The Blacklist season 5: Donald Ressler and the aftermath of Hitchin’s death

While we wouldn’t say that the entirety of The Blacklist season 4 was momentous to the Donald Ressler character, the end certainly was. Not only did he have to deal with the constant presence of Julian Gale in his life, but there was also the death of Laurel Hitchin. While Ressler was defending himself in the moment of killing her, he never meant to actually cast a deadly blow. He was just reacting to a moment, a terrible one where he felt like he was going to be stuck as her puppet for the immediate future.

As you would expect, killing someone like Hitchin is going to be a difficult thing for Ressler to process, and it’s not going to be easy for him to deal with the fact that this happened, and to some extent he’s crawling into the criminal underworld. For this one moment, he’s more like Reddington than he would ever want to admit to himself, and while he may want to wash himself of this — who wouldn’t? — it won’t be all that easy when the show returns to NBC this fall.

In extrapolating somewhat on this sentiment and explaining some of what is next for Donald, all you need to do is check out some of the latest comments from show executive producer Jon Bokenkamp to Entertainment Weekly:

“It’s an accident … It’s interesting, he ends up having to use the same blacklister that she used to remove Reven Wright’s body, so he’s in a desperate situation. It’s going to be a really great moral quandary for him. He’s the boy scout, he’s the moral compass in the show, and he’s not good at taking shortcuts. It’s going to be a really bumpy yet compelling road for him.”

Is there a silver lining for Ressler?

We’d say so, and we would also say that it comes in the form of Julian Gale being gone. As reported recently, Enrique Murciano will not return for the fifth season — there was talk around him potentially becoming a regular, but nothing was confirmed. That’s one less problem for Ressler to worry about, but it’s also somewhat of a shame since he gave Diego Klattenhoff some great material to work off of over his final episodes. Hopefully, there are some more interesting castings that could impact Ressler in the coming season; you want him to have a story that is of course tied to Reddington and Liz Keen, but also some exciting stuff of his own to explore. That’s what makes him such a key part of the show.

Filming for season 5 will begin in the weeks to come, and at that time, maybe we’ll get a further sense of what could await Donald + the aftereffects of what he’s going through with Hitchin’s death.

Your thoughts

What do you want to see coming the way of Ressler on The Blacklist season 5? Be sure to sound off now in the comments!

(Photo: NBC.)