This post contains spoilers for people who haven't seen the finale of season 5 so if you haven't stop reading here.





Alright, well in the finale we have finally learned the names of the 7 "real" Red John suspects.
The list is; 
Brett Stiles
Gale Bertram
Brett Partidge 
Ray Haffner 
Robert Kirkland 
Reede Smith 
Thomas McAllister 


It is quite obvious that Brett Stiles cannot be Red John, as we learned in the episode The Red Barn Brett Stiles is to old to be Red John.

Gale Bertram is also a very unlikely choice for Red John because he just isn't clever enough, he also isn't a very good "mind" reader as is demonstrated by his poker skills.

Brett Patridge is the first potential Red John suspect but for some reason he just doesn't seem to have the personality to be Red John, he doesn't really care about his appearance a lot, as is shown with his messy hair in the hotel. Furthermore he is also very humble towards Patrick Jane and even allows him to insult him as is seen in the pilot and since RJ did not immediately strike back at PJ for doing so it is again very unlikely that Patridge is RJ.

Ray Haffner is also a very good posibility for being RJ, as we learn in The Red Barn episode he is in fact a member of visualize and it is pretty likely that he was even at the Smiley barn at the same time as RJ was. He also clearly has feeling for Lisbon which explains why RJ has never made a move to hurt her, because Lisbon is easily Jane's weakness so it is very strange that he has left her alone. One thing however that sais that Ray Haffner is not RJ is that he admitted to "being unable to handle Jane", this is something that RJ would never do, unless Haffner wanted Jane's old team to come back so that the RJ vs PJ game would stay the same, so in my opinion Haffner is probably my nr1 suspect at this moment.

Then we have Robert Kirkland, our mysterious Homeland Security agent. For the entire season, the producers have tried us to believe that Kirkland is RJ. Firstly Homeland Security would have no reason to investigate the RJ case because it isn't a threat to national safety, unless ofcourse Homeland has come to suspect that RJ is actually a part of visualize and they want to get rid of visualize. I mean a big powerful cult where people are being brainwashed could be seen as a threat. So in my opinion Kirkland is trying to catch RJ himself and he probably has even tried doing so by going undercover, this is probably why he asked Lennon if he had recognized him because he clearly recognized Lennon. He also knew that Lennon didn't know anything about RJ because he didn't ask Lennon a single question about him.

Then we have Reede Smith, a very very unlikely person to end up on the list, since we can assume that we saw RJ himself in the season 2 finale it is clear that Smith is too fat to be RJ, unless he suddenly gained a lot of weight, which could actually be the reason why RJ didn't kill for such a long time. So eventhough it is still very unlikely that he will end up being RJ he is still someone that we should keep an eye out for.

And then we have our last suspect Thomas McAllister. I must be honest that I don't remember him at all, so I can't really make a point about him being RJ at all. But since he did appear in the beginning of the show and since he questioned Patrick a little bit while they first met he is a likely candidate to be RJ.

So my top 3 at the moment is;

Ray Haffner
Thomas McAllister
Robert Kirkland