The Blacklist season 5 filming starts for Megan Boone, James Spader, cast

For everyone out there excited to see The Blacklist season 5, you can now cross off a major milestone: Filming is underway! Megan Boone, James Spader, and the rest of the cast are going to be working in the New York area for the next several months in order to deliver the best collection of episodes possible.

We won’t tell you who has filmed so far or where (we don’t like to be that invasive to a production), but multiple actors have already been spotted out and about. That’ll be a trend that lasts from now until the spring, with a few breaks here and there, and there’ll probably be some long hours mixed in there.

There’s a lot that the show needs to address at the start of the fifth season, and much of it stems from where we left off. At the end of the season 4 finale, Elizabeth Keen (Boone) finally learned that Raymond Reddington (Spader) was her father — yet, there was a deeper secret out there, one that Reddington was desperate for her to not know. All we can say is that it has something to do with some remains that Tom Keen (Ryan Eggold, returning as a series regular) has in a suitcase.

Are there theories out there about them? Absolutely. We’ve heard an opinion that the bones may be Katarina Rostova’s, just as there are also theories that the bones are of the real Raymond Reddington and the man walking around with Liz is some sort of imposter. Part of the fun of this show is that there are so many different ways that the metaphorical pendulum can swing, depending on just what sort of twists the writers want to throw at you.

While we’re not sure we can say this universally, we do believe that The Blacklist has higher expectations than ever entering season 5. The run of episodes with Mr. Kaplan was the strongest arc in the series’ history, as it relied upon a built-in characters with a deep mythology that went back several decades. It aided Spader and Boone both as performers, and eventually, it led to some significant answers — something that are at times few and far between. No matter what the show plots moving into the new season, they have to find a way to match this hype and intensity. That’s not going to be easy, but we have faith in the writers to pull some crazy stuff off. They’ve earned it through four seasons.

The Blacklist premieres this fall on NBC; it will be navigating over to a new timeslot Wednesday night at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time. Hopefully, airing earlier in the night is going to mean stronger live ratings to go along with it.

What do you want to see on season 5?

(Photo: NBC.)