The Blacklist Episode 2.10 Luther Braxton: Conclusion

We pick up where the last episode left off: two raptors have just firebombed The Factory, per the CIA's directive. The blast has nearly destroyed the room where Ressler and Samar have been hanging from the ceiling by chains, allowing Ressler to get free, kill their captors and save Samar from strangling to death. Red revives to find himself alone, no Liz, no Braxton - but he does find a working shortwave radio. With all communications down, Cooper wants Goodson to send in the Coast Guard, but she insists the bombing never happened. If Cooper wants to press matters, he will be relieved of duty. Fully aware of this scenario, Red starts wiring up his shortwave, hoping to get a signal out before The Factory slips into the ocean and everyone on the rig drowns.

Liz wakes up on a medevac helicopter, which lands at a hospital outside Juno, Alaska. Luckily Aram has picked up the flight, so Cooper dispatches a TAC team that IDs Braxton, as he pushes Liz's gurney into a waiting vehicle. Aram taps all surveillance cameras within a one-block radius, just as Red's SOS signal comes through. Cooper tells Goodson that he's calling the Coast Guard whether she likes it or not. Red, Ressler and Samar are rescued, while Braxton has Liz waterboarded at the bottom of a drained pool enclosed in his Alaskan safe house. Looking for specific memories from childhood, Braxton is frustrated when the waterboarding fails to produce anything. Liz must have repressed these memories so deeply that she actually doesn't remember. But Braxton has an ace up his sleeve in the form of neurologist Selma Orchard, an expert on the tetL gene, and a chemically enhanced process called recovered extinction. Using this therapy, she once helped Braxton deal with unpleasant incidents from the first Gulf War. Now Braxton has kidnapped Orchard's young son Max to persuade her to use the inverse of this process, recovered memory (RM) therapy, to help Liz remember the trauma of her youth.

Having scored a phone off one of Braxton's dead men, Red calls, promising that when Braxton makes a mistake, he'll be there to say, "I told you so." Braxton announces his intention to find the answers he seeks in Liz's head, then crushes his phone. Red turns to Samar and orders her to look for known associates of Braxton with a background in neurology, and it's not long before Aram sends the crew off to hunt for Orchard. But how does Red know Braxton is searching for a memory Liz has no memory of...? Meanwhile, in a private club, the shadowy international cabal lays into The Director for the botched missile strike on The Factory, but he's not bothered. He's got a plausible cover story for the loss of life, and "people" working on procuring both Red and The Fulcrum.

Back at Braxton's safe house, Orchard is pumping Liz full of the risky pharmaceutical cocktail that, together with hypnotherapy, makes up RM therapy, which is kinda like lucid dreaming on steroids. Liz doesn't want to go back, but within moments she's sitting next to her four-year-old self in a closet when a man wearing a ruby ring, whom we'll call Ruby, hands her a live rabbit and an order to hush. They're hiding while a man and a woman argue. When another man joins the argument, we hear Ruby say, "We're dead. We're all dead." Both the rabbit and Little Lizzie scamper further into the closet until they emerge in a snowy Christmas tree lot. When Braxton hears Liz laughing, Orchard tells him that Liz is likely experiencing a tangent memory as her mind tries to replace a terrible memory with something good. But the past is turning dark, as Little Lizzie runs into the arms of a strange man, and then they're back in the closet with the rabbit, listening to the argument. When the woman says accusingly, "You abducted Masha," Liz asks Little Lizzie, "Who is Masha?" "You are," Little Lizzie replies, then warns Liz not to leave their closet; Daddy told them to stay put. Back in reality, Liz goes into V-tach, so Orchard injects her with Lidocaine to save her life. After an enormous gasp of breath, Liz's eyes pop open, and she says, "My father. My father was there."

Red gathers several of Braxton's business associates in a speakeasy to announce that their relationships with Luther have come to an end. When Braxton reaches out to one of them for help, they will contact Red, who will allow them to live. In fairly short order, a man named Foley comes forward. Braxton contacted him, asking for a wire transfer, and Foley is willing to sell this intel - for a price. Once Red makes a wire transfer of his own, Foley hands over the address of Braxton's safe house, and earns a beating from Red, just 'cause.

On a break, Liz tells Orchard that "the girl" has a secret, and yes, she knows that she is the girl. Orchard explains the girl likely represents Liz's subconscious, trying to embargo her memory of that night. Liz claims she has no recollection of her mother or father; all she knows is that her father gave her the burn scar on her hand. Orchard thinks the therapy is too dangerous to continue, but Liz is certain she'll be fine. She needs to find out the truth about the night of the fire for herself. Meanwhile, Braxton meets with The Director in a chapel, promising he'll deliver The Fulcrum by 9:00. And since the CIA tried to blow him up, Braxton is upping The Fulcrum's price tag by 10%. Red and Dembe intercept Braxton outside the chapel to demand Liz's whereabouts, and stuff him at gunpoint into the backseat of a Mercedes.

The RM therapy continues, with Orchard guiding Liz back to the closet - this time she's listening to the argument and reporting back. Ruby is arguing with the woman, who asks, "Where is The Fulcrum?" Just then Red bursts in and shoots the guard standing next to Orchard. Moments later he calls Ressler to arrange for the pickup of Orchard's son Max. Then he removes Liz's restraints, strokes her cheek and asks what Liz remembered. Does she know the location of The Fulcrum? Orchard admits Liz may have been close to remembering... With no firm assurance that Liz will be safe, Red takes Orchard's place by her side, asking the questions to guide her back into the past. He steers her away from the trauma, instructing her to focus on finding The Fulcrum. In her mind, Liz tries to see past Little Lizzie. We can't be sure what she sees, or if she sees anything at all - but we do hear a gun shot. As Red asks what's happening, Little Lizzie scampers back to the closet. Moments later, when smoke starts seeping under the door, Liz tells her younger self to scream as loud as she can. Someone opens the closet door, and takes Liz by the hand as she becomes one with her child self, leading her out of the closet through the fire. At that moment, Ressler and Samar burst in, guns drawn. Furious, Ressler demands Liz be freed from her reverie, but she stays with it. Carrying a stuffed rabbit, Liz moves through the fire, past Ruby, dying in a pool of his own blood, as three men exit a door. The burn scar sizzles up on her hand, and she stares at it until she returns to the present to tell Red, "You were there."

After being checked by paramedics, Red confirms that yes, he was there on the night of the fire. When she asks if he was with the people looking for The Fulcrum, he replies, "It's not that simple." Now Liz knows Red isn't in her life for the person she is, but because of The Fulcrum - an object. One thing she remembers is leaving her father dying on the floor of a burning house - and one thing she doesn't remember is the location of The Fulcrum. Furious with Red, Liz takes her leave, just as Orchard is reunited with her son.

Red sits in the dark, waiting. The Director enters his home office on the phone, promising he'll meet with Braxton within the hour, and contingencies regarding Reddington are on the table. It's not until The Director turns on the light that he spies Braxton's corpse hanging from a ceiling beam. After shaming The Director for hiring a dolt like Braxton in the first place, Red clarifies that neither he nor what he has are to be doubted. The Director promises that he and his colleagues won't hesitate to use every resource at their disposal to cripple Red... so Red invites The Director to call his bluff. Please.

Back at the Post Office, Aram, Ressler and Samar watch a press conference presided over by Goodson, who announces that the incident at The Factory was set to coincide with the transfer of Reddington, whose whereabouts are at present unknown. Red watches the same press conference on TV, while pounding whiskey beside a roaring fire in his opulent hotel room. Aram and Samar share an intimate moment, while Cooper gets bad news that makes his wife cry. Orchard calls Liz to an urgent meeting at a cafe. Orchard suspects she's not the first one to look into Liz's mind; someone else tried to block her memory of the fire. Liz doesn't believe it - she wasn't making anything up - but Orchard insists that the only people who can tell Liz what really happened the night of the fire are the people who want her to forget. Liz retires to her crappy motel room to look through the cardboard box she received after her stepfather Sam Milhoan's death. That stuffed bunny is there... and Liz finds a tiny box inside of it. Could this be The Fulcrum?