Thought I posted here earlier but apparently not. I enjoyed the episode, but it's surprising Marvin worked on all of this by himself. A lot of questions have been answered, but the role of Kaplan and her sister is still a bit confusing to me. 

Anyway, they set Marvin up to be a great villain and I'm looking forward to the finale. 

Marvin Gerard, despite his size 4.5 inch neck is a magnificent super-villain . . . . 

Who woulda thunk . . . ? ? ? ?

Thanks for starting the discussion, IW! I was out of town and 5 o'clock got past me before I realized it. I had planned to be able to watch it that night but discovered that just because I have the Directv app  it didn’t mean I could just watch it live on my iPad, even though I do that with baseball games. Something to do with being in a different region??? Oh well, I recorded it and watched it tonight when I got home. No snacks, unfortunately!

So Marvin is the enemy, eh? You know, I wondered about him after his Brimley encounter; he looked totally PO,d after that and who could blame him? But as he said, he never trusted Liz, so I am assuming that this plan of his went back several years at least. He was never going to let Liz succeed Red as boss and probably began preparing a plan just in case.

One thing that I thought was odd was when Park came back and said she had just gone to see Reddington and it was while he had Hettie and they were looking for her, but they didn’t say, hey Alina, you know where he is, let’s go! Or I also wondered if she had planted a tracker or something at the very least.

So they’ve been calling the finale "TBD". Now we can know it is "Marvin Gerard". Except we already had a "Marvin Gerard" back in season 3.

So I guess what we have is:

Will the rest of the Bank's customers who are now ticked off at Red  come after him?
Will Weecha succumb to her injuries?
Will Meirce be killed anyway?
Will Park go to work for Red?
I thought Dembe had been the one keeping Red's empire going when Red walked away from it? Marvin made it sound like he did it by himself, with help from Red's how-to run a criminal empire videos.

So I guess, Marvin started the Cooper blackmail plan after it looked like the Task Force was coming back together and would threaten him. So he figured if he lopped off its head, Cooper, that would end it? I think we still haven't gotten the full reason of why Cooper is important to be kept around, and discredited but not just killed off. After all, he was the one person Red wanted to surrender to in the Pilot. Well, maybe it's because he is just such a darned good character played by a fine actor. I don't know.

I am also curious about the connection, if any, between Marvin and VanDyke/Townsend. Marvin would have contacted him pretty quickly after Townsend was killed to go after Liz. I had assumed that VanDyke was killed in the explosion along with Townsend, so I was surprised to see him as Liz's assassin. Of course, as Red's attorney, Marvin had an intimate view of Red's succession plans and probably who Red's enemies are, or were, at any given time. He'd been tortured by Brimley at Red's request, so he knew what Red was capable of  and maybe he figured he'd better have a good backdoor to escape through so maybe he had reached out to Townsend's organization? I don't know. Still a lot left unanswered, probably for future plots.

@IW, the more I think about it, the more I feel like Marvin couldn't be working on his own. Marvin seems very capable of organising an elaborate plot, but I don't see him as a killer. However, in his plot, he supposedly killed a lot of people, including not only Liz, but also all the people involved in Cooper's blackmailing, Kaplan's sister and nearly Heddie and Meirce. And for what? not to reach an end goal but simply to direct away the blame from him after what he did was already irreversible. With all the resources of Red's empire (which he supposedly ran) he could've easily gotten away to some far-away place where no one would find him. 

More importantly, the safe was replaced years ago on Mr. Kaplan's request. Off course this could be her sister, but that doesn't seem to add up. Also, that would mean her sister is in on the plot (and has been for years), which makes no sense considering she was killed in the explosion. It makes me think that either there is a plot that has been going on for ages, or the writers haven't thought it through entirely. 
 

Yeti, yes -- that whole bit about the safe has some holes in it.