Blacklist Season 3 recap
If you sat down on your couch at 9 pm Thursday night and changed the channel to NBC, no one would blame you for wondering aloud, “What show is this?” Because even though the program that aired for the next hour did star James Spader, and it was sandwiched between new installments of Strong and Game of Silence, in no way did it resemble a regular episode of The Blacklist. And that, of course, is because it wasn’t a regular episode of The Blacklist. Save for Red and his freakishly eloquent monologues, this week’s outing didn’t feature any of the usual characters or plots we’ve come to expect from the NBC drama — with Liz’s absence naturally being the most glaring of all. In the first episode since Megan Boone’s protagonist was seemingly killed off, we took a deep dive into Red’s tortured mind — and boy, was it trippy. Here’s how it all went down: A few days after Liz died from complications during childbirth, Red takes a cab to Cape May, N.J., where it seems he’ll do little more than decompress and grieve. But just as he makes himself comfortable in a beach chair looking out at the waves, he spies a beautiful red-haired woman near the water, who sheds her coat and locket before throwing herself into the waves in a suicide attempt. Red — despite the many, many layers he’s wearing — is able to rescue the woman from her near-drowning and takes her back to the beachfront house he’s squatting in… and the 24-ish hours that follow Red’s act of heroism are some of the most bizarre and mysterious that The Blacklist has ever produced. (And if you’ve seen even one episode of the show before, you know that’s saying something.) Eventually, the men chasing our unnamed beauty make their way to the beach house, and in a massively entertaining but super-tense sequence, Red and the woman take out the hitmen, one by one. A few hours later, as Red is preparing to flee the scene of the crime with his anonymous companion in tow, he realizes he can’t find her anywhere in the house. Instead, he discovers that she’s back on the beach, preparing to once again throw herself into the water. For the second time this episode, Red, in all his three-piece-suited glory, runs across the sand in an attempt to save the woman, but by the time he reaches the water, she’s gone. And I don’t mean dead — she’s really gone. Vanished. As if she were never there in the first place. Looking for some answers, Red approaches an older man sweeping his metal detector across the beach… but when he asks the stranger if he recently saw a woman dive into the water, the man replies that Red is the only other sign of human life that he’s seen on the beach in two weeks. If you’ve got a strong radar for plot twists, or you’ve watched The Sixth Sense a bunch of times, you may have seen this next part coming: As Red looks back on his last 24 hours, he realizes that it was all in his head — there never was a woman, no assassins. Every conversation he had with Anonymous was held with himself. He was the one playing the beach house’s piano. He prepared dinner and drew a bath for… no one. (And this is officially the saddest episode recap I’ve ever written.) But just as Red seems willing to accept his day-long hallucinations, the man with the metal detector discovers a locket buried in the sand — the same locket that Red’s “acquaintance” had been wearing. He buys it from the man and washes off the dirt, revealing an inscription on the necklace that he seems to recognize. And just then, the red-headed woman appears before Red once more — and not only has Red known her all along, but she is Katarina Rostova, Liz’s biological mother. “You had no choice. It was me or Masha,” Katarina says, stroking Red’s face. “But you did save me. Through her.” So, that monologue Red gave earlier in the episode, about the heartbreaking choice between saving a woman and saving her baby? It seems that doesn’t just apply to Liz and baby Agnes, after all. With that in mind, Red runs off the beach, announcing that there’s someone he needs to see. OK, Blacklist fans, it’s your turn. What did you think of the show’s first Liz-less episode? Drop your reactions in a comment below.
Biggest TV Deaths of 2016
Warning: The following post contains major spoilers for the Season 3 finale of The Blacklist. If you have yet to watch the episode, turn back now. Step aside, Jon Snow. Your resurrection is yesterday’s news. Confirming what many fans of The Blacklist have suspected since the pivotal April 14 episode, in which Liz Keen died from complications during childbirth, Thursday’s Season 3 finale revealed that Megan Boone’s protagonist is, in fact, alive — and Tom has been in on it the whole time. Picking up where last week’s installment left off, the season ender found Red using every resource in his arsenal to track down and kill Alexander Kirk, the man responsible for ruining Liz and Tom’s wedding day, and subsequently ending Liz’s life. But just as Red closed in on his longtime nemesis, Tom completely upended Red’s plan for revenge. With the help of Mr. Kaplan — who Red was devastated to learn had betrayed him — Tom and baby Agnes hopped on a plane to Cuba, where they met up with a very-much-alive Liz. Of course, even when she’s hundreds of miles away from Red, Liz isn’t out of danger. (Is she ever?) In the episode’s final moments, Tom returned to Liz’s apartment, expecting to see his fiancée there… only to discover that she was gone, seemingly taken by force — a result of Alexander Kirk’s henchmen tailing Tom and Agnes all the way to Cuba. (D’oh!) Meanwhile, Red and Mr. Kaplan boarded their own flight to Cuba — knowing full well that they’re working on borrowed time to rescue Tom, Liz and Agnes from Kirk’s clutches — which gave Red’s traitor an opportunity to explain the hows and whys of Liz’s faked death. But upon arriving at Liz’s home in Cuba, hoping to take down Kirk and his associates, Red and Mr. Kaplan discovered the same unfortunate scene that Tom saw earlier: broken glass everywhere, clear signs of struggle and all signs pointing to Liz’s abduction. (By that point, Tom and Agnes had also been taken by one of Kirk’s men, after he and Tom tussled in the apartment.) The good news? Even though Red, Tom and Mr. Kaplan have no idea where Liz is, the home audience learned that (A) she’s alive, and (B) Kirk had taken her to an undisclosed location, where he dropped a major bombshell: Though he currently calls himself Alexander Kirk, his real name is Constantine Rostov — and he’s Liz’s father. It should also be noted that, despite Liz’s mysterious whereabouts at the end of the finale, TVLine has confirmed that Boone will return as a series regular in the NBC drama’s fourth season this fall. We’ll give all of that a second to sink in. You good? Good. TVLine caught up with Ryan Eggold, the man behind Tom Keen, to unpack the eventful episodes that capped Season 3, especially the twisty season closer. Plus, Eggold dished as much as he could about the forthcoming Blacklist spinoff, Redemption — including a potential title change. TVLINE | Walk me through what these last few episodes were like on your end. Were you told from the get-go that Liz’s death was faked, or was her death — and resurrection — something you only learned when reading the scripts? The writers really didn’t want to tell us that she was going to come back, but I had so many questions, in terms of how to play certain scenes, and what knowledge I had and didn’t have. There were certain scenes that didn’t go far enough. I was like, “Jesus, if my wife just died, I would be more upset than this. I’d be breaking something or punching somebody or drinking myself into a stupor.” And finally, [series creator] Jon [Bokenkamp] was like, “All right, look, she’s not dead, man.” [Laughs] And he told me the plan and why Tom was underreacting, because he’s orchestrating this plan. And I was like, “Huzzah!”
TVLINE | And at the same time, you got to play Tom as an even bigger part of the story, especially with the introduction of Scottie. TVLINE | Let’s talk about the spinoff a little bit. At what point in the year did discussions for a spinoff begin, and when were you brought in as a potential star of that show? We’re going to get into this political bent. Scottie’s hiring spies like myself to influence governments, and [there are] empires rising and falling and the behind-the-scenes of that. I think that’s really timely, with Bernie Sanders and the concentration of wealth at the top, and corporations having all the power and influence on politics. If we get into a dramatized version of that world, where we are spies operating with those 1-percenters, that’s a really fun world that people want to see right now.
TVLINE | In Seasons 2 and 3 of The Blacklist, we’ve learned bits and pieces about Tom’s childhood and his lack of real parents. Were you shocked to learn that Scottie was his mom, or did you anticipate that that might be their relationship? TVLINE | Aside from the spinoff, can we expect to see you in Season 4 of The Blacklist, given how this finale ends? TVLINE | Any parting thoughts? TVLINE | I think you should go for it. TVLINE | I’m definitely going to include this in our Q&A, and I have a feeling you’ll get so many responses. That’s a wrap on Season 3, Blacklist fans. What did you think of the finale? Grade it in our poll below, then hit the comments with all of your thoughts — including spinoff title suggestions! |