face is always hidden in shadows, under hoods, hats or masks.  In the first season finale Red John is seen escaping from an abondoned home that served as a prison to a young woman while Jane and Lisbon struggled against one of RJ’s accomplices. Red John also appeared in the second season finale dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt as he executed the film students Jane and Carter Peake in the presence of Patrick Jane, whom Red John ‘technically’ rescued.

During the season 3 finale, Patrick Jane has agent Teresa Lisbon redial the last number on one of Red John’s accomplices’ telephones and tell  the person that answers that the accomplice is dead.  A gentleman with a very plain, ordinary appearance (played by Bradley Whitford) reading a newspaper in the food court seated near Patrick answers his phone.  Jane has Lisbon confirm the conversation, which matches what Jane saw the man say into his phone, so Patrick confronts him.

Initially, the man denies the situation, but drops some interesting hints that he really is indeed Red John.  The man reveals details about the murders of Patrick’s wife and daughter, more specifically, the smell. This information spurs Jane into violent action and Patrick shoots the man with a gun that was hidden in his jacket pocket.

There has yet to be confirmation that the man was Red John, but since RJ is such an important element of the series which is set to go for seven seasons, it is most probably that the man was simply another accomplice, a tool by Red John possibly to test what Jane’s reaction would be to his revelation.

The identity of Red John remains a carefully guarded secret by the writers, and is completely unknown to the viewers, thus has become a topic of much debate. Red John is nearly always referred to as a “he” but there has yet been no evidence completely disproving that Red John could be a woman that simply uses many male accomplices.

All of Red John’s known accomplices refer to the killer as a ‘him’ and to this point none have given any appearance of lying about that fact, or to have expressed even the slightest doubt. The few moments where the audience has been shown what is believed to be Red John have been definitely given a masculine tone.  All theories are plausible at this point, however, since very little conclusive evidence currently exists.

We have done exhaustive analyses of this elsewhere on the site, but the mystery is still as strong as it has been in at any time during the series.  Writers of screenplays usually like to follow the elements of classical literature.  These and some newer elements have been combined into a sort of de facto “rulebook” for writing.  One of the most important elements is “leading the reader.”

In any creative writing class, writers are taught that everything that happens in a story must have precedent that leads the reader to a logical conclusion.  In other words, everything has to make sense.  At the end of pretty much any good murder mystery, one can go back and find clues that were well-hidden, but definitely there. 

It is “against the rules” for a writer to bring something in from “left field.”  There is even a name for it: Deus ex machina, or “God out of the machine.”  This was introduced in Horace’s Ars Poetica, and is loosely taught as bringing in a solution to a problem that is totally outside of what has previously appeared in the story.  This is great for Creative Writing 101, but what does it mean to us concerning Red John?

It means that, in all likelihood, the groundwork and clues are already present in previous episodes, or the clues will appear before Red John’s identity is revealed.  In other words, we have already seen Red John, and there are plenty of clues that will all fit together in retrospect. 

For better or worse, though, Heller has left so many clues that there is a body of “evidence” for just about anyone in the series being Red John.  It would take a Red John clues spreadsheet covering where everyone was at the exact time of every Red John murder, thus eliminating suspects, to get a closer idea of who he really is. 

How serious is Bruno Heller when he compares Red John to Moriarity?

There is a sub-question here: is Heller comparing Red John to the literary description of Moriarity or the versions of Moriarity that weren’t in Doyle’s original writings?  Though Doyle only had Moriarity appear in one book, his “final one,” Moriarity is ubiquitous in all of the TV shows, movies, and cartoons based upon the Holmes series. 

There is one thing common to all versions of Moriarity, though: he is always a step ahead of Holmes, but Holmes outsmarts him in the end.  Another thing they all have in common is that they aren’t anyone already in Holmes’ life. 

So, it comes down to this: if Heller is serious about Red John being Patrick Jane’s Moriarity, then he won’t be anyone who has appeared as a character so far.

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