The Blacklist
Raymond Reddington is a notorious criminal who is wanted by law enforcements agents. He agrees to help the police catch other criminals on the condition he gets to work with a new agent, Elizabeth.
TV Series 2013 – 2023
10 Seasons – 218 Episodes
With a few exceptions, an episode features one of the global criminals whom Raymond Reddington assists the task force in hunting down and capturing. In every such episode, the rank and name or alias of the featured criminal on Red’s blacklist are displayed at the close of the opening sequence. Otherwise, only the episode name is shown. The action takes place primarily in present-day Washington D.C., although other locations around the world are featured occasionally.
Raymond “Red” Reddington, an ex-US Naval Intelligence officer who had disappeared twenty years earlier to become number 4 on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, surrenders himself to FBI Assistant Director Harold Cooper at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. Taken to an FBI “black site”, Reddington declares he wishes to help the FBI track down and apprehend the criminals and terrorists he has spent the last twenty years associating with. They are the individuals who are so dangerous and devious that the United States government is unaware of their very existence.
He offers Cooper his knowledge and assistance on two conditions: immunity from prosecution and cooperation only with FBI Special Agent Elizabeth Keen, a rookie criminal profiler recently assigned to Cooper’s task force. Keen and Cooper are suspicious of Reddington’s interest in her, but he will only say that she is “very special”. After Cooper tests Reddington’s offer in locating and neutralizing Serbian terrorist Ranko Zamani in the first episode, Reddington reveals that this man was only the first on the “blacklist” of global criminals that he has compiled over his criminal career and states that he and the FBI have a mutual interest in eliminating them.
The mysteries of Reddington’s and Liz’s lives, and his interest in her, are an ongoing theme as the series progresses. She digs into her family’s past, the question of his real identity and their connection, while he desperately tries to hide them. Each season, the danger to Liz caused by his reemergence intensifies, and Reddington uses Cooper’s task force to protect her. The storyline ends with season 8, when Liz is murdered by a hitman seeking revenge for Red’s killing a crime lord at the end of the season. The explanation of Reddington’s identity and his interference in Elizabeth’s life are never given.
