Photo by: Virginia Sherwood/NBC
Warning: Spoiler Alert
Revelations and a rather shocking ending, left fans of the NBC series “The Blacklist,” looking forward to the series’ return at the start of the new TV season. The episode concluding the second season of the show, radically shook up the dynamic that had been in place, as events and people forced others to make life-altering decisions. Whether things can go back to the way were, is unclear at this point. However, deep down this series has always lived in a state of flux, since Raymond Reddington turned himself into the FBI, stating that he’d only talk to a rookie agent named Elizabeth Keen.
This episode showed just how powerful the organization know as The Cabal, truly is in the Blacklist universe. Their reach seems to be limitless and can turn fiction into fact, by pressuring the right people. As this evening started, Liz Keen stood in the Cabal’s crosshairs, in retribution for saving Red’s life by threatening the Director, saying she’d give the Fulcrum to the New York Times, if he refused to call off the hit on Reddington.
We found out last week that Liz got infected with the designer virus that killed Senator Hawkins, as Red realized that the United States Attorney General Tom Connolly set her up. We join Keen seconds later in the Task Force headquarters, as Connolly and some agents from the Justice Department, come into the building to arrest Liz. Reddington tells Lizzie to run, but Keen’s determined to clear her name.
Connolly heads into Task Force Director Harold Cooper’s office and tells him that he’s arresting Keen for the murder of the Senator, an outspoken critic of Russia. He says that Keen’s mother was a KGB operative and that she and Reddington have subverted the Task Force, for Reddington’s own needs. Cooper tells the Attorney General he won’t help him and Connolly replies that all he needs are the results from Keen’s blood-test. Lizzie’s standing outside of Cooper’s office, hears Connolly and decides she best get out of there.
Connolly tells Harold he’s putting Deputy Attorney General Reven Wright in charge of the investigation and Cooper threatens to tell Reven everything about the Cabal. Connolly says that Harold would face perjury charges in the Harbor Master case, Charlene would get charged with leaking a Federal document and Harold’s participation in the clinical trial to fight his cancer ends. Cooper opens his bottle of pills and throws them on the floor and says he’d rather die than roll over. Connolly tells the two agents to escort Harold to his car, he’s relieved of duty until the investigation ends.
Keen tries to leave through the elevator, but as she reaches the ground level Connolly and his agents are waiting for her. The Attorney General says he and his men were just looking for her, they take her into custody. She’s interviewed by two men, that apparently are from the Justice Department and seem to have an extensive knowledge of her background.
They ask her where she was born, she responds she was raised in Nebraska, they inform her she was born in Moscow. They ask her what her birth-name is and she looks at them blankly, they tell her that it’s Masha Rostova and that her mother was a KGB operative and her step-father had a criminal background. They then ask her how long she’s spied for Russia.
Wright’s listening to the interview and calls over Ressler. She says she doesn’t know Liz, but she’s suspicious that Harold got put on Administrative leave. She tells Ressler she wants him in charge of the Task Force during the investigation. She’s aware of his boy-scout reputation, in regards to upholding the law and says she trusts his instincts.
Harold and Red meet in a church, Raymond tells Cooper that he’s got a man inside the Task Force Headquarters and he’s getting the power cut, which gives them two minutes to get Lizzie out of the building before the cameras reset. He tells Harold that he’s going to need him to guide her through the quickest way out of the building.
The power goes out at the Headquarters, one of the agents leaves the office to find out what’s going on. A bald man walks in and Keen attacks him and the agent that’s still in the office, suddenly a phone rings and the bald guy says the call’s for her. It’s Cooper on the phone, giving her instructions on where the secret tunnels are. She’s two feet from the exit and Ressler finds her and tells her not to run. She tells him she’s being set-up and she asks him to look the other way, he does and she escapes.
Red gets her to a safe house, where Cooper joins them and Red asks Lizzie to think when she may have had her routine diverted in the last 24-hours. Harold says Union Station when she got knocked out by a man she believes was Russian spy Karakurt. Red tells her to go check out the station’s surveillance footage and says he needs to attend a meeting, concerning another aspect of their war.
Liz gets to check out the surveillance tapes and she discovers that it wasn’t Karakurt that attacked her, rather it was the scientist and designer drug maker Leo Andropov that knocked her out. He then infected her with the virus through a nasal spray.
She goes to the restaurant owned by the Russian criminal informant she had asked about her mother Katerina Rostova. The man says he doesn’t remember anything about Rostova, as he’s on retainer from Red, who instructed him not to talk with any Federal agents about Rostova. However, she says she wants information on where Leo Andropov’s staying at. He gives her the address of the safe house he’s hiding in. She asks him once more about her mother, this time he says he can’t tell her anything.
She heads back to the house Red’s at and she asks him why he got the restaurant owner to remain silent about her mother? He replies that he’s a sin-eater, a man who swallows other people’s sins, so they don’t have to. She asked him what kind of sin could she have committed when she was four-years-old. She then says every time he acts like he cares about her, he then blows it by protecting himself.
She heads to ex-husband Tom’s boat and asks him to go with her to Andropov’s safe-house, he says they should both just sail away to a new life. She says that if she doesn’t take care of this now, she’ll be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life. He agrees to go with her.
They enter the apartment, with guns drawn and see a laptop on the coffee table, Liz notices the hard drive attached and she puts it in her pocket. Suddenly they hear a noise from another room, Andropov has climbed out the window via the fire escape and hits the street, then takes off in his car. Tom and Liz go on a high-speed chase, that ends with Andropov getting killed by gunmen from the Cabal.
Red’s gathered eleven of whom he labels the best investigative reporters on the planet and gives them each a copy of the Fulcrum. He tells then to study it, investigate it and report it, once they’ve verified its veracity. He says that any of them that publish stories will become targets of the Cabal. However in the end the truth will come out.
Back at Tom’s boat, she takes a look at the hard drive and quickly realizes she’s found a treasure trove of documents that implicate the Cabal and Tom Connolly. The files even include Cooper’s medical records, as his doctor works for the Cabal. She calls Cooper and tells him they need to meet, she has information about his doctor.
Harold heads to his doctor’s office and tells the patient meeting with him to get out, then he grabs the doctor around the neck and tells him to let him know what kind of monkey business he’s pulled on Cooper. The doctor’s ready to wet himself and tells Harold they threatened his family and there wasn’t any clinical trial. He then informs Cooper, that the tests were falsified and he doesn’t have cancer. Andropov was supplying pills to make Harold feel sick, then altered the compound to make him feel better again. He says to Harold that he’s in perfect health.
Harold goes to confront Connolly, who tells Cooper he’s got a lot of stones showing up. Cooper takes him into a room and Keen appears, then tells Connolly he best not call his security team until he hears what they have to say. Cooper then tells Tom, that the doctor taped all their conversations and the tapes prove that Connolly blackmailed the doctor.
Liz then tells him he’s going to make this go away, he’s to exonerate her, drop any charges against Harold and Charlene and tell the Director to leave Reddington alone. He laughs and says why would he do that and Cooper says he’ll give the tapes to the Bureau or a Federal judge. Connolly says that Harold’s got no idea how deep and wide the Cabal’s river of influence is.
He then says that Keen and Cooper are heading to Federal prison, Samar Navabi’s to be extradited to Iran, where she’ll stand trial for killing an official. Reddington will get tried for treason and executed, Ressler’s Oxy addiction will get him drummed out of the Bureau. He’s even got things planned for Aram and Charlene.
Lizzie pulls out her pistol and aims it at Connolly, he laughs again and says he’s just a cog in a very big machine. If she kills him, they’ll put someone else in power who’s equally influential, they just won’t know their identity. Harold tells Liz to put the gun down, that if she shoots Connolly, they’ll get her for sure. She looks disoriented and then fires off a couple of shots into Connolly’s chest, killing him immediately. She suddenly remembers herself at four pulling the trigger of a gun, then runs out of the building.
Lizzie’s on the street when she gets a call from Ressler, pleading with her to turn herself in. He says he’ll help her any way he can, but she shot the United States Attorney General. She hangs up on Donald and calls Reddington, she tells him she killed Connolly and he tells her he knows and he’ll soon be there to pick her up.
Red and Dembe embrace, as Dembe won’t be making the trip with them. When he leaves the pair sit down and she tells Red she remembers the night of the fire and remembers that she shot and killed her father. He was hurting her mother and her pistol fell to the floor. The little girl picked it up and then shot her father.
She tells Red he truly is her sin-eater, he says he failed though, as he never wanted her to be like him. They are then picked up by a white SUV and driven away. We watch Harold taken into custody, Tom Keen leave the States on his boat and Ressler putting up a new wanted poster. Elizabeth Keen’s now on the Bureau’s ten most wanted list.
