IowaWatcher wrote:

Tuxie400 wrote:

The Cape May espisode was what most made me think Red was Katarina.

I see why you think that, and there's certainly a lot of support for it in the dialogue!

The main reason I'm not on board with that theory is the height/body problem: there still isn't a good way
to make an adult woman taller and increase her skeletal mass. KR has not been presented to us as a
tall woman with a lot of body mass, a la Sigourney Weaver, who would make a more convincing looking
male with the right surgery and hormones. KR is a slender femme fatale.

But I'm keeping an open mind. Anything can happen with this show, and you've certainly made some
excellent arguments for that theory!

Somewhere on the Redorina thread I have links to articles and a video that document changes in skeletal mass after a year of taking hormones. The video shows the differences in the young woman's body who is transitioning to male. As for the height differences, Katarina and Red are shown in twice Cape May to be almost the same height. The Internet lists different heights for Spader. I tend to believe the shorter heights are correct. Check Diego's given height (5'11) and compare it visuallly to Red and Ressler standing side by side. There's no way Spader is 5'10.
 

Last edited by Tuxie400 (5/18/2018 12:34 pm)

Tuxie, I'll keep my mind open and think about that when I re-watch some of the episodes later this
summer. We'll have about 8 months to chew on everything, so it's a theory certainly worth thinking about.

 

Red: How fortuitous. We were just talking about you. You. How the hell did you get in here?

Liz: Wait, is it me or– That sounds like Reddington.

Aram: This can’t be good.

Red: May I present to you Raymond Reddington? [ All murmuring ] Pour the man a glass of this wonderful port. It appears this party’s just getting started.
[ Murmuring continues ]  

Ressler: He lied to us. He knew that location the whole time.

Samar: Why? What’s his angle?

Ressler: I don’t know, and I don’t care, but I’m calling that breach.

Samar: The minute you do, it’ll prove Red’s with us. He’ll be killed.

Liz: Reddington knows our protocol. If he’s in there, it’s because he knew we’d find him. He knows we’re listening. If he’s willing to roll the dice, we should be, too.

Dmitri: Raymond, what is this?

Red #2: He’s not Raymond Reddington. He knew I called this meeting. He knew that I was going to accuse him of being an impostor, so he beat me here.

Red: I told you that before this dinner was done, I would prove my innocence and identify the person who’d betrayed us. Meet the fake Red. Faux Red. Fred.

Tatiana wrote:

I think we can still entertain lots of ideas, even if they don't fit every storyline. Like, I still think 'all the world's a stage and we merely players" is something of a thing here. The stories "Red" tells are suspiciously like stories of James Spader's young life LOL!
 

Now that you mention it...  I am reminded especially of THIS ONE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL88b9A2ySE

“Whether or not he is her father, we look at it as a father-daughter story.” - Jon Bokenkamp

 “Ultimately in the end the short answer is that, when the series ends, whenever it ends, it’s ultimately a parent-child story..” - John Eisendrath

 That’s why they don’t let Eisendrath interview, he gives away too much. Comic-Con 2013 he describes Red’s obsession with Liz as being ‘sick and potentially twisted paternal feelings toward her’ and Spader interrupts him abruptly with "Just watch the show...."

So here's the thing:
1) Spader has said he knows most of the story, but he wants to have some sense of unknowing with the final final whatever Bokenkamp has teased us with from day one.
2) Daniel Knauf, the writer of Cape May, has said he knows a lot but he too does not know the final final whatever. 

I'm certain they both knew the person aka as Raymond reddington was an imposter.
I think it's highly likely both know Red's identity. And I think it a fair guess the identity is a transgendered person formerly known as Katarina Rostova. What the final twist will be is anyone's guess at this point.

So getting back to the possible identity as Elizabeth's mother-parent-father continuum, just watching Cape May reveals a great deal ... it wasn't that Red and Katarina were so close and worked together, it was that they are one and the same.

Raymond Reddington, Red, bereft at the death of Elizabeth Keen goes to Cape May to commit suicide. He returns to the place where he makes his Hobson's choice. 

Knowing that is what made it possible for Knauf to create such an incredible story. I had exchanged tweets with him once mentioning that Cape May had strong shades of Ingmar Bergmann's "Persona". He responded something to the effect of "Bergmann and m night shyamalan a la  Kubrick. Unfortunately he dropped his Twitter account so I cannot refer back to it, but Bergmann and Kubrick were two of the names.

Honey West wrote:

So, if we look at the possibility of Red being a Soviet operative, was he intended to replace RR from the beginning, or was this a matter of opportunity presenting itself after fire night, when RR was unexpectedly killed by his own kid. I lean towards this being something planned, because he has been able to pull off fooling people who seem to have known him quite well. Unless they are all in on it, of course. I am thinking that he was an operative who worked for Dom in his Oleander guise. Maybe Dom is his father, or a close relative? Or maybe Dom is like a The Major, a Faginlike character who "adopts" these kids and trains them in the art of espionage.

Anyway, I will think and write more, but feel free to add or subtract.

Given all the parallels and mirror characters and themes, I do not remember the Major having a similar parallel or mirror character. And Oleander/Dom, despite his claims as 'analyst' is held in high regard, even causing Red to 'acquiesce to his Dominance (see buttermilk scene).

Last edited by Tatiana (5/19/2018 10:36 pm)

Honey West wrote:

The Major ran sort of a school for spies. Taking youngsters off the streets who seemed to have potential, and training them. Perhaps Oleander had a similar operation. If he didn’t, then he likely knew someone who did, and had a source for his operatives. I guess until we learn more specifics about Oleander, we are still only speculating. Meanwhile it raises the related question of why was it necessary to replace RR at all? If he was killed, so what, just another casualty of the Cold War.

 

I like this HW. 
​I still want to know what the mess is that Red made of everything tht Dom blames him for. 
 

Honey West wrote:

Meanwhile it raises the related question of why was it necessary to replace RR at all? If he was killed, so what, just another casualty of the Cold War.

All season long I was heavy into FakeRed being an Oleander spy who replaced Red after the night of the fire.    But that scene with Diane showing up at the end of the finale with the implication she knew the truth about Red made me rethink the Cabal angle. That being in mind, now I'm wondering if the Cabal replaced Reddington, the reason being they needed to find the fulcrum and only Reddington knew where it was.  And Reddington was dead. So the Cabal faked Red so that FakeRed could use RealRed's connections to find it for them.  But whoever FakeRed really is, he had some allegiance to the Russians, specifically Dom.  So he betrayed the Cabal and  told them he found the fulcrum but wasn't going to turn it over and then held it over them for 20+ years, which was the agreement Alda had with FakeRed that each would leave the other alone. But the Cabal was always working to get FakeRed killed, just in a way that wouldn't trigger any of his fulcrum revealing instructions. So they told Berlin he killed his daughter, they told Sutton Ross he betrayed him to the Chinese.  Then they told Anslo Garrick how to find him.  All to get enemies mad enough to kill FakeRed for them.   This does not preclude Katarina being FakeRed.  Maybe she was worried the Russians were looking for her and agreed to hiding in plain sight as a man. Or, maybe the Oleander spy theory is still possible - maybe ironically the man the Cabal chose to replace Reddington was none other than an Oleander spy who screwed everything up by taking the assignment. 

 

Honey West - The carpet story is real - just not Red's. It's a personal story of John Fox, one of the show's producers.

That’s a lot of what I was thinking, KathyN. Bravo! Except I had been looking at it purely as a Cold War US vs USSR thing. But I like how you factored in the Cabal. I hadn’t gotten round to them yet.