The Blacklist

About the series

Contains story spoilers.

The Blacklist puts a wanted criminal inside the FBI's investigative machinery. Raymond Reddington offers the bureau something it cannot get from its own files: access to dangerous people whose activities he knows from the inside. He insists that Elizabeth Keen, a newly hired profiler, become his contact. Jon Bokenkamp created the series, with James Spader as Red and Megan Boone as Liz. Their arrangement has an awkward practical foundation. Agents must act on information supplied by someone they would ordinarily arrest, while Liz must decide how far to trust a man who has made her involvement a condition of his cooperation. Even successful investigations leave that imbalance intact.

The pilot makes those complications immediate. Red identifies Ranko Zamani, a Serbian terrorist the FBI believes dead, who intends to attack a general through his daughter. Liz reaches the child but loses her when Zamani's men strike. Zamani then attacks Liz's husband Tom at home, and a stamp on the attacker's hand helps her identify the zoo as his destination. Red moves his tracker onto Zamani, allowing the FBI to find him, while a bomb specialist Red summons removes the explosive from the girl's backpack. Saving her does not clear Red's name: he has secretly orchestrated the operation. Back home, Liz discovers cash, passports and a gun hidden beneath the floorboards, giving his warning about Tom a troubling physical basis.

The next investigation, “The Freelancer,” turns a supposed protection operation inside out. Red predicts the time and place of a train derailment, identifying an assassin who conceals targeted murders inside disasters with many other victims. He and Liz attend a charity event to protect Floriana Campo, apparently a humanitarian fighting sex trafficking. Ressler captures the assassin, but the man's confession changes what the agents think they have interrupted: Red hired him to poison Campo. Her charitable work is a cover for operating a trafficking ring and removing competitors. Liz has entered the event believing Red is helping prevent a killing. Instead, she discovers that he has used the bureau's presence inside a plan whose target and purpose he chose himself.

“Wujing” sends Liz undercover as a cryptography specialist. Wujing needs a message recovered from a murdered CIA agent decoded, and Red presents Liz as someone who can do it. A CIA device helps her reveal the intended target: architect Henry Cho, who is secretly an intelligence asset. As she and Red leave with Wujing's men, Ressler and Meera Malik race to protect Cho and his son. Liz plants a tracker on Wujing's car, leading to his arrest. Red gives her only a fragment of an explanation for choosing her, saying it concerns her father. Meanwhile, the gun from Tom's hidden box produces a classified ballistics result. Her husband's secrets now touch a homicide investigation, while someone else installs surveillance on her home.

The threat in “The Stewmaker” is disappearance made deliberate and systematic. Liz is testifying against drug lord Hector Lorca when an important witness is abducted. Red suspects Stanley Kornish, whose chemical expertise lets him dissolve victims and erase evidence of their deaths. Liz seeks Lorca's help but becomes Kornish's next captive. Red and Ressler have to cooperate, with Ressler posing as an insider to obtain the information needed to reach the killer. Red finds Liz, rescues her and pushes Kornish into the bath he prepared for her, then takes a photograph from his victim album. Liz's separate inquiry also narrows: the murder connected to Tom's gun occurred at a Boston hotel where he claimed to have attended a job interview.

“The Courier” places a rescue on a strict clock. A criminal carrying a shipment for an Iranian spy is arrested after a chase, but the agents discover that he has imprisoned NSA analyst Seth Nelson with a dwindling supply of air. The courier escapes while the search is underway. Red pressures a nightclub owner connected to him for information, helping Malik and Ressler track him down; they kill him in self-defense. Red and Liz locate Seth alive. In gratitude, Seth provides Red with documents about the murder Liz suspects Tom may have committed, and Red sends those records to her. The rescue produces a new lead in the marriage investigation, just as Tom discovers the hidden box and demands a conversation about it.

The task force's own base becomes the target in “Anslo Garrick.” Garrick, a former associate of Red's, attacks the facility and badly wounds Ressler. Red carries him into a protected holding cell and treats his injury, leaving them safe from gunfire but unable to help the people outside. Liz escapes a stalled elevator and fights through the building before being knocked unconscious. Cooper refuses to surrender the code that would release Red, even when Garrick starts killing hostages. Red watches Luli die and then faces the threat of losing Dembe. The situation reverses the usual pursuit: the agents are trapped inside their workplace, and protecting the informant gives his enemy leverage over everyone around him.

The continuation gives Liz and Aram a route to outside help when they disable the signal jammers, but Garrick captures them. To save Liz, Red forces Ressler to provide the cell password and surrenders. Liz escapes during the getaway, then follows Red's contact Mr. Kaplan into a wider surveillance operation that has been watching the task force. Red, meanwhile, survives questioning by another former colleague who hired Garrick and eventually kills Garrick with surgical scissors before fleeing. His later call to Liz offers continued help without restoring the bureau's control over him. She asks directly whether he is her father; he denies it and warns her about Tom again. The siege ends, but the people monitoring Liz and the gaps in Red's account remain part of her life.