The Blacklist: Season 8 Episode 4 Preview & Recap

Previously on ‘The Blacklist’ as Raymond Reddington sees the body of Katarina Rostova getting wrapped up by his team of cleaners, a stroke of doubt bothers him. He asks aloud to Dembe whether killing her was a mistake or not. Hearing this, Dembe says that though the act of killing her was wrong, it wasn’t a mistake. Slow claps, please! The distinction between what is right and what is wrong is proved by Dembe through a different lens here. He feels that whatever choice he made was subjective and would invite different opinions from different people. So for him, he is ethically right.

Elizabeth is mad at Reddington because he killed her mother mercilessly even when she had warned him not to. So maybe now she will initiate revenge against him by killing his father. Eventually, we get to know that Liz’s choice of weapon for her revenge plan is stolen explosives that turn out to be somewhat weird. She would have made a choice of such weapons over which she could have her control.

Explosives are basically for people who have got nothing to lose. But here, in Liz’s case, she got a hell of things at stake. She has friends she cares about, the fear of her freedom being snatched if she ends up in prison, and most importantly, her daughter. Then we see Liz packing up her clothes, her fake passport, and a bunch of cash in a motel which she uses as a hideout. There she finds a voicemail from Katarina while she was in her final moments before Red killed her. Liz, on hearing this, is now confident that she has the evidence to prove that Red indeed killed her mother.

Megan Boone as Elizabeth “Liz” Keen

She walks into the Post Office like she didn’t recently commit a crime by casually kidnapping her grandfather and tells Cooper that she has enough evidence to convict Red of murdering Katarina. She holds an argument with him regarding Katarina’s murder, and the next moment we see her luring Aram away and getting her hands on 16 ounces of Semtex explosive, and walking out of the Post Office confidently. As the episode proceeds, a quick point crosses our minds. We’ve seen Liz being mad at Red, we’ve seen her wanting to get him arrested, we’ve seen her turning against him, but did we ever see her wanting to kill him? Liz calls up Red, and for a moment or two, it seems like she is actually willing to hear his side of the story and his reason for killing Katarina as Cooper has previously insisted her to hear him out.

Liz arrives at Dom’s house to spread his ashes in a nearby lake and to also to hear Red out, but the next moment what we know is, she has rigged the passenger side of the car with the explosives. She then invites Red to ride in her car to the lake. Before he can open the door and get rid of the explosives, he collapses against the car and begins coughing blood all over the window. Dembe rushes him immediately to a nearby hospital, and Cooper arrives to provide protection on the floor he’s admitted on. Liz feels that now her hopes of revenge murdering Red has been crushed until she comes up with a wider plan of exploding him in front of her FBI colleagues.

Promotional poster of the show

We come around an emotional content in the episode where Liz had previously said that she needs fewer men in her life who are always up to tell her what is right for her. Instead, she needs more women who trust her and are ready to stand by her. With see her thoughts being executed in real life when she approaches Essie with the hope that she might help her. She lets her know the plan even when she doesn’t know her completely and has very less reason to trust her. But she picks up the route of manipulating her in a false fear that Red might eventually come after her and put her life to an end.

The plan that the ladies come up with is to create some chaos inside the guarded wing hospital wing where Reddington is admitted so that Essie could slip into the wing and plant a bomb under his bed. Liz calls up the U.S Marshals that Raymond Reddington, the escapee, is admitted to the hospital. This creates enough distraction for Cooper and his guarding colleagues as now they’ve got to explain why as FBI agents, they’re protecting the most wanted man in the criminal list.

Amir Arison as Aram Mojtabai

Now for Reddington’s security team, Essie just has to tell them the truth. She arrives at the hospital and tells them that Elizabeth is trying to murder Reddington, and they let her into his ward, where she tells Dembe that Elizabeth showed up at his house and told her about her plans of putting an end to Red’s life because he killed his mother. All the men walk out to find her, and now Essie is all alone, and she is doing what she has been instructed. As she walks out of the room, the bomb begins beeping, and while the nurses and Ressler walk in to check on Red, he finds out the bomb and throws the bomb far in the sky.

While Liz is desperate to know about what happened in the hospital ward, she calls Aram, who tells her he’s is well aware of the fact that she stole his requisition form and now he is under investigation for attempted murder. The moment she hears ‘attempted’ she chokes out, realizing that her plan has clearly failed. She asks if Ressler is alright, but Aram says that he would bear any witness for her crime and promises her that the next time she meets him, she’ll be under arrest. Liz calls up Red and warns him of being killed by her hands because he is the one who taught Elizabeth to think like a criminal.

She assures Essie that they would always be one step ahead of him and the entire FBI team because she has learned it from the criminal himself. The declaration, however, comes with a weird statement of being too confident because Elizabeth’s two failed attempts have got two of her best friends on the line of danger, while putting one of them under suspect for attempted murder, she nearly got the second one killed.

The episode was really important from some perspective because we saw two murder attempts against Reddington and how the tables were turned towards Elizabeth herself. She landed her friends in trouble while Red was unconscious and uninvolved in the whole process of saving himself. Imagine what it would be like for Elizabeth when Red wakes up and initiates a plan to save himself? She has, however, been put on the number one slot of the Blacklisters by Cooper and Red. So what is supposed to happen now?

Well, we’ll come to know about it eventually as the show proceeds and as we get to witness new episodes coming our way. The fourth episode of the season is scheduled to air on 29 January 2021 on NBC. ‘The Blacklist’ is also available on Netflix for online streaming, so if you’re missed any previous episode or season, don’t forget to check it out there.

Read: The Blacklist Season 8: Release Date, Cast, and Trailer