The Blacklist season 5 spoilers: Cooper’s struggle with Liz – Reddington reveal

If you’re an avid viewer of The Blacklist, you know about the big reveal already: Reddington is Liz Keen’s father. The DNA test is in, and while we certainly have come up with our fair share of theories over time about the truth to some of the claims, it’s hard to deny some of what’s out there and much of what the producers have said so far is pretty definitive. Unless they’ve found a clever way to get themselves out of this (clearly possible), this is something that we have to accept and move forward with for now.

As for who’s probably going to struggle to with this reveal almost more than anyone, think in terms of none other than Harold Cooper. This is someone who’s struggled already trying to keep the Task Force afloat — especially given what happened last season with Julian Gale. Isn’t it going to be even more problematic now that it’s known that one of his agents is a direct descendant of one of the most notorious criminals in recent memory? Well, let’s just say it’s an issue. Here is what executive producer Jon Bokenkamp teased (per Entertainment Weekly) on the subject of what’s going to be coming up next:

“Cooper, first and foremost, is going to be saddled with what to do with that … He is now faced with, ‘What do I tell the higher ups and what happens to the Task Force?’ Cooper is a pretty above-the-board guy, so it is going to be something that all of them are going to have to deal with.”

Ultimately, the biggest thing that you need to hope for with Cooper is that he can spin this in a way where the gains outweigh the losses. The relationship between Reddington and Liz doesn’t change the fact that the goals are the same as they once were: The Task Force is trying to do everything in their power in order to ensure that the bad guys are coming from, and they can still do that. They just need to monitor things a little more closely to ensure that nothing else happens that causes the Task Force to descend into more chaos.

What we’ve learned already is that when The Blacklist season 5 starts airing, you’re going to see a very different side of Reddington than we’ve seen so far through the show’s run. He’s not tethered in the same way that he once was to the principles of his organization — he has no organization anymore. He has to figure out how to freewheel it and be his own man. Sooner or later, we imagine that he is going to get some of his mojo back.

(Photo: NBC.)