The Blacklist spin-off The Blacklist: Redemption only lasted for one season consisting of 8 episodes.
If you haven’t seen the first (and only) season of The Blacklist: Redemption and want to avoid spoilers, we suggest you stop reading now. If you have and want to hear our thoughts then keep reading.
The cancellation was a hasty one and despite the less than stellar ratings, the show had so much potential. The eight episodes saw Tom Keen (Ryan Eggold) go to New York to discuss the estate of his father Howard (Terry O’Quinn) who had been declared dead. It soon turned out that wasn’t the case and Howard had faked his death believing that his wife Scottie (Famke Janssen), Tom’s mother, had been trying to kill him.
Tom started working for Halcyon, his father’s firm, to infiltrate the operation and find out what, if anything, Scottie was really up to. The season threw plenty of twists and turns at viewers and the final episode revealed that it was Howard, not Scottie, who was up to no good!
Elsewhere in the season Scottie discovered that Tom was her son, tying up a plot that saw her desperately searching for Christopher, Tom’s original name. There was also a few appearances from Liz Keen (Megan Boone) and an appearance from Harold Cooper (Harry Lennix).
I’ve put together the 10 reasons why I think The Blacklist: Redemption should have been renewed for another season.
1. It was better than almost all of The Blacklist’s fourth season. It pained me to admit it but The Blacklist really hit a creative roadblock in season 4. It was until Mr. Kaplan (Susan Blommaert) started her revenge plan, that the show got back to its best and that took a good 15 episodes out of the season’s 22. By comparison The Blacklist: Redemption was engaging, edge-of-the-seat stuff every single week.
2. Ryan Eggold is a great leading man. Tom has been hanging around like a loose end on The Blacklist for too long so it was good to see him go off and have his own adventures. Eggold has serious leading man abilities and he is SO good as Tom. He brought out the character’s more vulnerable side and showed more of his humanity. It was very welcome.
3. The show was just getting going. Now that we know it was Howard, not Scottie, who was manipulating Tom there was so much material for the show to explore. Shifting dynamics would have made a second season feel like a new premise and I was excited to see where it went.
4. We were only just getting to know the supporting characters. Nez (Tawny Cypress) and Dumont (Adrian Martinez) were working their way into my heart and I liked the brother/sister relationship Tom struck up with Nez. I was really hoping to see more of an exploration of that in the next season because I thought they made an awesome team.
5. Solomon is one of the best characters on TV. Edi Gathegi plays Solomon always with an edge of menace and I love how he flits between charming and ruthless. He plays for no one’s team and he lives by his own rules. I enjoyed how he was happy to turn on Tom in a second’s notice if he had to and the unpredictability of the character was refreshing.
6. Scottie and Howard sparring was brilliant. When you have actors like Famke Janssen and Terry O’Quinn going up against each other, it’s amazing TV! The veteran actors clearly relished their roles and any scene with the two of them was fun to watch. Scottie is the new Queen of resting bitch face (sorry Revenge’s Victoria Grayson) and Howard has fun pushing all of the right buttons.
7. Presumably we’ll never see the end of Tom’s story now. He’s back in The Blacklist as an accomplice of Mr. Kaplan but what about his family and his new friends? Will they come to The Blacklist to end the story or will it just remain unfinished? I hope they give some kind of conclusion during season 5 of The Blacklist. Plus surely Liz has to meet Tom’s parents at some point?
8. The balls-out action was thrilling. The fight scenes and shoot-outs were superior to anything seen on The Blacklist in ages. The show was almost like a Bourne type affair but weekly and on TV. I can’t think of any other show that’s half as fun as The Blacklist: Redemption was.
9. The weekly cases were great fun. Sure you could turn your brain off and still get what was going on but isn’t it nice to have pure entertainment every now and then? The series arc balanced nicely with the ‘case of the week’ format and often offered a breather from the Scottie vs Howard drama.
10. We’ll never get to see a proper crossover with The Blacklist. I’m pretty sure an epic one was planned during the show’s second season but we’ll never get to see that now. Can you imagine Liz and the Task Force in New York helping Tom? It would have been TV gold!
The Blacklist: Redemption is released on DVD on 9th October 2017.
[brid video=”151762″ player=”531″ title=”THE BLACKLIST REDEMPTION Official Trailer (HD) Famke Janssen Thriller NBC Series”]