Shouldn’t Liz be more conflicted?
Instead, she seemed hellbent on killing Red on The Blacklist Season 8 Episode 3.
She sought revenge for his executing Katarina on The Blacklist Season 8 Episode 2.
So Katarina, the woman she has only known for a few months, is more important to her than the man who has been there for her throughout her life?
This storyline hasn’t made sense since it began on The Blacklist Season 7 and it still doesn’t. And yet it continues … and continues.
Granted, people important to Liz have dropped dead around Raymond throughout the series. So she could definitely blame him for that.
Still, he made Liz, pulling her from FBI obscurity and creating the Blacklist Task Force around her. Which she seems to forget with regularity.
And the task force has done good work, taking hundreds of high-level criminals off the street. All they had to do was look the other way from whatever illegal thing Red was doing that particular week. Consider that a necessary tradeoff.
Reddington has become the father Liz has craved from a young age, saving her and hers more times than could be counted.
And she’s been the daughter he would never have been able to have otherwise, based on his most-wanted status.
Just think of all she’s learned from him, for better or worse.
Yet Liz threw him over for Katarina. Understandably, she wanted to learn more about the mother she’s heard whispers about through the years.
It helped that Katarina revealed herself to Liz complete with a well-crafted narrative that fits with what Liza had heard through the years.
Katarina cast herself in the best possible light, as the mother who left her daughter behind to keep her safe.
On the flip side, Red has reinvented himself so much through the years that Liz doesn’t know what to believe. How does he keep everything straight in his own mind?
Katarina succeeded in poisoning Liz against Raymond. Meanwhile, he kept waiting for Liz to come to her senses because, well, she has time and time again when it comes to Red. That was despite everyone around him warning that things were different now.
This time, however, he took one too many people away from her. Just when Liz was beginning to learn about a sanitized version of her mother, Katarina was gone.
And now Reddington was up against someone who knew how to manipulate things on both sides of the law.
This has to be the final season because Liz is burning every bridge she has.
And she did try to do things the right way one more time, bringing the recording of Katarina’s murder to Harold.
Not that a lawyer only slightly better than Marvin couldn’t tear that apart in court. And the only prosecution eyewitness would be a renegade FBI agent.
Only Harold wasn’t willing to sacrifice both Liz’s law-enforcement career and the task force on the long shot of bringing Red to justice, whatever that means.
Based on his ongoing medical problems, karma already has been taking shots at Raymond for his bad life choices.
Cooper’s insistence on Liz trying to work things out with Reddington led her to take a different tack.
She did a lovely job of determining a way to kill Red on the fly, stealing Aram’s evidence slip and grabbing some explosive to build a bomb.
Liz showing up at Dom’s house full of hostility should have been a hint to Raymond that he wasn’t going to talk her down yet again.
If not for his bloody coughing jag, her plan might have worked. Why she didn’t just let nature take its course and leave with Agnes to start a new life was difficult to fathom.
After all, she’s already thrown away her FBI career to participate in her mother’s revenge plot. She should have just written off this chapter of her life as a net loss and become a private eye on the West Coast.
Instead, she roped Esi Jackson, last seen on The Blacklist Season 7 Episode 16, into her murder scheme. They were just going to invade a hospital swarming with Red’s people and the FBI and blow him up there.
Her scenario did create maximum chaos. But it also meant too many people running in and out of Red’s room attempting to get him transported to safety.
So Liz nearly blew up Ressler instead.
And, because he has a soft spot in his head for her, he forgave Liz and let the fugitive stay overnight with him. She uses him horribly.
At least Aram, her wiser co-conspirator, didn’t seem as willing to forgive her. We’ll see.
Park likely would shoot her on sight and ask questions later. They don’t have the same history.
Red couldn’t even explain to Cooper why he had to kill Katarina.
It was quite simple really. They were battling over Liz. Katarina was willing to die to win, an odd outlook.
Raymond probably will soon follow. The only question is whether viewers will get the answers for which they’ve been waiting eight seasons.
To follow the decline in the Red-Liz relationship, watch The Blacklist online.
What’s wrong with Liz?
Does she really think she can outsmart Red and the task force?
Do you wish we would have gotten more Marvin?
Comment below.
Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.