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eaglechica19 · 8 years ago

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IS LEONARD CAUL THE MEMORY SNATCHER? (AND OTHER FUN THEORIES FROM 4.19)

@redandlizzie this is for you ;-)

Okay, so pure speculation here, but I wanted to look at this Dr. Krilov guy a little closer and theorize about the bombshell he dropped last night - that he supposedly treated Lizzie a second time two years ago and erased another memory of hers...

Also, were we given the final clue as to who was actually fighting with Lizzie’s bio dad when she shot her father the night of the fire?

Time to go down the rabbit hole again folks :)

So last night we met THIS Blacklister, one “Dr. Bogdam Krilov.”

Red tells Lizzie that Dr. Krilov is able to suppress and change memories from his patients. Red also admits to having hired Dr. Krilov when Lizzie was a little girl in order to help her forget the traumatic experience of killing her father.

So the episode occurs, and by the end, we have Dr. Krilov in FBI custody, with Lizzie questioning him.

Dr. Krilov admits to Lizzie that he did indeed change/suppress her memory from the night of the fire, just as Red stated at the beginning of the episode. But then Krilov tells Lizzie that he has actually treated her a second time, only two years ago...

Krillov: “You don’t remember me, do you?”

Lizzie: “From twenty five years ago? No. But then you wouldn’t be very good at your job if I did.”

Krilov: “No, not twenty five years ago. Just two.”

Lizzie: “What are you talking about?”

Krilov: “You were brought to me by a mutual acquaintance of ours who wanted me to take away certain memories from you.”

Lizzie: “What memories?”

Krilov: “Let’s just say you had uncovered a certain truth about Raymond Reddington and he couldn’t have that.”

Lizzie: “You’re lying.”

Krilov: “No. I’m not lying. And I think you know that. So let’s make a deal. Full immunity. I walk. In exchange for the memories I took from you.”

Lizzie: “That’s not going to happen.”

Krilov: “That is a shame. For all of us. But more so for you than for me, I suspect.”

Lizzie then calls Red and asks him about this supposed second memory suppression, and Red is genuinely confused.

He tells Lizzie that he only ever hired Krilov the one time, when Lizzie was a child. (And Red doesn’t lie to Lizzie.) He wonders outloud if Krilov’s statement to Lizzie about a second session is, for lack of a better phrase, simply a mindf**k by the man, stating, “Kaplan is using Krilov. She’s using him to pull at threads. To continue to unravel my life. He’s sidelined Ressler. He’s trying to do the same to you.”

So from Red’s statements, it sounds like he believes that a second memory session never occurred and that Krilov is simply blowing proverbial smoke.

But I personally don’t think he was. I think Krilov was telling the truth. But if Red didn’t hire him again, then who did? And what major discovery did Lizzie make that someone felt needed to be kept from her?

Let’s look at the options and what criteria needs to be met in order to be that person...

Krilov states that it’s someone who is a “mutual acquaintance” of both her and himself.

This means that it is someone who has been involved in this mystery likely since the very beginning.

It would have to be someone who is very familiar with Red, possibly knowing his “deep secret.”

It would probably be someone who has knowledge of the night of the fire and the Fulcrum.

So who can we check off the list right away?

Tom, Jacob, Christopher, Tim, Whatever Name He Is Using Now

Tom likes to act like he has all the answers, especially when he’s talking to Lizzie in regards to Red, but as we saw when Tom was talking with Jolene Parker (before he killed her), he actually has no idea what the real connection is between Red and Lizzie. I highly doubt he knows Dr. Krilov either. And he definitely doesn’t know anything about the night of the fire or the Fulcrum.

Kate

It also can’t be Kate, as we learned in this episode that even though she was aware of Dr. Krilov from the time Red used him twenty five years ago, she never actually met him before. Krilov himself has no idea who Kate is when she first introduced herself, asking her, “Who are you?” I also don’t think it was Kate for the simple reason that if she was aware of some deep dark secret of Red’s, there is no way she would take that memory from Lizzie in order to keep that quiet. She would use it in order to hurt him and take him down.

Laurel Hitchens (or the Cabal)

Even though it appeared at first that Hitchens was in on the memory manipulation of Ressler last night, we later learned that that was not the case. Laurel had no idea about Kate’s plan to manipulate Ressler’s memory in order to make him go after her and get himself arrested. She also had no idea that Dr. Krilov even existed.

Kate wasn’t doing it as any favor to Laurel though either - she was doing it in hopes of discrediting Ressler and getting him arrested. Him possibly being successful and killing Laurel probably would have been a bonus for Kate, but not of that much importance. And like Kate, I don’t think Laurel or the Cabal knows Red’s deep secret, and if they did, I highly doubt they’d want to keep it under wraps either for the same reason Kate wouldn’t - they want him gone.

(KRILOV ALSO SAID IT WAS A ‘HE’ WHO HIRED HIM...)

Sam

Already dead at this point...

Harold

We have no indication at this time that Harold knew anything about Dr. Krilov before last night. He also doesn’t seem to know the connection between Red and Lizzie yet, so I doubt it’s him. Harold also doesn’t know about the night of the fire - so he’s more than likely out as a possibility as well.

Dom

At this moment, I still don’t think Dom has had any interactions with Lizzie yet, even off screen. I also personally don’t think Dom knows Red’s deep dark secret. Besides, Dom wasn’t even in the story yet two years ago.

Kirk

Neither was he.

So where does that leave us? How about this guy?...

Leonard Caul

Exactly two years ago, we were on episode 2.19 - “Leonard Caul.”

Leonard Caul knows Lizzie. He knows Red. He very well may know Dr. Krilov.

Leonard Caul probably knows about the night of the fire and the search for the Fulcrum, as he was the one who created it, and more than likely created the interface for it too. He is also obviously aware of the damning files that are contained on it.

Like Red, Caul had to disappear after the events of the Fulcrum, as the Cabal was after him as well because of what it contained. (Caul isn’t even his real name, but is an alias used to help him hide.) He has been in hiding for decades, and the Cabal is still after him, as we saw by his slashed throat and missing finger.

While he may not have known Red personally until this episode, we learned in in 2.19 and the subsequent episodes that both Caul and Red had a mutual association through Alan Fitch.

Alan Fitch told Red before he died to go to his safe in St. Petersburg. Once there, Red located a business card with a phone number on it. We later learn that the phone number connects Red with Leonard Caul.

Caul tells us that Fitch wanted Red and him to meet once he learned that he was being “outed” from the Cabal. He knew his time was running out. In my opinion, Fitch was always sort of rooting for Red.

Somehow, (as this part still remains a mystery) Red knows the location of the mysterious limousine hidden under the Kenyon family compound AND has the key for it.

There is some speculation that Red knows the location for the car and has the key for it because it is the car that he used to drive while spying on Katerina and Lizzie’s father while working undercover at the Summer Palace.

That theory can found here.

And for that theory to work, you must be on board with one of the “Imposter Red” theories as well.

Which can be found here: “Red Is An Imposter” Theory

And here: “Lizzie’s Father Stole Red’ Identity” Theory (This will be posted and linked hopefully in the next day or so)

Red gets into the driver’s seat and the car starts right up, even though it looks like that battery should have died years ago. Inside the trunk Red finds the interface for the Fulcrum.

Red already has the key for the interface, as he somehow knew that it was located on the property of Maddox Beck in “The Front.”

In “Leonard Caul,” after Red is shot, Dembe sends Lizzie to Red’s secret apartment to retrieve the key from his desk. As she is leaving however, she is confronted by Caul, who tells Lizzie that if she trusts Red, she’ll give him the Fulcrum. Lizzie does, and Caul shows her the files located on the device. Caul is obviously on Red’s side at this point.

Now here’s the interesting thing... We know from Caul’s own words that he created the Fulcrum. (We still do not know however, how or where he retrieved all of this damning evidence on the Cabal, why he felt the need to personally create the device that could store all of those files, or who told him to make it.)

We also know that Lizzie’s father seemed to have been the one who stole it all those years ago as we saw in the flashback fire scenes... (It is more than likely Lizzie’s father who hid her in the closet that night. He also put her stuffed bunny in her arms - the bunny that contained the Fulcrum which Lizzie later found while in her motel room.)

In ‘Luther Braxton, Part II,’ we learn that both Red and Katerina went to his house in Cape May to not only find Lizzie, who had been taken from the Summer Palace, but to retrieve the Fulcrum as well. That night turned into the night of the fire.

By this point if you still believe Red is Lizzie’s father, you’re already out of the game and should just stop reading...

So if Lizzie’s father initially stole the Fulcrum as we have been led to believe, isn’t it possible that he stole it from the creator - Leonard Caul?

Now here’s where the Imposter Theor(ies) comes into play...

If Lizzie’s father was the one who stole it from Caul, then Caul may very well know the secret that Lizzie somehow figured out (off screen apparently) about Red.

Either that:

1. Her father stole OUR Red’s identity all those years ago and Red has been trying ever since to use Lizzie to find out the truth about what happened to his family and clear his name and/or seek revenge

2. OUR Red is in fact an imposter who took over the real Raymond Reddington’s identity (after Lizzie killed him the night of the fire) in order to keep Lizzie safe from the Cabal and possibly Russia

More Evidence Pointing To Caul Knowing The ‘Truth...’ About Red:

LEONARD CAUL NEVER CALLS RED BY HIS NAME. EVER. HE ‘REFERS’ TO HIM BY NAME TO OTHER PEOPLE (LIKE LIZ), BUT NEVER DIRECTLY ADDRESSES RED HIMSELF, AS EITHER RED, RAYMOND, OR REDDINGTON ON SCREEN.

We also see Red and Caul working together to help Lizzie against the Cabal while Red is recovering from his gunshot wound over the next several episodes. It can assumed that they are still working together.

He also has apparently been keeping tabs on both Red and Lizzie for quite some time, maybe well before the events we witnessed in 2.19.

In closing, if Caul is truly helping Red to try to take down their common enemy of the Cabal, and he figured out Red’s ultimate secret, he may have worried that Lizzie knowing the truth about Red would put Red at a severe disadvantage in trying to complete his mission, whatever that ultimate mission is.

Now HOW or WHEN did Lizzie supposedly figure out this secret of Red’s?

We haven’t been told yet. But think about this... We did not get to see everything that transpired between Lizzie and Caul in Red’s apartment in 2.19. Most of that happened off screen. Caul could have either accidentally let Red’s secret slip, thinking Lizzie was already aware of it, or perhaps there was something in the Fulcrum or Red’s apartment that tipped her off or triggered a real memory. We simply don’t know. And as of now, like I said above, this theory is complete speculation on my part and has no real evidence proving it.

It IS interesting however to hear Dr. Krilov’s final words to Lizzie during their interaction.

Krilov tells Lizzie he is willing to give her back her stolen memories in exchange for immunity. Lizzie tells him that that’s “not going to happen.” Krilov laments that that is unfortunate, probably more so for Lizzie than anyone else. I think this is a clue that IF this is what the big secret is about Red, (that somehow either her father or Red is an imposter) we won’t find out for quite some time, as TPTB have told us that the connection between Red and Lizzie won't be revealed until the end of the series.

Now off to a more tangent thought regarding the original memory that Red hired Dr. Krilov to suppress...

We know from past episodes that Red had Lizzie’s memory from the night of the fire suppressed in order to protect her from the knowledge that she shot and killed her father.

But last night we learned something new. Dr. Krilov doesn’t just suppress memories, he ALTERS them. This is something that Dr. Orchard warned Lizzie about in ‘Luther Braxton, Part II.’

In the flashback scenes in 2.10 we see Lizzie walking down the hallway towards the open window. At this point you can see two men fighting. The one on the left seems to be wearing a fedora.

Lizzie is then confronted by her younger self, who tries to turn Lizzie away. Lizzie persists, and her younger self runs off screaming down the hall. Lizzie then wakes up and states that she has just seen her father. (This would indicate that Red and her father were the ones fighting in front of the open window.)

Next we have another flashback scene of Lizzie in the hallway approaching the open window again.

We see Lizzie struggling against someone in the hallway who is blocking her path. We are shown present day Red talking to Lizzie, while Lizzie stares at the person in front of her in the flashback. She seems to recognize the person.

She then struggles against the person in the hallway while in the present day, she pushes against Red who is in front of her.

The person blocking her path in the hallway in her flashback is Katerina. You can clearly see the long hair and figure of a woman pushing against Lizzie.

Lizzie looks past Katerina and again sees two men fighting, and just like in her other flashback, we see one of those men wearing a fedora.

In the next part, the two men are still fighting in front of the open window while little Lizzie looks on. We can hear Katerina yelling at someone to “stop,” and “get away.” (For now we are to presume she is yelling this at little Lizzie).

We also hear her father yell “Don’t tempt me!” Meanwhile, present day Red is still trying to turn Lizzie back down the hallway. We see grown Lizzie push past Katerina, followed by little Lizzie screaming.

This is immediately followed by a gunshot and the image of a man putting on a fedora while walking away. Little Lizzie then runs off down the hall to hide in the closet again.

So at this point in the series we are led to believe that Red and Lizzie’s father were fighting in front of the open window while Katerina held little Lizzie back. A gunshot then went off, followed by Red walking away and Lizzie running off down the hallway.

(NOTE: YOU ONLY REALLY SAW THIS FOOTAGE IF YOU SLOWED IT DOWN AND LIGHTENED IT UP, SO I DON’T THINK IT’S SOMETHING TPTB TRULY THOUGHT MOST VIEWERS WOULD SEE CLEARLY.)

Fast forward to 2.22 and we get a new flashback from Lizzie...

When Lizzie shoots Tom Connolly, it triggers a new memory of that night.

Lizzie remembers that she shot her father the night of the fire. She tells Red that she was in the hallway and saw her parents fighting. Her father was hurting her mother, Katerina, and so she picked up the dropped gun and shot him.

So now the question becomes... which memory is the REAL memory, and which is the ALTERED one?

We’ve been led to believe that the real memory is of her parents fighting in front of the open window, because this is the most recent version we have been shown. It is also the one that Lizzie truly seems to ‘remember’ after it is triggered by her shooting of Connolly. But perhaps that is not the case. Perhaps the actual real unaltered memory is the FIRST one we were shown, of Red and Lizzie’s father fighting. This would explain Red’s terrified expression in both 2.10 and 2.22.

Let’s revisit Red’s reaction when Lizzie is reliving her memories in ‘Luther Braxton, Part II’ first.

Red tells Lizzie, “You don’t want to see this. What you want to see, what you need to find, is the Fulcrum.” As present day Lizzie gets more and more agitated, Red becomes nervous, telling her, “Lizzie, turn around. Go back. You don’t want to go in there. Lizzie, turn around and go back. Go back. Go back.”

After the gunshot goes off, Lizzie begins to ‘wake up.’ Red now looks terrified, asking Dr. Orchard...

Red never really finds out what she saw in this scene... only that Lizzie remembers that he was there that night. She doesn’t confront him about supposedly seeing him fighting with her father, so maybe she doesn’t actually realize what she had seen in her memory. Red seems to have decided to let the issue drop at this point, possibly hoping that his secret is safe.

Flash forward again to 2.22 when Red goes to meet Lizzie in the park after she shot Connolly.

Lizzie tells Red, “I remember. I remember everything.”

Red looks terrified at this point. He asks her, “Remember what?”

Lizzie: “The night of the fire. I know what happened. And I understand why you didn’t want me to find out.”

At this, Red looks like a doomed man. Lizzie knows his secret. He is waiting for the hammer to fall.

He literally gulps and has a grimace on his face. He believes Lizzie is about to accuse him of being the reason her father is dead. He is literally bracing for the fall out.

Lizzie: “When I shot Connolly, when I pulled the trigger, it came back to me. It was like I was there. I could hear them arguing. He was hurting her. And I know why my father died that night. I shot him.”

At this, Red seems crestfallen, but relieved. You can see him physically relax at her recollection.

Lizzie continues, “That’s why you blocked my memory. Not to protect yourself. To protect me.”

Red has a shameful look on his face, and mumbles quietly, “Yeah.” He looks beyond guilty at this point.

After last night’s episode, and learning that Lizzie’s memory was not simply suppressed, as Red as told her, but was actually altered by Dr. Krilov, I believe Lizzie has it wrong. Her first memory (the one ironically that she apparently didn’t really ‘see’ clearly in 2.10) was the correct one and that it was in fact Red and her father fighting, and NOT her parents fighting, as she remembered in 2.22.

I always gave Red the benefit of the doubt that the reason he seemed so concerned with Lizzie turning around in the hallway in 2.10 and why he seemed so distraught at the end of 2.22 was because he was simply afraid of Lizzie finding out she killed her father and her having to live with that guilt. But I now think that is only part of it. Red feels guilty because HE was the one fighting with Lizzie’s father when she pulled the trigger and killed her dad, NOT Katerina.

By altering her memory of this event, he succeeded in accomplishing two things:

He is now no longer a part of the original memory, thus he can hide the fact (at least from Lizzie for now) that he is somewhat responsible for her father’s death by her hand.

By replacing himself with Katerina in the memory, it alleviates some of the guilt Lizzie would feel for killing her father. Shooting the man hurting your mother sounds much less harsh than shooting your father while he fights essentially a stranger.

So while I think the fact that Lizzie shot and killed her dad remains canon, I personally believe her memory of it being a fight between her parents is false.

This may have been what has led to all of the guilt felt by Red through the years. The killing of Lizzie’s father led to Katerina’s apparent suicide, thus robbing Lizzie of both of her parents, making Lizzie feel completely responsible for it.

And while technically Red isn’t lying when he tells her again and again that she killed her father and that that’s why he suppressed her memory, he also is intentionally omitting the fact that he was more directly involved than she realizes.

He tries to alleviate some of her misguided self blame (and consequently his own guilt for putting it all on her) by telling her again and again, “You were a child.”

I personally do not think this is the ultimate secret that Red is keeping from Lizzie, (as he has admitted similar bad things to her in the past after she has confronted him about them) and I also do not believe this is what the person removed from Lizzie’s memory two years ago but I think it IS an important one.

(If it WAS Caul who removed the memory, I don’t think he would know who exactly was fighting with Lizzie’s dad that night. That’s a VERY specific thing to know unless you were there.)

If this proves to be true, (that Red was the one fighting with her father instead of it being her mother as she remembers) it essentially led to a snow ball effect of horrible events for Lizzie through the years.

Just one more thing for Red to feel guilty about.

Anyways, those are my thoughts... hopefully if some of you actually read this far, you enjoyed it. And as usual, I’d love to hear your ideas and discussion on it!

Thanks as always!!!

#theblackist #nbcblacklist #james spader #megan boone #raymond reddington #elizabeth keen #red reddington #imposter theory #leonard caul #4.19 #the real memory #what is red hiding?

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