Tuxie400 wrote:

Brittany - Many people over the years have commented that the hand looks like it belongs to an older man. I personally don't. It's a hairy hand, and it seems to have some spots - but I took that to be freckling and not age spots. 

Brittany and Tuxie400 - I saw that hand as an "older" hand from the beginning but everyone perceives things differently.  I don't think "old" so much as "older" - meaning that it looked like the hand of someone who would have been at fire night but who now might be around 55-60 years of age.  In other words, Liz was seeing the hand of someone "current" .  Who would have been 30 years younger on fire night.  

The scenes we saw at fire night seemed to feature all people under the age of 40, so the "older" hand didn't seem to fit.  I even thought at one point, Liz was just "seeing" "current" Sam's hand as part of her messed up memories.

That continues to be the problem with the memories.  we just don't know - the "real" hand of who put her in there might have been "replaced" by Sam's or by anyones.....My head now hurts.  
 

KathyN:  ...
"I think because this is the Blacklist and has a series long history of its writers doing this, another very real possiblity is that the bones are of someone the audience hasn't met yet. ....."

Well, it could be that we haven't met the real Raymond Reddington yet.

LOL sorry everyone I could not resist.   

By the way, just because I love the imposter theory (because I love complicated things that are not obvious), it doesn't mean I rule out Red being real Red.  I absolutely think he could be.  Its just more fun for me to follow the clues to think he's not.  

KathyN wrote:

Brittany, you're right that Liz has gone unrecognized before which strains credulity, but could still be believable if enough time passed, in this case, if the bones are Katarina's, seeing that Garvey is a federal marshall and recognizes the importance of the bones to Red, it's really not believable he wouldn't recognize Liz. If Katarina is not on his radar, or in his sphere of orbit, it could almost be believable he didn't know who Liz was. But then the bones wouldn't be hers.

That's very interesting Tuxie about old DNA being entered into CODIS. That does open up the possibility that they could be Katarina's if her blood had been around somewhere, maybe at the scene of the fire, maybe outside the house if she was wounded and bleeding when she left. But again, if Garvey was that interested in Katarina's bones, wouldn't he know that Liz was her daughter when he met her?

I think because this is the Blacklist and has a series long history of its writers doing this, another very real possiblity is that the bones are of someone the audience hasn't met yet. The show has tied up most of its riddles with people we hadn't heard of before (best examples Berlin, the Major, Alexander Kirk, Anslo Garrick, etc.) We didn't know any of those people until they were introduced episodes after some mystery surrounding them happened. It would be easy to make it work out that Tom recognized the name from his work for the Major, or his work with Berlin, or from stories he heard while working with Scottie and company (from her, his father, or his team), or from Gina, or his fake brother, etc. They could build a whole new storyline around these bones and who they were in Red's past and how they relate to Liz. In an interview, Bokenkamp said the bones represented a bigger story that was the hook of the show and were a piece of a much larger puzzle, so they would still have to belong to someone important to the mythology, but that absolutely does not preclude that it's someone we haven't been introduced to yet, someone whose story we don't know and can't guess because we haven't met their character yet. This is the Blacklist, it wouldn't be the first time the audience was spinning their wheels trying to figure something out with what was already in the story only to have it be something (the fulcrum) or someone (see names above) we could never have guessed because they weren't known to us at the time.

KathyN- the body being someone we don't know at this point is another option for me that I've kept in my back pocket because I agree that the BL likes to throw things to us like that.  I tend to believe the body is heavily KR related (either her body or evidence that leads us to discovering she is alive).   Tom recognized the name in the CODIS search, which I think is possible that he would recognize it from his time in the criminal world but that those of us watching and even Liz might not know.  And he could know if it was really bad or not, if something happened to this person around the time Red came into Liz's life or at another critical point, etc.  So I think that is a definitely possibility as well.  

I think it was a complicated group of people, Dom, Faux Red, Harold, Katarina, Garvey, Fitch, Diane Fowler, etc. and I don't think Dom was such a nice guy either. There may be others but I really do think now that Faux Red took on Raymond's identity.  I think the real Raymond Reddington died in that fire or sometime around then and his bones are in the suitcase. It was interesting that Harold gathered evidence from a bloody shirt from prior to 1989 and used it to provide a DNA result to Liz proving paternity. I think Harold knows our Red is Faux Red. He and Liz could have easily gotten DNA from Faux Red. And remember how Ressler wanted to resign after he accidentally killed Lauren Hitchens? He gave a letter in a closed envelope to Harold explaining what happened. Harold rejected it. At some point after that, Harold told Ressler that we all have our secrets and if he read Ressler's letter, Ressler would have to read Cooper's letter and he handed Donald his own letter in a sealed envelope. 

Keep in mind that when Fake Red turned himself in, he asked specifically for Assistant Director Harold Cooper. And the only other person he asked for by name was Elizabeth Keen. They are the fulcrum to marry the past with the present in the lives of all these players.

Maybe when Diane Fowler said she knew what happened that night wasn't about the Christmas Eve house with 'blood everywhere' but maybe it was Fire Night where the real Raymond died and the Fake Reddington took over his persona.

Maybe what was supposed to happen was that Faux Red came up with a plan to get Katarina and Raymond out of the country to an isolated island where no one could find them and they could abandon their spy life. He planned to have a fire at the house, someone would die, and the country would believe it was Raymond. But things messed up. The real Raymond stole the fulcrum, found out that Katarina was actually spying on him, he stole Masha from her, and they shared hateful words (see Cape May). And because of Faux Red's scheme, little Masha ended up shooting her own father.

I think maybe Faux Red partnered with Katarina, maybe was her brother. There was a closeness with the three of them, Dom, Katarina, and Red. 

Anyway, that's as far as I got and frankly, it's not a whole lot of anything :-) But I do think a lot of these folks know each other from way back, there was a plan, some of it backfired, he's come back because the deep state, the shadow government, the Cabal, started growing more turbulent and unstable. Carla said, he's using you for something. He's using her to what? have his own shadow government? take over the world, nuke the United States or Russia (depending on his point of view). 

He's Moby Dick and no one will capture him. What's his scheme?
 

Last edited by Tatiana (2/12/2018 5:39 pm)

His calves also got appreciation from the early part of season 5 when he was chilling by the pool.

Brittany wrote:

His calves also got appreciation from the early part of season 5 when he was chilling by the pool.

Brittany - so both you and Tuxie have opened new horizons I didn't know existed.  LOL. 

I never believed Kate's sister was Red's whole reason for wanting to retrieve the Witsec list. He rarely tells Liz the whole story about his motivations.

Last edited by Tuxie400 (2/12/2018 7:37 pm)

Tuxie400, #293.  And interestingly we never saw a "sister" at Kate's mother's funeral in Requiem.  Not that we know of, at least.  

Tatiana, #294 - agreed.  Red is so immersed in "Red", that is his reality.  Whether he is Rederina or not.
I remember that episode where Red spoke to REssler about how he (Red) and Tom share one thing: Tom's ability to totally immerse himself in his new "identity" or "persona" that he becomes that persona.  It showed Tom becoming the German Neo Nazi guy while Red was saying all of this to Ressler.

I also remember how, when Red made contact with Tom by phone to get him to come back to the US to help exonerate Liz in the harbormaster case, he seemed to use specific words or commands even, to kind of "break the spell" that Tom was in.  I remember Tom at first was in "character" and totally rejected Red's request and as Red kept talking Tom started to sort of freak out a bit and Red had to almost pull him out of that and back into the Tom persona.  That whole scene was fascinating to me.  I did wonder whether it paralleled Red (and who or what would "pull" him out of "red", if anything could). Conjecture, of course.  

Tatiana - I agree with you about Red's stories. I doubt that very many of them are true. I think people who've been spies and done undercover work like Red, Dom, and Tom, are very adept at telling believable stories that sound personal, but really aren't'.

So I am wondering again whether the accidental shooting of Tony (in the ribs , on the left side I believe, in common with a lot of other lung/rib injuries in the series) foreshadows what happened to KR.

Here is a snippet of dialogue when Red goes and visits Tony in the (illegal criminal) hospital at the end of the episode:

Tony: [ Reads writing on balloon ] “Get ready to party”
Red:  Best I could do.
They were fresh out of “Sorry I Shot You” balloons.

KR  says "Best I could do"  about the Risotto with KR in Cape May.... although we later find out its Red that says that to himself...  hmmmm
 

Last edited by lara1 (2/13/2018 7:11 pm)