So, I have a lot of feelings about the events that took place in “Whitehall,” and almost all of them are about Scottie. The decisions that she has made throughout this entire series have been pretty questionable. but she reached a whole new level tonight. Instead of believing Tom when he told her he had no idea who Whitehall was or what was going on, she sends him to Solomon to have the information beaten out of him. Anyone could see that Tom was telling the truth and was completely in the dark about everything going on between Scottie and Howard.
He was almost in tears. and you could read the confusion all over his face. For being a highly trained agent and assassin, Tom is awful at hiding his emotions, and the fact that Scottie couldn’t read him and see that he was telling the truth immediately shows how incredibly out of touch she is. I would understand if she doesn’t trust him anymore and decided to maybe keep him contained until she could get everything under control, but having Solomon interrogate him? That’s the fastest way to get someone to never trust you in your entire life that I’ve ever seen.
Hey, Tom honey, I want you to believe that my husband is crazy, and I’m the one you should trust and support, but I’m going to send you down to the basement and have my deadliest agent hit you repeatedly in the face with a sock full of pool balls until you pass out….wait, why are you escaping and threatening to shoot me and siding with my husband? What did I do wrong?
I honestly have no idea where Scottie is getting her parenting ideas from, but she has done an amazing job at making Tom think she really is an evil criminal, and I think the entire audience as well. As it stands right now, I completely believe Howard’s story that Scottie tried to kill him and has some major plot against U.S. national security, in league with Russia or not. I mean she was okay with ordering her own son to be interrogated, so it’s entirely plausible that she tried to kill her own husband.
Just to clarify, I don’t completely trust Howard either. The way that he was avoiding telling Tom who Whitehall was, continuing to keep him in the dark about most of the situation, and trying to get rid of Tom before he went in to get Whitehall is really suspicious. If he was working completely with Tom and didn’t have something else up his sleeve, wouldn’t he just come clean and tell him everything?
Tom @ his parents throughout this whole series:
The Blacklist and Redemption both love their plot twists, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Howard turns out to have been the bad guy all along, but it would go against the development of his character in the show that they have so meticulously built, and I would be more than a little disappointed if they used such a worn out plot device to end the story they’ve been building on for seven episodes.
More and more it seems like the finale might really be the end of Tom Keen. There was so much foreshadowing of Tom’s death in “Whitehall”, mainly through his conversations with Liz that it seems almost impossible that he’s getting out of this alive. For example:
“Her first steps God, I don’t want to miss those. I feel like I missed too much already.”
“I just have one more job to do, and then I’m coming home.”
“This is my fight. Just give Agnes a big kiss for me.
Liz: “How about you give her a kiss when you get done with this?”
Tom: “I’m looking forward to that.”
These exchanges are incredibly ominous. Every time he talks about Agnes and Liz, it seems like he’s saying his goodbyes, and the writers are preparing us for his death. Which would be a logical ending for Tom’s character, as he has almost solved the mystery of his past, and the title of the series is “Redemption”. A lot of the time, major characters will get a redemption arch and there will be a lot of time spent on their character before their death. It seems like this is exactly what they’re doing with Tom.
I could be wrong, but the feeling I have right now is that Tom Keen is not long for this world and we are going to be hit with an absolutely devastating and heartbreaking finale, with the aftermath being dealt with when the Blacklist returns in two weeks.
Check out the trailer for “Whitehall: Conclusion” below, and start preparing yourself now, because next Thursday is going to be intense.
The Blacklist: Redemption concludes next Thursday at 10/9c on NBC.