‘The Blacklist’ season 3 finale review: Was Liz Keen’s father revealed? Also, Mr. Kaplan’s big trick

The Blacklist logo any seasonIt is not particularly often on “The Blacklist” when we see Red out of the loop on something, but when that happened on Thursday night’s season finale, it was one of the biggest surprises on the series to date.

We do have to say that Liz Keen being alive wasn’t really that much of a surprise to anyone, mostly because of what we’ve come to know about this show and this world already: Anything can happen. It was more of how Liz proved to be alive that was a surprise, and who helped to arrange everything: Mr. Kaplan, Red’s associate and one of our favorites in his little crew. She is the one who helped to ensure that Tom and baby Agnes got on the secure flight to Cuba, where they could be safe and live a real life.

In the end, of course Red wasn’t going to leave that alone, and he wanted answers on how in the world this happened. It was a pretty good explanation, given that we knew that this was going to be a hard sell making all of this made sense. We’re just so IN AWE of Mr. Kaplan that she was able to pull this off.

As impressive as this whole operation was, it was heartbreaking in a sense to Red for him to realize just to what lengths Kaplan and Liz went through in order to ensure that she was okay and safe from him. Here’s the problem: It didn’t work, Alexander Kirk now has Liz, and it seems pretty clear that, by his accounts, he is her father. Whether or not that is true remains to be seen, but it’s a pretty epic cliffhanger either way that blows many theories out of the water.

On a different note, another shocker of the night was Ressler’s realization that he was going to let Red shoot Alexander Kirk, just because he wanted him dead. Nothing’s changed now, beyond just that he realizes that he needs to be more cautious. There’s really not too much to see here.

Ultimately, tonight’s finale gave us not only a huge reveal, but it leaves Mr. Kaplan’s fate in the balance and has us wondering how in the world the Tom spin-off happens. All in all, pretty epic. Grade: A-.

(Photo: NBC.)

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