I'm disappointed seeing how the series has turned out
easily with red john's death.
Like most of you, I thought the story would have had
a quite more elaborated and elegant finale.
Here was my theory:




Patrick is actually a mentalist, a showman, a magic
trickster with real skills,

we'll say he is the best illusionist of the world.
He has a family: wife and daughter, as we all know
them.
But he is so proud and obsessed with his personal
glory and prestige that he progressively doesn't really care about
them.
After trying to make peace, his wife and daughter
leave him because he doesn't behave like a father but rather like a
businessman.
They decide to silently escape but they die in a
car/plane accident.
When patrick finds they're dead, he realizes it has
happened all because of his egoistic and self centric mania.
He finally feels guilty, so guilty that he can't
accept what he has done, he is driven insane by his guilt sense, or
more likely it makes he falls in coma.
Thus he is trapped in false memory, that he, the
mentalist, has institued (mental-ist).
This false reality created by patrick's mind is
populated by all people introduced in the series from season one.
Anyway, the guilt sense is so strong that it still
remains even in this mental condition, and since patrick can't charge
himself for his wife and daughter deaths, his mind also generates his
worst enemy: red john.
Red john is then charged for the homicide of
patrick's family and portraited as evil itself.
(If you pay attention you can notice that red john is
a character built with many different elements from most known serial
killers cases.
For example, the red smile is from the serial killer
smiley face,
the women-victim line is from jack the ripper,
the relationship with a blind woman is from the novel
Red Dragon, in which appears hannibal lecter, and other elements are
taken from William Blake's bibliography and iconography, author that
revalued the role of the devil, an innocent that was unjustly judged
guilty by god.)
In this way, patrick can demonstrate himself
innocent, more, he represents him to himself like a brave knight
after the most terrible (Blake's) demon.
On the other hand, his mind wants him to find himself
responsible for what happened to his family, so through the storyline
there are a few little clues that indicates the fake (the red john's
voice that sounds like jane's, some clues about red john that don't
match each other...).
So jane has to run after red john until he realizes
there is no red john, no direct killing but a fatal accident caused
by his snooty pride.
then he awakes, he admits his guilts and
finally he makes peace with the memory of his wife and daughter.



Well...I think I could write my own novel about this,
and so could you all!

I've read so many interesting theories that made me
think about...there's a bit of red john in each one of us :)



sorry for bad English,

cheers! :)