The Blacklist Recap: Karakurt (Season 2 Episode 21)

Remember how I’ve often said that The Blacklist provides more questions than answers with its episodes?

For every answer we get, we – as the audience – are usually left with about ten more questions to ponder. As the second season of the NBC series draws to a close, however, we’re being thrown answer upon answer and the stakes have never been higher for our characters as a result. “Karakurt” is the perfect penultimate episode for this season as it propels us into the finale.

Before we talk about “Karakurt,” let’s briefly recap what happened in last week’s “Quon Zhang”: In an episode filled with mythology and curses and ghosts (well, kind of), our blacklister of the week was atypical – a smuggler desperate to prevent curses from occurring by smuggling Chinese-American women from America to China to be buried back there.

But that’s not really the most important part (I mean, Quon Zhang mentions that Liz is cursed, so maybe that IS the most important part) of this episode: with Liz recently taunting her enemies by possessing the Fulcrum and all its secrets, she’s finding herself in more than a little bit of hot water with aforementioned enemies. The Cabal is anxious and Tom Connolley is on the inside for them at the FBI, threatening Cooper and his family unless he follows his instructions. I knew I hated Tom for a reason, you guys.

But even more important than all of this is what Liz learns. She finds a photograph of her in Red’s apartment, if you’ll recall, and begins to try and find answers as to who the woman in the photograph was. It’s her mother, but she wants a name and she enlists Tom/whatever his actual name is for help once Tom recognizes the ring on her mother’s finger as a Russian one.

All of this leads to Tom and Liz discovering that their inquiries to Tom’s Russian connections have already been cut off at the source by Red. So Liz does what she does best – demand answers. And Red finally gives them to her. Sort of. Her mother was a Russian KGB agent. Both of her parents were in foreign intelligence. Liz was born in Moscow. Red was the one to block her memory of the fire.

So that brings us all the way back to “Karakurt,” where Liz is still desperate to know more about her mother and that desperation eventually causes her to become the FBI’s number one target. This episode focuses a lot on the Cabal who are… well, doing a lot of legwork to ensure that Liz is destroyed. They bring a Russian assassin to the United States (via last week’s blacklist smuggler, if you’ll recall) and with him, a deadly virus. Here’s the reason that the Russian was smuggled into the United States to begin with: it’ll be the perfect catalyst for a second Cold War. Oh, and it was all orchestrated by the Cabal. Of course!

Meanwhile, in all of the terrorism, Liz is still concerned with finding out who her mother was and what happened to her. So when Ressler and Liz talk to the CIA about Russia and you know, a credible terrorist threat, she also happens to bring up the photograph of her mother: Katarina Rastova. A really helpful, nice CIA agent tells Liz that Katarina Rastova is well-known as a myth. He says that she’s “an amalgamation of half a dozen unknown female Soviet operatives.”

Still, he promises that if she sends him the photograph, he’ll see what he can find. Liz actually confides in Ressler, telling him that Reddington had a photograph of her and her mother in his apartment and she’s learned her name. She literally stops just short of telling him that her mother was a KGB agent, which would have aided her in what happens toward the end of the episode.

Unfortunately, friendly CIA agent and all the others in that sector are blown up when an IED created by Karakurt explodes just as Liz and Ressler barely escape. After that, skeevy Tom Connolley – who, you’ll recall, is working for the Cabal (you know, the people who orchestrated the act of terrorism and who Cooper knows is blackmailing him) – tells Cooper to back off the terrorist investigation and give Ressler and Liz a fake lead.

Once Cooper’s wife is threatened, he does as he’s told and this leads Ressler and Liz to Union Station. It’s weird, however, when – at the station – Liz finds a man dressed like Karakurt and gets knocked out by him. Nevertheless, the team plunges forward with the investigation and they discover more about the virus that is planning to be unleashed on a senator at a memorial service for the victims of the CIA bombing. And if that happens… well, WAR happens on Russia.

Meanwhile, Cooper asks for Red’s help in dealing with Connolley and Red offers a suggestion: make him squirm by letting him know that they have the Cabal’s plans all figured out. This does rattle Connolley for a moment… but then not so much.

The “not so much” is because the Cabal’s plan is set in motion. You see, Ressler and Liz rush to the memorial to try and prevent Karakurt from touching the senator and igniting another war (and, I mean, also preventing someone from being assassinated). And Liz manages to stop the senator from touching Karakurt’s hand just in the nick of time. But unfortunately, when they’re in the getaway FBI vehicle, the senator begins convulsing and dying quickly, which makes no sense because he didn’t touch the man with the virus.

As the FBI is interrogating Karakurt, across town, Red is conversing with his own informant and learns – to his horror – that his informant friend was contacted and questioned by the Cabal. Red freezes and you can see him begin to panic as he asked what the men wanted to know. Once the informant reveals that they asked about Katarina Rastova and her daughter, Red immediately calls Liz.

Because no, Karakurt wasn’t the one to infect the senator. SHE was. When she was hit by the man and knocked out at Union Station, she became a carrier of the virus. And the Cabal knows now that she’s the daughter of a Russian KGB spy. They know she has the knowledge of the Fulcrum. And they’re out to destroy her by making her look like a Russian spy who just tried to assassinate a U.S. senator.

The final moments of the episode include a panic-stricken Liz hiding around a corner from where Connolley and his cronies just stormed into The Post Office with Red’s ominous voice on the other line of the phone warning her to get out of there as quickly as she possibly can.

The hashtag which we all tweeted as the episode ended was: #RunLizzieRun. And I seriously hope she can run fast, because the people who are coming for her will clearly stop at nothing until she’s dead or silenced forever.

Other things:

• There was a Tom story and here’s the deal: I don’t really like Tom (or whatever his actual name is these days) and I don’t like Tom and Liz together. But it looks like he’ll be around next week to help Liz out of her – really, really, REALLY big – problem as she’s on the run. That said, I kind of do wonder if all this talk of Tom’s boat means he and Liz will end up sailing away from all of their problems at the end of the season.
• Per the trailer for next week’s finale, Liz tells Ressler that if he’s going to arrest her, he has to do it now. I’m interested to see how Samar, Aram, Cooper, and Ressler all handle the whole “Liz is a terrorist and spy” thing that Connolley and the Cabal throw at them. I have a distinct feeling that Ressler will be protecting Liz. I hope everyone else follows suit and that no one gets hurt in the process.
• Red: “The boy knows more than doodle.”
• Sometimes I realize that 90% of the reason I watch The Blacklist is to listen to James Spader talk and watch him wield guns and wax poetic while wearing a fedora. I think I’m okay with this revelation.
• When Liz was knocked down at Union Station, Ressler did a hilariously adorable slide to make sure she was okay. Also solidifying why I think he’ll be protecting her next week.

• Red: “What good are ethics if you’re not alive to live by them?”
• Red: “If I had bad intentions for this visit, you’d know by now.”

Who’s ready to see what happens in The Blacklist’s season two finale? I know I’m anxious now that Elizabeth Keen is #1 on the FBI’s most-wanted list, apparently. Let us know your thoughts, too!

The Blacklist airs Thursdays at 9/8c on NBC.

Jennifer Stasak

Jennifer is a writer living in Central Florida. Her work has been previously published in The Anemone Sidecar, Epiphany Magazine, Bone Parade, and Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, among others. She currently serves as an Assistant Editor for Narrative Magazine, and this marks the fourth literary journal she has served alongside. Jennifer's additionally passionate about television and blogs about it weekly at her website Just About Write. When she's not writing, Jennifer enjoys binge-watching shows on Netflix, distance-running, and volunteering.