The Blacklist S05E03: The Celluloid Dungeon

“Miss Rebecca Thrall”, aired October 11, 2017 IMDB

The main plot of “Miss Rebecca Thrall” concerns a scheme by Waterday Financial to take out life insurance policies on poor people, and then bribe police officers with loans to kill them, and collect the money. 

The main agent of this operation is Miss Rebecca Thrall (played by Sarah Wynter) who negotiates with both the victims and the killers. She also keeps a man in a full rubber suit and hood bound to a St. Andrew’s cross in her basement. 

Miss Thrall is visually fetishized, even before she’s shown to be a dominatrix. When she enters a scene, the camera focuses on her spike heels first, and she usually wears black, form-fitting clothing. She’s icy cold and professional as she manipulates the poor and distressed people. 

When the FBI raids the corporate office, we learn that the bound man is the CEO and her partner in crime at Waterday. She kills him without a moment’s hesitation by putting the rubber hood on him and constricting his breathing tube. There’s no mention of what she did with the body. Later she attempts to kill the police officer she bribed into committing murder, which leads to her being arrested. 

It’s clear that the CEO knows about insurance/murder scam, and may have started it. Thrall is the one who negotiates with the victims and the assassins, but she’s not the only person responsible for this crime. She is singled out as a more hateable villain. The sadomasochistic element is there mainly for sex appeal and to make Thrall as monstrous as possible. Her sexual deviance reflects her moral deviance and vice versa, a motif we’ve seen many times before.