ArthouseBlacklistwouldn’t have the same impact if they rolled the genre out all the time.
These black-and-white flashback episodes are a once-every-few-seasons kind of affair.
Sorry, let me rephrase that: a two-part once-in-a-series kind of affair.
Lotte Verbeek on ‘The Blacklist’.Sony Pictures Television
This penultimate episode of season 8 is titled “Nachalo,” which meansbeginningin Russian.
Next week’s season finale is “Konets”:the end.
The interior looks like your fairly average criminal workplace inside a Cold War-era bunker.
People are typing, shuffling papers, moving boxes around.
But it’s that last bit Liz has the most trouble with.
She doesn’t want any part in Red’s enterprise, or his alleged protection.
And this is where things get interesting.
But it doesn’t really matter.
I guess that’s how Liz feels all the time.
“The truth, Masha, is that you were conceived as part of a lie.”
THE O.G.
(In fact, he looks a little like Ressler.)
But suddenly he’s standing across from present-day Elizabeth.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he whispers.
It’s all very “Harry Potter has come to die”/Resurrection Stone vibes, and it isworking.
And then they conceived a daughter of their own, Masha.
It’s going to be important later.
But she also continued spying on the U.S. government through him, and eventually he figured it out.
But once he did, he was in over his head.
Seeking to protect her mother, little Masha picks up a gun and shoots her father.
She was the one who attempted to have Masha’s memory erased.
Liz, nee Masha, went to live with Sam as her mother disappeared from her life for good.
“I made a promise the day you were born to protect you,” Katarina tells Liz.
Enter the events of “Rassvet,” as Katarina reaches out to Ilya Koslov to help her disappear.
It’s going to be important later.)
If not, it’s about time to start.)
Unbeknown to her, Tatiana’s assignment was a death sentencebut she didn’t die.
But Liz still doesn’t understand why her mother would have to hide fromher.
Why would her mother have to abandonher?
Liz sounds so small when she pleads with Katarina: “You’re nothere.”
But before she tells LizwhoRaymond Reddington is, she needs to tell herwhyhe is.
Katarina would be blamed, but it wouldn’t matter: “Because she was already gone.”
To which, Liz counters: “Okay, now we have thewhyI want thewho.
And where haveyougone?”
But Liz isn’t going down without a fight (or more likely, without answers).
And I guess that puts us smack-dab in the middle of this story.
See you back here next week for the end.
(Video courtesy of NBC)
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