The Blacklist: Redemption: Tom Gets Yet Another Blast from the Past

Tom Keen (Ryan Eggold) was reunited with an old childhood friend on Thursday's episode of The Blacklist: Redemption -- sort of.

The episode, "Kevin Jensen," finds Halcyon trying to rescue the titular kidnapped journalist (Kyle Harris), who's been arrested in the Middle East and coerced into confessing to espionage. And the case is extra personal for Scottie (Famke Janssen), who is extremely close with the Jensen family and has been ever since her own son Christopher (aka Tom) disappeared when he was four years old. (Kevin and Christopher were schoolmates.) The Jensens took Scottie under their wing after Christopher's disappearance, and it's clear that Scottie thinks of Kevin as her adoptive son.

As the team tries to free Kevin (including a failed weapons smuggling ruse by Tom and a shootout with border officials), we become privy to a conversation between Scottie and the CIA director, in which she basically says that Halcyon has been operating illicitly for so long that there's no way they will be shut down at this point -- despite the fact that the Kevin Jensen mission was "extra illegal," since the government had explicitly warned Scottie & Co. not to interfere.

The Blacklist: Redemption's Ryan Eggold weighs in on the sexual tension between Scottie and Tom

Unfortunately, the mission is ultimately unsuccessfully, and as Tom tries desperately to revive Kevin after he's wounded in the aforementioned shootout, we get the sense that in some twisted way, he's trying to prevent his mother from suffering yet another loss of her child. It's Tom who delivers the bad news of Kevin's death to Scottie, and we get to see a different side of the seemingly unflappable woman as she drops the phone, weeping.

But there's another twist -- Kevin actually wasn't just a journalist after all. He was an operative placed in the field by the CIA, but his real identity needs to be kept under wraps even after his death in order to protect national security. And yes, this means Scottie has to lie to his mother/her best friend going forward... leading to an awkward moment that passes between her and Tom when Scottie laments the fact that Kevin's mother never had any idea who he really was. Looks like these two have a lot in common.

The Blacklist: Redemption airs Thursdays at 10/9c on NBC.