"Luther Braxton" is the ninth episode of the second season of American crime drama The Blacklist, which aired on February 1, 2015 after NBC concluded coverage of Super Bowl XLIX.
News broadcasts highlight the military's capture in Asia of Reddington (James Spader), whose current whereabouts are undisclosed to the public.
They inform Cooper of the situation, prompting him to dispatch agents Keen (Megan Boone), Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff) and Navabi (Mozhan Marnò) to the Factory to extract Reddington.
Reddington explains that he planned his arrest to stop Braxton from obtaining "The Fulcrum", a data file containing highly confidential and compromising information on many very powerful and important people.
Reddington's helpers 'wake him up', he obtains and brandishes a shotgun, making his way through the wild prison inmates until he arrives at Braxton's location, shoots his men down and subdues him.
Series creator Jon Bokenkamp—in an interview for The Hollywood Reporter—said that the two-part story arc resembles a "big heightened event movie in a very contained way.
It's an easy show to sort of dive right into at this point, but also I think we've designed some really fun revelations and some [surprising payoffs] for people who are ardent fans.
[3] In regard to preparation for new viewers, executive producer John Eisendrath said in an interview for Entertainment Weekly:Yes, we knew that it was going to be the Super Bowl.
[7] Jodi Walker of Entertainment Weekly gave the episode a positive review, saying: Rather than give us an interesting one-week character, we got a baddie to sink our teeth into with the likes of Ron Perlman and his mysterious Belgrade references, and rather than skirting around the lingering issues from November's midseason finale, the show went full-frontal Fulcrum.