Last night’s new episode, “Ilyas Surkov’ was another enjoyable installment, potentially setting up some big revelations for the rest of the season. The promotion for “the death of one of our own” in “Ilyas Surkov” was a misdirection, as most of us thought. No one new died, but Liz did discover the death of doctor Nik, as police found his body in an empty field.
Of course Liz storms over to Red, at first accusing him of causing Nik’s death until he convinced her that he had absolutely nothing to do with it. He did however, offer to do everything he could to figure out who had killed Nik, which puts Tom in a very interesting position.
Red’s investigation into Nik’s death will eventually lead him to the suitcase…and to Tom. Red actually found out for sure that Tom was involved in the suitcase ordeal toward the end of “Ilyas Surkov” when he called one of the numbers on Nik’s cellphone and Tom answered. This really surprised me, as I thought it would be a while longer before Red had absolute proof that Tom was the one to whom Kate had entrusted the suitcase.
Red is visibly shaken when he hears Tom’s voice on the other side of the phone, and Tom knows he made a mistake by answering the call. Which was also a moment that really surprised me. Why would Tom answer a call from the phone of someone he knows is dead without even trying to disguise his voice? You would think he would have just let it ring and tried to track down whoever called him later.
Anyway, Red now knows for sure that Tom is the one who had the suitcase. I don’t however, think that this is actually going to be a bad thing for Tom. Someone has been coming after whoever has the suitcase and trying to kill them, and it’s not Red. There’s a third unknown adversary in the mix, and Red now knowing that Tom is involved might actually be the thing that saves his life.
My guess is that the unknown man who killed Nik will come after Tom, and Red will be the one who keeps him from getting killed. The premonitions that Tom has been having are almost certainly flash forwards, showing the confrontation between Tom and the unknown killer, leaving Tom seriously injured with Red coming in to save him at the last minute.
The way that the flash forwards were edited seemed to be designed to make the viewer think that Red was coming to kill Tom, but I predict that it’s going to be the exact opposite.
The blacklister in “Ilyas Surkov” this week was somewhat uninspiring, but it did give us the chance to see the task force working together on foreign soil. Their investigation of a terrorist named “Ilyas Surkov” lead them to England, where they ran into a rival CIA task force. It turned out that everyone on the task force had been fooled into thinking that they were taking down Ilyas Surkov (who was actually dead), when they were really doing a cover up mission for the CIA.
Next week’s episode “No. 5” actually focuses on Cooper (for maybe the first time ever) as with the help of Red he goes rogue to save the life of a friend who’s missing. Finally we’re getting to explore a character who is often pushed into the background!
Check out the promo for “No. 5” and I’ll see you all back here next week!
The Blacklist airs Wednesdays at 8/9c on NBC.
