Speaking of coming a long way, there’s agents Keen, Ressler and Navabi’s ill-advised mission to save Red at “The Factory.” Sadly for Ressler and Navabi, they get to sit out much of the episode as hostages. Liz, meanwhile, joins Red in his plan to upset Braxton’s scheme with two of his contacts, conveniently detained at “The Factory.” (Red released a third in order to shoot him in the head for a past slight, another great example of Red’s laugh-out-loud ghoulishness.) Eager to stop Braxton from accessing critical intelligence from a top secret database, Red and Liz overload the boiler and cut power to the facility, but that leaves a bit of time for the closest thing to a heart-to-heart Red gets, and the closest thing to answers The Blacklist has yet to give us.
So why is Liz so important? Because the Fulcrum can’t be retrieved for some reason without Special Agent Elizabeth Keen. Braxton doesn’t know that of course, which is the reason why Red didn’t want Liz to come along on this adventure because he’ll likely find out. We don’t go into too much detail because, hey, who wants answers to all those lingering questions after a year and a half, but it also seems like this Thursday’s conclusion, free from the need for Super Bowl levels of action, will dig deeper into Liz’s origin story. The fire, the scar, the Fulcrum, and Red’s turn to criminality are all tied together, and it seems we’ll get some insight into all that in the next episode.
But in the midst of everything that’s going on in “Luther Braxton,” we were allowed one instance of “Sincere Red.” Of course, the nature of the character and the way Spader plays him is supposed to make you doubt every word that’s coming out his mouth, but Red’s monologue about feeling like one of those fish that don’t have eyes because they live in total darkness, and whether or not he still might be able to perceive a shaft of light if there were to be one, seemed truly heartfelt. One gets the felling that Red is at the end of his rope, no matter how much he might try and compensate with his typical arrogance.
The chemistry between Red and Liz was also really spot on here, as for once they felt like a genuine team that needed each other as opposed to one mystery box that feeds into the other. As much fun as Spader can be on The Blacklist, he does often seem to be on his own show within a show compared to the other members of the cast. In “Luther Braxton” though, either because of the urgency of the situation or because of the excellence of the rest of the episode, the Liz and Red dynamic felt real and it felt natural.
The Blacklist finished the week with everyone’s fate in doubt as the air strike is carried out. Of course, I doubt anyone but Desmond the guard and a few of the bad guys will likely be found dead in the aftermath, but the explosive finale is symbolic of a propulsiveness I feel that the show has. The Blacklist may very well let us down with part 2 of “Luther Braxton,” and I almost expect it to, but part 1 was a whirlwind that had action, character development, and a few new hints at the bigger picture being revealed.
Welcome back, Red.