‘The Blacklist’ Season 4 Spoilers: Tom Betrays Liz, Puts Their Daughter In More Danger In Episode 4? [RECAP]

“The Blacklist” Season 4, episode 4 saw Tom (Ryan Eggold) taking matters into his own hands.

In the fourth episode of “The Blacklist” Season 4, Kirk (Ulrich Thomsen) reaches out to Liz (Megan Boone) and tells her that he has set up a feed where she can watch her daughter Agnes. Liz then tells him that she already knows Kirk tracked her down because he needs her or Agnes’ blood to cure his rare genetic disorder. However, Kirk insists that though he does need their blood, what he truly wants is to be together with his daughter and granddaughter.

Tom suggests that they trace the video feed to find out where Kirk is keeping Agnes, but Liz tells him that she’s got another plan in mind. Her plan involves earning Kirk’s trust and deceiving him into thinking that Liz cares for him, so he will eventually let her see her daughter again. Tom agrees to go with her plan, but he later betrays her and does his own sleuthing. He has a man trace the feed and shows up at the location where, unsurprisingly, there were only cameras and no trace of Agnes. Kirk catches wind of what he did and shuts off Liz’s only link to Agnes.

It looks like their only hope of getting anywhere near Kirk now is Red’s (James Spader) plan. The latter is tracking down Owen Ayers, who goes by the alias Gaia and is a “stealth eco-terrortist." Gaia has made it his mission to “protect the earth from the greatest threat to its existence as we know it,” which mainly involves killing innocent people and committing acts of eco-terrorism to draw attention to certain toxic economical practices. As to why he became an eco-terrorist, the Post Office finds out that Ayers used to be a Navy officer and helicopter pilot, but he was discharged in 2011 after his unit flew through an unscheduled radioactive gas venting at Fukushima and he suffered radiation poisoning. However, Ayers wasn’t the only victim. His young son has a major deformity covering half of his face, which was apparently caused by the radiation that contaminated his Ayers’ blood.

Ayers’ newest act involves recreating the Fukushima nuclear meltdown on the Hudson River. Cooper (Harry Lennix), Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff) and Aram (Amir Arison) manage to stop him from causing a nuclear incident that would have affected thousands of people.

Despite their successful mission, things are tense in the Post Office after Samar (Mozhan Mamo) asked to be transferred. While Ressler tries to convince her to stay, Aram only congratulates and wishes her well when he realizes nothing will change her mind. However, after she criticized him for hesitating to kill Ayers, Aram reaches his breaking point and goes off on her, saying, “You know when I congratulated you on submitting your transfer request? I didn’t mean it, I was trying to make you feel better … What I wanted to say was, I’m glad you’re going. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t go fast enough.”

Meanwhile, the reason why Red was hunting down Ayers is revealed near the end of “The Blacklist” Season 4, episode 4 when Red meets up with Ayers’ wife, Maya, and their son. It turns out Ayers’ and his son, Skyler, have a rare blood disorder and share a hematologist with Kirk, Dr. Sebastian Reifler. Red tells Maya that both he and Ayers are no longer threats to her and her son and asks to meet with Skyler’s doctor. In the end, Red does manage to track down Dr. Reifler and tells him that he wants to accompany the doctor to his next appointment with Kirk.

Find out if Red finally manages to close in on Kirk when “The Blacklist” Season 4, episode 5 airs Thursday, Oct. 20 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.