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Tom Keen's undercover identity is safe for the time being.
On Thursday's episode of The Blacklist: Redemption, Scottie (Famke Janssen) came thisclose to learning that the employee she knows as Tom (Ryan Eggold) is actually her supposedly dead son, Christopher.
A private investigator hired by Scottie to look into Christopher's disappearance gives Scottie an adoption file that seems to indicate Christopher was adopted by a family named Phelps shortly after he went missing 30 years prior. But when Scottie goes to see the couple, they tell her that they were informed Christopher's real mother was a drug addict, and show her a picture of their son "Jacob" as a young boy with a huge birthmark on the side of his neck. Not recalling her son having any birthmarks, Scottie believes she's hit a dead end.
The Blacklist: Redemption: Ryan Eggold breaks down Tom's dilemma
However, in a big gotcha! moment, Tom later learns that the private investigator actually works for his father Howard (Terry O'Quinn), and while he did give Scottie the correct information about Tom/Chris' adoption, he and Howard hired actors to play the Phelpses and show Scottie a fake photograph to convince her that the intel was no good. But, the investigator warns, this will only buy them time; Scottie's definitely going to find out what's really going on eventually.
And he's probably right -- Scottie's apparently already got her suspicions about Tom, as she tasks Solomon (Edi Gathegi) with tracking him after she hears that Tom has an "anonymous source" who apparently has some information about the case they're investigating.
Which brings us to another puzzling twist. When Tom meets with Howard (aka his "anonymous source") in Washington Square Park towards the beginning of the episode -- and in a panic because he's overheard the PI handing the adoption file over to Scottie -- Howard immediately gives him the name of the man responsible for the case-of-the-week: a heist involving computer hackers, a prison break, and a corrupt owner of an intelligence security company. Seems like Howard has his tentacles in everything.
...Which begs the question, can Tom trust him? Even amid Tom's concerns about his cover being blown, Howard is singularly focused on exposing the mysterious "Whitehall" operation he claims Scottie's been running. As Howard explains to Tom, "Whitehall" is an unexplained item in the Halcyon budget that pertains to a warehouse in South Africa. When Howard hired a private investigator to look into the matter, the man mysteriously disappeared, shortly before Scottie tried to force Howard out of the organization, and possibly tried to have him killed. Recently, Howard discovered that Scottie is exchanging coded messages with someone and believes these messages are the key to figuring out what this black op was. Even though Tom's skeptical, Howard insists that if Scottie starts to trust Tom enough, she'll tell him what the project is.
Complicating matters from a viewer's perspective is how vulnerable Scottie seems in this episode when she believes she may have a shot at reconnecting with Christopher. We get a glimpse into her sad relationship (if you can call it that) with her escort, "Trevor" (Dan Amboyer), who she says she keeps going back to because he's hot and isn't intimidated by her, even though she doesn't even know his real name.
As Scottie explains to Kat (Theodora Miranne) when she's over the moon at the prospect of Christopher being alive, she'd love to be able to celebrate the news with Trevor -- but unfortunately he has "plans" (i.e. another client) that night. And later, when a devastated Scottie is drowning her sorrows after meeting with the couple she believed to be Christopher's adoptive parents, she tells Kat that she's going to Trevor for comfort because he ended up having a cancellation, and time with him is better than therapy.
But there's drama brewing as far as that relationship is concerned as well. When Scottie tasks Kat with bringing Trevor breakfast because she has to cancel on him at the start of the episode, Kat immediately reacts to him in a super flirtatious (yet still a little judge-y) way. He invites her to "have breakfast with him" in Scottie's stead, and while we don't see what goes on between them, he texts Kat later that night and thanks her for a lovely breakfast (hmm), also divulging that his real name is Dan (heh), which is more information than he's ever shared with Scottie. Oh, and that client who canceled on him? Kat.
A love triangle is the last thing Scottie needs right now.
The Blacklist: Redemption airs Thursdays at 10/9c on NBC.