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The title of The Blacklist Season 9 Episode 18 might have sounded familiar for long-time fans of the show, and there’s a good reason for that. The episode introduced the son of a blacklister criminal the task force dealt with in season 6. Park (Laura Sohn) faces difficulties due to a past injury, and Cooper (Harry Lennix) and Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff) dig into Tyson LaCroix. Meanwhile, Red searches for answers to his suspicion that Mr. Kaplan is still alive.

[Spoiler warning: This article contains spoilers for The Blacklist Season 9 Episode 18, “Laszlo Jankowics.”]

Diany Rodriguez as Weecha Xiu, James Spader as Raymond Reddington in The Blacklist Season 9. Red and Weecha sit at a table waiting.
Diany Rodriguez as Weecha Xiu, James Spader as Raymond Reddington in ‘The Blacklist’ Season 9 | Will Hart /NBC

Laszlo Jankowics gets high on his own supply

The Blacklist Season 9 Episode 18 opens with Red paying Mr. Kaplan’s sister Maureen (Susan Pellegrino) a visit. He informs her of his sneaking suspicion that Mr. Kaplan could be alive. Maureen tells Red she hasn’t seen her sister but informs him that Kaplan was “seeing” a woman named Clara Moore (Winsome Brown) around the time of her death.

This week’s blacklister criminal Laszlo Jankowics (Alexander Pobutsky) is a bit of a blast from the past. It turns out that Laszlo is the son of Marko Jankowics, a drug lord who specialized in psychedelics. Ressler killed Marko in season 6, but it seems that his son has taken over the family business. However, Laszlo is considerably more unhinged. He has been getting high on his own supply, so much so that the LSD permanently damaged his brain and he hallucinates a pet lion wherever he goes.

Alexander Pobutsky as Laszlo Jankowics in The Blacklist Season 9. Laszlo wears a brown jacket and stands in a room looking surprised.
Alexander Pobutsky as Laszlo Jankowics in ‘The Blacklist’ Season 9 | Will Hart/NBC

Laszlo infiltrates a pharmaceutical company meeting in an attempt to kill Dr. Wallace Avery (John Rothman), who is discussing the prospect of manufacturing LSD into a pharmaceutical drug. Avery manages to escape, though there are multiple bodies left behind in his wake. Using ballistics from the crime scene, the task force hunts down Sebastian Grant (Ben Thompson). He informs Park and Dembe (Hisham Tawfiq) that Avery worked for Marko in the past. Avery’s attempt to create legal, pharmaceutical LSD with Laszlo’s product doesn’t sit well with him.

Alina grapples with her own limitations while Cooper and Ressler search for answers

Throughout The Blacklist Season 9 Episode 18, Aram (Amir Arison) is working on the annual reviews for the rest of the task force. Park subtly requests that Aram not mention the migraines she has been getting since getting hit by Benjamin T. Okara’s directed energy weapon, insisting that she is much better.

However, when Dembe and Park track down Laszlo and attempt to apprehend him, things go awry. Park grapples with Laszlo in a freight container, but when a gun goes off it triggers one of her migraines and Laszlo escapes. This leads Park to realize she might need to be taken out of the field.

While Park and Dembe go after Laszlo, Cooper and Ressler spend the episode digging into Tyson LaCroix. Ressler realizes that LaCroix and Reginald Cole were scamming people by threatening non-existent criminal lawsuits. Cooper is frustrated by how giddy Ressler is about the ingenuity of the scam, given that Cooper is facing years in prison. Cooper yells at Ressler, but eventually apologizes, realizing that the scam could potentially help them.

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‘The Blacklist’ Season 9 Episode 18 ended on an intense cliffhanger

Red enlists Rogelio’s (Gerardo Rodriguez) help in tracking down Avery. Meanwhile, he helps Rogelio study for his upcoming citizenship test. Red sets up a meeting with Laszlo, pretending to deliver Avery to him as a show of good faith. However, Red (fake) shoots Avery, causing Laszlo to call in his cleaner who is none other than Clara Moore.

When Clara shows up she is shocked to find Red waiting for her. It turns out that Clara truly didn’t know that Kaplan might be alive. That is, until a few days ago when she received a note instructing her to meet Kaplan at an abandoned building. Red goes to the meeting place and sees Kaplan through the window. However, Weecha (Diany Rodriguez) decides to go in first to get Kaplan, but the whole thing turns out to be a trap. The building explodes, leaving Weecha’s fate unknown.

New episodes of The Blacklist air Fridays at 8 p.m. EST on NBC.

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