‘The Blacklist’ season 4, episode 9 preview: Return date for Megan Boone, James Spader series

Tonight, “The Blacklist” is going to be wrapping up potentially the saga of Alexander Kirk with “Dr. Adrian Shaw: Conclusion,” and as a result of that, potentially also answering a key question when it comes to whether or not Reddington is really Liz Keen’s father. Maybe you’ll get an answer that you’re satisfied with, or maybe it’ll feel like more dancing about on the part of producers. It’s really hard to say with a show like this, but our presumption is that we’ll get some more in-depth answers on the subject a little bit later tonight.

For now, the question that we want to answer for you is when James Spader, Megan Boone, and the rest of the cast is returning to TV: Thursday, January 5. Yes, that is an incredibly long time to wait between episodes, but we actually like the way that NBC is doing this. Had “The Blacklist” continued until December, odds are that there would’ve been some hiatuses here and there, especially for the Thanksgiving holiday. In constructing things out this way, what the show does here is give us a good break, and then allow us to come back at a time when new episodes will air in succession once more.

Will there be a new arc? It’s hard to say for certain, but knowing this show, it almost tends to put two or three separate seasons into one these days. We would imagine that we’ll get a batch of episodes from January until the end of February around one theme, and then after another break some more episodes that set the stage for the end of the season.

For the record, it’s still not clear whether or not the show is coming back for a season 5, but we’re confident. At present, NBC is not exactly killing it elsewhere with some of their shows, and this is a very strong DVR player and it’s performing better than many of the other series that have struggled to do much of anything in this timeslot.

(Photo: NBC.)