‘The Blacklist’ Season 7, Episode 16 Recap: “Nyle Hatcher”

Kailey
16 Min Read
Courtesy of NBC

If you missed last week’s recap, check it out here.

We see a plane crash site, 10 months ago. A crew is there to find victims and one of the crewmen, Hatcher, looks at a victim named Mr. Geller. He takes a picture of Mr. Geller and brings him back to an identification site. Next, a woman knocks on a hotel door and Hatcher answers it, inviting her in. She’s wary of Hatcher when he reveals her real name, Angela, and reveals information of her past. He has news that will change her life.

Liz and the PI Esi Jackson are at Ilya’s apartment where he was hiding and Liz is looking for a bug. Esi insists she looked everywhere and Liz tells her that she was made, so Ilya must’ve known she was watching him. Esi tells her she should’ve been honest and Liz says she wanted to ask him some questions. Esi says that it seems the man was running from his life.

Courtesy of NBC

Red and Dembe are meeting with Imam Sadiq Asmal, and he tells them that the FBI’s counterterrorism team came to him. He wants Red to ask the Task Force what they know. Red tells Imam he will do what he can and and then receives a call. He answers and asks if it was done. Esi, in Ilya’s apartment, tells him that Liz won’t find out where Ilya is going. Red hangs up and tells Dembe that Liz knows he isn’t Ilya and he wonders what else she knows. Dembe says to ask Liz, who’s waiting in the park for him.

Courtesy of NBC

Red meets Liz in the park. She has a case from Liz’s time in the Mobile Psych Unit. He tells her that now they are on the same side, and what’s important to her is important to him. Red asks Liz for a favor: to look into Dembe’s Imam. Before she does that, he wants to know about the case. Liz briefs the team on “The Boneyard Killer.” She tells them that he buries bodies under freshly buried coffins and most of his victims are prostitutes. The victims were found with dirt in their lungs from being buried alive and unconscious, pumped full of sodium thiopental. As she briefs them, we see Nyle Hatcher in a bathroom with a plastic sheet. Liz tells the team that the Bureau didn’t agree with her profile of the killer when she was on the case. She believes he doesn’t want to kill and has another motive. A flash flood brought up several bodies, one being Mara James, so Cooper has the team talk to the Medical Examiner. As the team breaks off, Liz asks Cooper for a favor for Reddington. The counterterrorism team came to Dembe’s Imam and Red wants to know what they found. As Liz and Cooper talk, Imam is kidnapped.

Liz tells Ressler at the ME’s office that Ilya is gone. The ME comes in to tell them that this victim is connected to their killer because of the evidence found. He shows Liz and Ressler what he found interesting; she had a baby a month before she was killed. In the bathroom where Hatcher was, we see Angela in the bathtub giving birth. Before she can hold her, Nyle quickly holds the baby and says they have work to do.

Ressler and Park meet with Mara James’ family, the victim found from the flood and tells them they put out an alert for Mara’s baby. Her family is shocked and didn’t know she’d had a child. Mara’s sister tells Ressler and Park that Mara called about 10 months ago, telling them she had found this guy who had a plan to get her out of her line of work.

Courtesy of NBC

 

Red, Dembe, and Cooper are looking for evidence of what happened to Imam. Cooper hands Dembe the case file Keen requested and Dembe recognizes people from the services at the Mosque. Two members have been smuggling shipping containers from Syria. Red tells Cooper that there are certain territories set up and there is a man in Queens who holds the shipping territory for Latakia, Syria. The midwife who helped deliver Angela’s baby is about to run errands and tells Angela she received a message for her from Geoffrey Entz, an attorney.

Hatcher is at a crime scene with several victims and receives a call from Angela. She tells him the attorney received the letter but doesn’t want to discuss it over the phone. She is worried but he assures her that he’ll coach her through it. He hangs up and is interested in one of the victims so he takes their picture.

Aram tells Cooper and Liz that he found the identity of Mara James’ child from DNA that was passed from the placenta into Mara’s blood. The father is Jonathan McClaire and Cooper wants to bring him in but there’s a catch: McClaire died 11 months before Mara was murdered. Hatcher is seen looking up Roger Ashby, the most recent of his picture victims. Another woman, Kendra, is meeting with Hatcher and he offers her a way to get out. She asks how much and he hands her a file which convinces her to agree.

Red meets with Costas Korba, who holds the Latakia, Syria territory and tells him that he wants to know what Jalal Abbas is bringing into the country from Syria and what the shipments contain. Red threatens Korba’s business by sabotaging his truck carrying beef. He tells Red that he doesn’t know what the shipments were carrying, but where they went.

Ressler and Park meet with Mrs. McClaire and ask her about Mara James. She tells them that Mara signed an NDA about the fact that Jonathan had fathered her child and Mrs. McClaire settled. She says that she sealed the settlement because she lives off the idea of a “perfect marriage.” She saw the DNA test of the child so she knows that it belongs to Jonathan. Park and Ressler meet Liz in her office and she says she found torn ligaments in the victims from eight years ago that suggest child birth. All the victims were mothers and more than likely had secret settlements. Liz recruits Red to get ahold of the secret settlements.

Red meets with Mickey, the file clerk. Mickey tells Red about his wife’s angina and Red offers to help. At the Post Office, the team find that all the fathers died before the mother had their children, and the mothers died soon after. All the fathers died in bizarre accidents and were cleared of foul play. Suspiciously, Nyle Hatcher signed the fathers’ death certificates in all different states and worked near the cemetery where the bodies were buried. Cooper sends Ressler and Keen to Hatcher’s current place of work at a funeral home. Cooper asks Liz if they found anything about Dembe’s Imam and Liz said Red and Dembe got a lead on the smugglers. Keen and Ressler head to the funeral home where Hatcher works and he isn’t there. Ressler and Liz have a warrant to search his office where they find pictures of women, his computer, and a locked freezer that contains a canteen.

Kendra is brought in to be questioned by Aram as he shows her pictures of the woman that Nyle Hatcher murdered. After not seeming to cooperate, she says she knows Nyle. Liz and Ressler tell Cooper that Hatcher was in Baltimore where the ferry-boat accident occurred. When there is a mass casualty, many morticians are brought in to help identify bodies and that’s how Hatcher is connected to the victims who fathered the children. Kendra tells Aram that Hatcher knew her past and could make it go away if she became pregnant and got money from the man who would father her child. She would receive money from the settlement and the children would be dropped off at a fire station to be adopted. Liz and Ressler tell Cooper that they found sperm in Hatcher’s office and he impregnates the women with the sperm from rich, dead men since the sperm are viable for 36 hours postmortem. The women would make a paternity claim and the widows would settle quietly to avoid scandal. Kendra says that she was supposed to meet with Roger Ashby tomorrow, but Aram tells her that Ashby died yesterday. Aram realizes that Hatcher was going to claim the money and kill Kendra.

Angela meets with Geoffrey Entz and signs the settlement. Aram tells the team that Kendra isn’t pregnant and Park says she found information about an Abraham Geller who died 10 months ago. There’s a chance the woman who was impregnated had his baby and made a claim. Cooper tells Park and Ressler to find the attorney for Geller as Angela calls Hatcher. He tells her to drop off the baby at the fire station and meet him at Cedar Wind. Ressler and Park arrive at Entz’s office and he says that he met with Angela and wired the money about an hour before. Angela meets Hatcher at Cedar Wind and brings baby Lily. Hatcher meets her at her car and injects her in the neck with sodium thiopental.

Aram tells them that Angela’s cell pinged near Cedar Wind Cemetery. Cooper tells Ressler and sends Keen there to meet. Hatcher is seen finishing the grave and goes to Angela’s car. Angela is awake and he apologizes, saying he didn’t want her to see this. He injects her again, throws her body in the grave, and starts to fill it with dirt. Dembe arrives at Jalal’s and a shootout ensues. Hatcher continues to bury Angela while Red arrives at Jalal’s to ask him where Imam Asmal is. Hatcher gets into Angela’s car and is about to leave when Ressler and Keen arrive. Keen asks where Angela is and he denies everything. Liz tells everyone to pan out and find a fresh grave. Red hears coughing from another area of the house and asks where the basement is, which Jalal says he doesn’t have. Red and one of his men rearrange some furniture and find an opening in the floor. Ressler calls out that he found something. Liz and Ressler dig and find Angela. Dembe, Red, and his men go into the opening to find several families trapped down there.

Nyle is being interrogated by Ressler and Keen. He says that he needed people who were willing to break the law and the women who came to his hotel room achieved that. He tells them that he took money from people who died because they wouldn’t miss it and instead of dropping the children off at the fire station, he has them all in one place living together.

The families in the basement are refugees and Jalal was trying to help them. He thought Imam Asmal was taken because the FBI thought he knew, but he didn’t. Red gets a call from Cooper and he says that units are on their way to the extremist’s safe house but Red tells him that they are humanitarians. Hatcher is seen getting taken into custody and Park tells Liz her profile was right. Liz says they need to reach out to the widows to tell them their husband’s didn’t cheat. She tells the team that Child Services is reaching out to the family of the parents who are willing to take care of the children. Angela is on house arrest but gets to keep her daughter.

Liz arrives at a kitchen to meet Red as Dembe and Jalal are feeding the refugees. Dembe’s Imam’s disappearance is ongoing and Red feels he’s to blame. Liz meets with Esi and discovers that Reddington got to her and hid Ilya from her. Before Reddington warned her, she had Ilya’s apartment bugged and says there are archives that Koslov is obsessed with. Imam Asmal is seen and Katarina Rostova returns to say they have a lot to talk about.

Ressler’s brother confronts him and warns him about digging up Ray Field, with all the secrets under it. Dembe tells Red that Jalal thanks him for everything. Red starts to cough and there is a knock at the door of the kitchen. A woman who was at Imam’s office found a fingerprint on Imam’s desk of a man who’s been in prison 15 years, Arturo Ruel. Dembe goes to ask Reddington but he finds him on the floor, unresponsive.

Check out next episode’s promo below!

The Blacklist airs Friday at 8 p.m. EST on NBC.

Nerds and Beyond is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Share This Article
By Kailey
Follow:
Kailey has been a writer for Nerds and Beyond since 2018. She received her bachelors degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders in May of 2020. Some of her favorite TV shows are The Blacklist, Supernatural, and Prodigal Son, to name a few. She also loves all things Disney! You can check her out on social media @kaileygross.
Leave a comment