Spoiler Alerts, Good or Bad?
The Blacklist. Season 8 Finale. Episode 22: Konets.
Things certainly get crazy and complicated for the 8th season ending of The Blacklist. And therein lies the dilemma.
With an episode so crammed with drama and incident (not to mention a few deft comedy touches) what is a writer to do? Describe the whole shebang, including the heart-wrenching surprises? Or leave it all vague and mysterious, tormenting the poor reader with phrases like “You won’t want to miss this episode!” or “Check out Reddington’s latest summer fedora!”
Nowadays people have merely to go online to learn what happens to their favorite characters in their favorite series. There’s no guessing, no cliffhangers. Unless the viewer is determined to let the show flow organically and never seek out spoiler alerts. It’s kind of like parents who don’t want to know the sex of their infant, even though the technology exists to find out easily and early on.
‘Konets’
This much we’ll say: the word ‘konets’ is Russian for ‘end.’ So who and what comes to an end in season eight of The Blacklist? If you want to speculate, instead of cheating by looking it up online, you might start with James Spader. Who plays the quirky killer Raymond Reddington. Except he’s not Raymond Reddington. He assumed that identity 30 years before the series starts. Or did he? The way the writers are pretzeling things around, there’s no telling WHO he really is. Maybe Elvis. Good thing there’s a season 9 available on Netflix. There might be some more startling revelations. But it’s obvious that Reddington is not expendable. Without him there is no The Blacklist series. That would be like trying to film Seinfeld without Jerry. So that leaves everyone else in the cast. Will they all survive to season nine?
No comment
Here’s what you need to know to make you so curious about the ending, the konets, that you’ll have to watch it at some time soon or go stark raving mad. Reddington asks Elizabeth Keen to kill him. Why? Because he’s terminally ill. And because he wants her to take over his criminal empire by showing his crooked colleagues that she’s strong enough to bump him off.
Does she do it? No comment.
It still beats playing Microsoft games.
