‘The Blacklist’ season 2, episode 18 preview: This Megan Boone – Ryan Eggold photo suggests…

On Thursday night’s new episode of “The Blacklist,” you are going to get a chance to see Elizabeth Keen make a choice … maybe. She is at least going to be presented with one. Who is she going to trust, the dangerous man in Tom who lived a lie with her for several years, or the career criminal in Red who claims he is out to protect her now?

We’re wary about reading way too much into a promotional photo for a single episode of the show, mostly because of how many times we have seen these can be incredibly misleading. Could this be the case here with Ryan Eggold and Megan Boone’s characters? We do understand where the sudden attraction is coming from now, at least from the vantage point of Liz. This is a man who did recently come back and protect her from heading to prison, and that temporary high may help to offset some of the terrible things he’s done … but she still has to remember that those things are terrible. There’s always another game that Tom is playing, and it may not be to Liz’s benefit. At the same time Liz has done some terrible things to Tom too, so are their scales a little more even now that we know that she has a darkness in her?

One other reason we are nervous about Tom’s sudden involvement? Most of that stems from the fact that this is a guy who was locked up by her for months at the harbor and then interrogated. Unless the guy’s got a serious case of Stockholm syndrome, why would he continue to want to spend time with her unless he had some bigger game going on?

As for the relationship between Liz and Red, we understand why viewers are rooting for them, as well. Reddington has protected her in his own bizarre way, and the frustration there comes from what he doesn’t say more so than what he does.

With these two characters being diametrically opposed, we do feel like we are being set up for a more dynamic story than what we’ve had in a while.

(Photo: NBC.)