It might not be very confidence-inducing to hear your trusty Blacklist recapper say that she couldn’t be any more confused about what’s to come after the end of this episode — but here we are.
As is Elizabeth Keen! So I have a great amount of empathy for how she must be feeling in this episode as Reddington tells her over and over that she’s about to get all the answers she’s been begging to hear for years, only to then put her in a car, fly her to Latvia, drive her out to the middle of nowhere, and start talking about how an entire sophisticated intelligence network was erected decades ago with the sole purpose of keeping her safe when, as far as she knows, she has been running for her life for the last eight-ish years.
We’ve heard Reddington assure Liz that it was finally time to give her the answers she seeks before, after which he’s done everything from giving her itty-bitty answers that don’t really matter to flat-out lying about being Ilya Koslov.
But Liz is none too keen to keep that temporary partnership with Reddington alive, so the moment they make it out through an underground tunnel into a convenience store, she slips outside and tells a cop that the man wearing a fedora has a gun, giving her time to escape.
Which leads to an extremely gratifying sequence wherein Elizabeth Keen is willingly marched into the Post Office’s nifty titanium gold alloy Box, just as Raymond Reddington once was.
While Liz makes her one allotted phone call to Ressler, who’s really not doing well in the hospital, a commando helicopter descends on the Post Office, blows through the roof above the Box, attaches a bunch of hooks and loops to said helicopter and said Box, and yanks the entire thing right out of there, whipping Liz through the air to whereabouts unknown.
Edna tells Reddington she’s implanted a tracking chip in the back of Page’s neck so that when he’s eventually cut loose and makes his way to Townsend, he will lead Reddington right to Townsend as well.
While straight-up padlocking Liz into a stable, Reddington tells her he hopes she’ll think of her stay as more of a guest than a prisoner.
Liz will turn on the chip to lead Townsend to Reddington once she knows that Townsend has accepted her terms. And she’ll know that because Page is to tell Townsend to book a room at the Golden Leaf Hotel under the name Margaret French, and if that room is booked when Liz calls, she’ll know their deal is on.
If you’re wondering how Liz will get a phone from her stable-prison, you’ll soon find out that it’s because Liz asks to call and make arrangements for Agnes’ care, and Dembe and Red just… fork over a cell phone and let her step away to make a private call.
And even though Reddington doesn’t suspect the reality of the phone call Liz just made in front of him, he knows that she must have helped Page escape, and therefore that they have to change their location.
Whichever it is, we’ll never know because Reddington’s car ride to answers quickly turns into a plane ride to answers, and Townsend can only watch as Reddington flies right over him.
In the field is what appears to be the entryway to a large bunker, which Reddington describes as the epicenter: “I brought you here because this is where it all started.” And just when Liz is starting to get annoyed with Reddington talking in circles, he says he’ll start with a question she already knows the answer to: the identity of N13.
“You need to forget what you think you know,” Reddington says, which seems like apt advice when it comes to anything Liz believes about her mother.