The Blacklist Refugees » Summer 2017 Discussion

Tuxie400 · 8/16/2017 8:11 am

Eastcoast - Your photos of the wrist and the ceiling are really interesting! Thanks for posting them! In regular watching, I never noticed either before. I wish I had a slow motion feature on my TV. The ceiling strip does look like it could be a bleed-through of the barn roof.

lara1 · 8/16/2017 11:01 am

Hi all, RL has been insanely busy so I've had little time to even catch my breath!

thanks eastcoast for the latest images. I'm probably the only one who thinks this, but I think the image with the hands is Liz's hand touching Red's, not Red touching Liz's wrist. I see Liz's hand (the top one in the image) kind of reaching to touch or hold Red's hand, underneath. That is when in the fire memory there seems to be a hand letting go of hers (might be the glove/sleeve/arm image you captured, east coast)

The image of the open ceiling I had seen before in one of the flashes. I think you are correct, east coast, I only remember it appearing once in a flashback. It kind of shows a high ceiling with what looks like exposed beams. A the time I thought it looked like the inside ceiling of a film studio! but have to now look to see if it could be barn beams......

Your captured images of the figure are very good. on closer look, it does look like a man seated on a box or small trunk or something but its hard to tell because I think one leg is extended and the view blocked by the wall of the hallway, in other words you can't tell the length of the legs. it could be a man - bald or with short blond hair or a boy. There seems to be either a shadow or some other color on the top of one side of the head. And yes I see what looks to be a plaid shirt! something like blue or green.....interesting colors too given the rest of the series and some of our theories.

I originally saw the various fire flash images through a combination of freezing the frames myself and seeing what others had posted online. I think that is where I saw the image of what looks like a black dog and a child at the far end of the corridor. Tuxie400, I did look at Tessa's blog after you told me about it, I thought she had a section on the fire but it doesn't seem to be there now. So I may have seen it on another blog. I did have the link at one point but I don't seem to have it now. But there were a few blogs out there that focused on close up analysis of the fire memories.

my own view is that I think the flashes are the "real" memories that Liz has left, with the "real" people, whether or not MPD is part of the story.

That's all for now! everyone enjoy the rest of the summer! it goes by so fast!

Last edited by lara1 (8/16/2017 11:03 am)

Eastcoast · 8/16/2017 12:25 pm

Tuxie, I do not have slow motion either. Just hit rewind for a few seconds and watch it a few times because that is the only way to catch everything.
I decided that since I picked up on stuff I had not seen before I would do that throughout it. I looked at each one about 5 times. And I do not mean the whole segment on it, I am talking about 5-10 second scenes. I just saw another man walk behind her that I had not seen before when I did this but have not had the time to devote to getting a pic of it. When I do I will post it. There is a lot to tell in the scenes where she starts going down the hall when I looked at it like this! I think we missed a lot on the fire we didn't know was there.
I got these pics by hitting the pause button many times. Sometimes it is blurry when it stops and sometimes I get it just right.

lara1, I have watched that scene more times than I can actually count. I went back to it again and Red touches her wrist on purpose in my opinion as if he is trying to jog her memory.

well, back to RL!!

Eastcoast · 8/16/2017 12:26 pm

Oh, lara1, if you can find those links to other sites that have those pics please share!!

lara1 · 8/22/2017 8:29 pm

hi there, RL is still out of control but I'm managing to dip in here now and again.
Someone recently mentioned (can't find it again), that in the cut scenes on the Season 4 DVD, a cut scene of "Masha" with Kirk , Masha's hair has that dirty blond color running through it like bubble girl (and maybe "Elise" aka maybe Jennifer, with her washing machine bubbles....but I digress...). Just looked at some set photos on Aly's website that show Megan filming Season 5. Megan's hair is longer, wavier and.....well bits of dirty blonde. Reminded me of bubble girl. Although, I never thought that bubble girl was Liz, for a bunch of reasons....

But is there a link between Liz and Elise that we don't know as yet. Or either of them and bubble girl without being bubble girl. Or any of them and the girl with blonde wavy hair in the fire memories.

Well the options are enough to get me thinking in circles again.

They have played with Liz's hair color before (IMO deliberately, but what do I know). There was the episode in Season 2 I believe, I think it was Linus Creel where Red and Liz show up to talk to the doctor with the tin foil room who worked on the government experiments where Creel at the time was an assistant way back when. Liz has her hair up in a bun, and in the light, standing outside on the threshold to the door of the doctor's house, looks a LOT like ballerina girl. Again I don't think Liz is ballerina girl. But somehow they are linked, IMO....
LOL

lara1 · 8/22/2017 8:31 pm

Oh, Eastcoast unfortunately when I cleaned up my computer about two months ago I deleted the bookmarks to those links. I remember thinking, oh, they are out there on the web blogs, I can always look them up.
Argh. I now can't find them. Maybe they were on a blog that was taken down. But I will keep trying to re-create the search that pulled them up in the first place. I think it was as simple as Blacklist fire memories but that doesn't seem to do it. LOL silly me.....

lara1 · 8/22/2017 11:11 pm

OK good news, I found some fire links. I went back to Tessa's blog. I don't remember if this was the only place I've seen the image (there are a lot of various images around the web and I may even have seen it myself in one of my many freeze frame re-watches) but anyway its good to find at least one image of it. (And thanks again to Tuxie400).

I attach the link from the page in the blog that has the image of what looks like a child and black dog at the end of the hallway. similar to the one with the person/child at the end of the hallway - scroll down and you'll see them together. I find it interesting that its another image in one of the "flashes" (which I think are Liz's real memories.)

I've also been looking at some images again of the men exiting the fire which I had seen a number of times before, but I noticed something new when I looked at it tonight - its the images of the men exiting the fire. one of them has what I swear is a ghostly image of a woman or a person in center screen, next to the man in the plaid shirt. I managed to draw a circle around the "image", but I can't figure out how to post it here. Well maybe someone else will see it anyway!

https://tessabltheorist.tumblr.com/post/150518066292/after-a-full-re-watch-i-thought-i-would-revisit

Last edited by lara1 (8/22/2017 11:15 pm)

lara1 · 8/22/2017 11:45 pm

well I've been looking over a bunch of old photos from the series. And I don't know why I never noticed this before but in the picture of Liz on the swing with her "mother", her "mother" (Katarina?) is wearing plaid.

which brings me back to the idea that either the woman in the photo is not Katarina or something is up.
Red said to Liz that the girl in the photo was her, and the woman was her mother. He never says the woman is Katarina. He does say the he knew her mother had many names and he knew her as Katarina Rostova. The implication is that they are one and the same. But are they?

So back to my ideas about there either being two Katerinas (the real one and the "alias" or double, a decoy perhaps?) or two Liz/Mashas. Though to have both would truly make my head hurt. LOL

Last edited by lara1 (8/22/2017 11:47 pm)

Tuxie400 · 8/23/2017 10:44 am

lara1 wrote:
OK good news, I found some fire links. I went back to Tessa's blog. I don't remember if this was the only place I've seen the image (there are a lot of various images around the web and I may even have seen it myself in one of my many freeze frame re-watches) but anyway its good to find at least one image of it. (And thanks again to Tuxie400).

I attach the link from the page in the blog that has the image of what looks like a child and black dog at the end of the hallway. similar to the one with the person/child at the end of the hallway - scroll down and you'll see them together. I find it interesting that its another image in one of the "flashes" (which I think are Liz's real memories.)

I've also been looking at some images again of the men exiting the fire which I had seen a number of times before, but I noticed something new when I looked at it tonight - its the images of the men exiting the fire. one of them has what I swear is a ghostly image of a woman or a person in center screen, next to the man in the plaid shirt. I managed to draw a circle around the "image", but I can't figure out how to post it here. Well maybe someone else will see it anyway!

https://tessabltheorist.tumblr.com/post/150518066292/after-a-full-re-watch-i-thought-i-would-revisit

Yes, lara1, those are the images I remembered but could not find! It's interesting how people see different things in them - just like a Rorschach test. I could never see a dog in any of them. In the later, more yellowish one, with the person on one knee, what I see is some sort of narrow vertical object. My first impression is that it's a weapon - maybe a rifle, a baseball bat, or a board. Then, as I thought about it more, I think maybe the object is just being used to help that wounded person stand. There's really no way to tell if the person is an adult or a child, female or male! Again, the writer's words predisposes our interpretation.

In the photos of the men leaving, I've always seen the blurred image in the middle. But it doesn't look like a woman to me. It just looks amorphous. The one that really amazes me is the longer one from farther back that shows the men leaving on the right and then little Liz to the left. I'd never noticed her in that image before. It's impossible to see who is guiding her out.

Tuxie400 · 8/23/2017 10:58 am

lara1 wrote:
Someone recently mentioned (can't find it again), that in the cut scenes on the Season 4 DVD, a cut scene of "Masha" with Kirk , Masha's hair has that dirty blond color running through it like bubble girl (and maybe "Elise" aka maybe Jennifer, with her washing machine bubbles....but I digress...). Just looked at some set photos on Aly's website that show Megan filming Season 5. Megan's hair is longer, wavier and.....well bits of dirty blonde. Reminded me of bubble girl. Although, I never thought that bubble girl was Liz, for a bunch of reasons....

I was the someone who mentioned Masha's hair color in the cut scene. I have never believed Liz was bubble girl either - until I saw that cut scene. When you compare the baby in Kaplan's Requiem memory, the toddler in the stroller, and this girl in the cut scene to the supposed photo of Liz and her mother, something is really off. The child of about 2 in the swing photo has dark brown or black hair. You did rightly point out in another post that the mother is wearing plaid. So something is not as it seems, under Tessa's theory of plaid - which always seems more right than wrong. The writers went to a lot of trouble in 4.22 to address the issue that Liz is Masha with Red calling her Masha to both Dom and Kaplan.. And I still believe Red never directly lies to a question Liz asks. So are both Katarina and Masha disguised in that photo? And if so, why? Were they grifting at the time?

Last edited by Tuxie400 (8/23/2017 10:59 am)

lara1 · 8/23/2017 11:26 am

Hi Tuxie400, yes I agree, its unclear what the "dog" image could be - I see a black dog with a child in front of it, and an adult standing behind, but who knows? LOL its too blurry to say anything for sure. Like the blond girl at the end of the hallway who could be a man or a boy also.....But I do think whatever the images are, they represent Liz's "real" memories which is why they are so indistinct....well IMO anyway.

In the fire exit scene, I see in the middle what looks like an arm bent up from the elbow to the hand, face out, connected to a more amorphous figure. LOL. I still think its interesting that "Liz" watches and talks to "Liz" in those memories.

I agree something is up with the little girl(s). And in the Summer Palace memory, Liz sees herself as the brunette. I know that children's hair color changes, I'm just not that sure that it goes from that light to that dark in such a short period but I guess it could. But I tend to think that the different girls/hair colors are on purpose....I mean they could have just had a different child with dark hair play the role of the little girl with Kirk, but they didn't. I also read somewhere a while back that the actress who played little Liz in the fire memories wore a dark long wig but I have no idea whether or not that is true. But even little Liz's hair seems shorter and longer in different fire memory scenes.....to be continued, LOL

JackPow · 8/23/2017 10:33 pm

Wow, Lara, thanks for posting the link to Tessa's photo collection!

While I disagree with much of what Tessa thinks she sees in the photos, the sheer amount of great still shots really allows for good detective work! After reconsidering those photos and the fire dialog, my latest theory of fire night is that Katerina showed up at (the original) Raymond Reddington's home (where he was keeping Masha/Liz because Katerina wouldn't let him see her, they argued about the Fulcrum and him "kidnapping" Masha/Liz...... and Katerina shot Raymond Reddington. (I'm not typing "Masha/Liz" because I believe there were two girls. Definitely not. I just mean because the real RR refers to her as Liz and KR calls her Masha)

Now, whether that original Raymond DIED that fire night and is "the skeleton in the suitcase" with our "Red" being Katarina or some other story, I'm not yet sure.

Maybe Katerina shot the real RR dead in front of their daughter, had her memories altered to forget that traumatizing event, sent her to be with Sam, and eventually took on RR's identity for some reason.

Or, the real RR managed to escape the fire house after being shot and left for dead, with burns on his back, and later decided to become the notorious Red we know now to essentially continue the fight against his enemies while securing a vast fortune to always keep Lizzie safe and accomplish his goals.

I hope this made sense. It's 11:30pm and I'm exhausted. My point is that.....i still don't known what the heck is going on! And I love it!

lara1 · 8/23/2017 11:11 pm

Hi JackPow, interesting thoughts. thanks to Tuxie400 for pointing out Tessa's blog. Back to Refugees, every time we get a new piece of info I feel like the whole deck of cards gets thrown in the air and lands slightly differently, LOL. I keep moving away from theories and back to them and vice versa. A slight twist on one of your theories might be that Liz's real father did escape the fire, but let people continue to be believe him to be dead, and came back as "RR" in order to try to keep his daughter safe. So the twist ism maybe Red is her father but he's not RR which I think someone else has suggested before me. So many ideas to remember! But after all, he was very protective of her, enough to take her from KR. Mind you, I don't believe that the current Red that we see is really Liz's father. But I don't discount anything - anything is still up for grabs and possible and all theories have merit.

I still don't know what is going on either and probably won't until the end! LOL

To be continued....

JackPow · 8/23/2017 11:54 pm

Ugh, an hour later and I'm still awake! Haha.
I just stumbled on the line "the man she loved killed by THE CHILD she adored" Well....out goes my previous suggestion that Katerina shot Raymond. Why in the world would Red say that? I guess little Liz did get her hands on a gun and shot her father on fire night. Ugh I'm so confused.
I was just thinking how I cannot wait to finally find out what all of this is about and while it would be sad for the show and this group to end......I laughed to myself thinking that we'd probably spend a good YEAR or more going back over all of the episodes seeing how every single clue, scene, line, pattern fit in to that final reveal!

Honey West · 8/24/2017 1:48 am

And then Jon Bokenkamp is saying that being her father is not the reason Red reentered Lizs life. The suitcase has more to do with the reason. Hmmmm.

JackPow · 8/24/2017 8:32 am

I've always wondered if there is something hidden or locked somewhere that can only be unlocked with perhaps a combined DNA/bodily sample of both Katerina and Liz. Of course that sounds crazy SciFi and I don't watch enough TV/movies to even know if that's possible in "TV Land" so who knows. Maybe the bones in the suitcase are Katerina's and then we have Liz, marked with her scar, and perhaps lots of people would love to get their hands on both Katerina's body and Liz for some reason. Who knows. (That is definitely NOT my prevailing theory though) While we've seen them use eyeballs to unlock doors, I think that's getting a bit too SciFi.

Tatiana · 8/24/2017 9:06 am

From almost the beginning I have wondered if Red didn't 'hide' something in Liz's scar, what, I do not know. There's a lot of themes of hidden pieces of the puzzle or even hidden keys in people's bodies. I don't think it's a literal key, though. I suspect it's DNA of some sort. Why on earth would anyone purposely burn a child?

A possible clue that the scar is in play is it's the first thing Red asks about when he meets Liz. But I've not developed this idea any further.

lara1 · 8/24/2017 9:24 am

Well, I think a few of us have thought that the "father" reason is too easy, simple. So even if Red really is Liz's father, that is not "the connection" that drives the show. What else it could be, ha ha I don't know.

We know that Red believes Liz to be his way home again. IMO that's a big reason for his devastation at losing her (in her fake death) and his rage at Kaplan, which I think he repeated before he shot her - she presumed to know what was best for him and (in my words) really messed up his strategy. Then we have Dembe saying that Red needs to stay the course, not give up on his mission (whatever that is).

I know we've discussed in the past how Liz is a key to something and IMO all the puzzle pieces point to this, including what may be the biggest analogy - the fulcrum. Red had one piece of it, Fitch provided the other through Leonard Caul, but Liz had the key piece to it all of the time though Red (and she) did not know it. And we still don't know who hid the fulcrum in the bunny. Was it the same person responsible for Liz's scar?

Tatiana I think you make a good point about the scar. Its obvious Red wanted to see it. At the time of the pilot, I thought it was a kind of "marker" to ensure that Liz was Liz. But Red saw and knew she had the scar from where he was sitting. He wanted to see it up close. Why? To inspect it for some reason we don't know.

And, if Red is after or protective of what the key is that Liz has, it seems that maybe the "enemies" know it as well? More food for thought. LOL

JackPow · 8/24/2017 1:00 pm

Tatiana and Lara, you are both totally right. I think the show has been implying for years that Liz (and now maybe also those bones) are the key to something. Maybe even Red, plus Liz, plus Katerina.

I vaguely remember there being some quotes over the years flat out saying that Liz was needed for something or perhaps a "key" for something. Perhaps locked in her memories. Maybe some other superfan can recall those.
Why the cabal (or whoever) didn't already abduct Liz at any other point since the show began is puzzling though. They've had plenty of opportunities. Maybe they don't have the other necessary "piece" which could involve Katerina's supposedly missing body.
Even if our Red turned out to be a BAD guy after this big thing, he's had those bones and access to Liz for ages now. Anyway, time will tell. Season 5 should be great!

Honey West · 8/24/2017 3:06 pm

Tatiana wrote:
From almost the beginning I have wondered if Red didn't 'hide' something in Liz's scar, what, I do not know. There's a lot of themes of hidden pieces of the puzzle or even hidden keys in people's bodies. I don't think it's a literal key, though. I suspect it's DNA of some sort. Why on earth would anyone purposely burn a child?

A possible clue that the scar is in play is it's the first thing Red asks about when he meets Liz. But I've not developed this idea any further.

After The Courier, anything like that could be a possibility. Maybe there's a microdot hidden in the scar. She says her father gave her the scar. Seeing how Red had all of the keys for the Fulcrum hidden in so many weird places, I wouldn't put it past him to have other keys to other secrets hidden like that. Wouldn't it be crazy if some of these keys were hidden in various people years ago when they were children? I think the Fulcrum was small potatoes compared to other secrets he has stashed all over the world. And their "keys" might be in some really weird places. Maybe the skeleton in the suitcase has a hidden key to something embedded in it? It is a partial skeleton, or is just so cut up that it looks like parts are missing. Maybe it was cut up by someone who was searching for something?