Review of This Week’s Episode of The Blacklist

The Blacklist launched its twelfth episode of season four and it’s time for a review.

The last few episodes were: season four, episode nine, titled “Lipet’s Seafood Company” (No. 111), this was the first episode since the mid season finale. The following week it was “The Forecaster” (No. 163), which was the tenth episode of the season. Finally, last week was “The Harem” (No. 102)

The episode also stars Amir Arison as tech analyst Aram Mojtabai, Harry Lennix as FBI director Harold Cooper, Mozhan Marno as FBI agent Samar Navabi, Diego Klattenhoff as FBI agent Donald Ressler, Hisham Tawfiq as Dembe Zuma, Reddington’s right hand man.

What questions do we still have?

What happened to Smoll? Who killed him? Who is after Red now? What happened to Mr. Kaplan? Is she connected to the Smoll murder and the attacks on Red? How will this new threat effect Red and the FBI?

A heads up before I go in depth on this episode: there will be SPOILERS. If you have not watched The Blacklist: season four, episode twelve “Natalie Luca” or do not want it to be spoiled stop reading! You have been warned!

So what exactly happened in The Blacklist: season four, episode twelve: “Natalie Luca”?

A big question for the episode was why did Smoll die? That plot arch is seeming to be grinding to a halt as many questions about Smoll were answered in this episode.

How did Smoll die? Smoll died after being infected with a disease by Natalie Luca. How did this happen? Luca is infected with the disease but can’t die from it, however, anyone who touches her will become infected with the disease and die in a few short seconds. Luca kills Smoll by infecting him and Red intends to find out why.

Natalie Luca is seen using her disease to kill several people throughout the episode. Luca and Malik are part of an organization that used them. Malik and Luca fell in live, but due to Natalie carrying the disease, she could never touch him, ever. Malik is later killed and Luca is taken into custody. Red visits Luca to figure out why she killed Smoll. Luca says Isabella Stone forced her to kill Smoll after she threatened to tell the company where to find Malik and Luca. Red seems familiar with Stone. As of now we don’t know if this goes higher than Stone as far as who is attacking Red. Samar and Aram get into a discussion about their wages, Samar saying she gets 32% less than Aram does but she feels as though she does more. Aram moves 16% of his wages to Samar and that way they have equal pay rates. Red lost his money which he was going to use to buy something, however, due to Smoll dying, a business rival bought it first. Red pays them a visit after enlisting Tom to work as an agent on the inside with a new codename and everything. Red talked to and later killed the man. Red made a comment that he feels like death is drawing near, which is very odd considering that he deals with most if his threats so it’s very rare to a see this. What has him so shook up?