Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
Jane opens the season refusing to work after Red John spares him, but Lisbon draws him back into cases and he vows revenge. New director Gale Bertram takes over the CBI while an internal inquiry threatens Madeleine Hightower. Jane keeps pursuing Red John through separate cases, including a Visualize investigation that gives him a lead on missing psychic Kristina Frye. Lisbon challenges his recklessness, while Jane tries to protect her by withholding parts of his plans.
The team faces another internal inquiry when J.J. LaRoche investigates the death of police killer Todd Johnson and questions Rigsby. Van Pelt becomes engaged to FBI agent Craig O’Laughlin, while Jane investigates dating-agency owner Erica Flynn after her husband is murdered and tests her alibi. Near the finale, a bomb robbery points Jane toward transaction records connected to Hightower. Red John is hunting her, so Jane helps her hide with her children while the team searches for a mole inside the CBI.
Jane gives the suspected insiders different hotel-room locations and watches which one Red John’s assassin targets. The clue appears to implicate Bertram, but a rope reveals the real target is O’Laughlin. His warning arrives too late: O’Laughlin shoots Lisbon, then Hightower and Van Pelt kill him when Lisbon creates an opening. A call from O’Laughlin’s phone connects Jane to a man at the mall who knows private details about Jane’s family. Jane shoots the man, convinced he is Red John, and security arrests him as he returns to his tea. The season ends with Jane in custody and his belief that he has killed his enemy.