Shortly after Raymond Reddington has escaped execution by lethal injection with lit’rally 10 seconds to spare, he explains to his almost-executioner, “People make their own luck, some more than others — I make a prodigious amount.” Later, though, he tells returning Blacklister Bastien Moreau that the best cons are something more akin to a magic trick: They create the illusion of luck.
And Red concocting a weeks-long, globe-spanning plan — while in prison, mind you — for the President of the United States to be forced into granting him clemency even though the President of the United States is the very person who stands to lose the most from that clemency? Well, we’ll just have to chalk that up to the magic of Raymond Reddington. And thank goodness this magician revealed his trick….
Because personally, I’ve been operating under a cloud of humbling confusion over the last six episodes or so: knowing that Red was piecing a plan together, but also having trouble keeping up with just how those pieces were fitting together. A little more sense was made of that last week when Ava Ziegler died by way of quite a few of the most recent Backlisters, all working with the assassin Bastien Moreau, who, as it turns out, has been employed by the, uh, top Justice Department official of the United States, Anna McMahan.
But to really understand this entire plot, Friday’s episode called for a bit of unabashed exposition ’round the ol’ Post Office hearth. And you know what? I’m fine with that if it means I don’t feel so dumb anymore. So before we get to Red escaping death and uncovering a plot against the United States seemingly headed up by the United States, let’s go over how we got here. It all started with Bastien Moreau, a.k.a. the Corsican, the assassin the FBI stopped from bombing the U.N. Because Moreau escaped, Red came to understand that if he found Moreau and figured out who he was trying to kill inside the U.N., he might also uncover a conspiracy big enough to earn him clemency.
Red then requested a competency evaluation so he could be transferred to the federal mental institution that contained Atticus Rodrick, one of the few known associates of Moreau. In a brief window of mental clarity, Rodrick whispered “General Shiro” to Red, which eventually led to Dr. Nikola, the guy who was infesting people’s bodies with beetles and ultimately haunting my dreams forever and ever. In Nikola’s files, Dembe discovered that he’d sent his bug toxin to an address in London belonging to Moreau. Inside that apartment, Dembe found files that showed Moreau wired $5 million to the Cryptobanker. And in the last episode, we found out that money was then laundered to Jonas Kruger in exchange for giving Moreau his credentials to gain access to Ava Ziegler’s hotel room, wheeeeeere…
[pause for breath]
He beetle-juiced her (honestly don’t know how I’ve made it this far without using that pun), so that Ziegler died an untraceable death before she could tell Senator Wade about the impending attack on America.
Well, an almost untraceable death. Red figured out — once again, from inside prison — who killed Ziegler and how he did it. The only question left is why.
BASTIEN MOREAU, NO. 20: CONCLUSION
And the why matters! Because in the opening moments of Friday’s episode, Cooper threatens the president with exposing how he failed to prevent the death of Germany’s top intelligence officer until he finally relents and grants Reddington a stay of execution in exchange for finding her assassin. So yes, Reddington does narrowly escape death, but Anna McMahan makes sure Red stands very little chance of actually finding the assassin during his stay. He’s only granted 48 hours, he has to do it in secret because the public believes he’s still in prison, and he has to wear an ankle monitor to track his every move. If he flees or even tampers with the ankle monitor, Cooper gets charged with aiding and abetting a criminal.
No way in hell would Red put Cooper, his stone-cold savior, at risk. But he’s also quite chill about telling the Task Force that he has no idea what this conspiracy against America is, he just knows it exists and basically bluffed his way off death row. He is sure, however, that Moreau is the final piece of the puzzle. So the Task Force sets about figuring out who it was Moreau failed to kill at the U.N., knowing that’s probably the person who uncovered the mystery-conspiracy, and also the person Moreau will still be going after. (Recap continues on the next page)
James Spader returns as Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington, a mastermind criminal who teams up with the FBI.
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