The Blacklist Season 8 Episode 17 Cast

This is one of those Blacklist episodes that makes you ask the existential questions. Because, sure, there are two violent shootouts, one armored tank, and a casual $32 million jewel heist but when you boil this episode down, it's all about the fundamentals of what brought us to the series in the first place. Why did Raymond Reddington decide to work with the FBI in order to gain access to Elizabeth Keen's life? What is he protecting her from? Why does he trust Liz and the Task Force with so many elements of his mysterious organization but not others not the ones that seem the most important to their livelihood?

For the last few episodes, the Venn diagram of who shares a common goal, who shares a common enemy, and who's sharing which secrets has been slinging around like a bunch of hula hoops between Reddington, Liz, and the Task Force. Everyone is asking everyone else to trust them completely when absolutely no one on this show should trust anyone else.

Reddington is highly capable but always lying about something; the Task Force is typically earnest in its intentions, but often pretty inept on the whole; and Liz is a complete wild card unpredictable and proving to be kind of a manipulative jerk, at times. These are not the people I want on my team! And they don't really want to be on each other's teams either, but they're tied together by the reality of their situation. The problem that presents itself in this episodes and has presented itself throughout the series is that only one of these three parties possesses the full knowledge of what that reality is.