The Blacklist season 6: How many supporting-character spotlights should we have?
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Typically, we get to see at least one or two episodes a season revolving around Cooper, Aram, Samar, and Dembe, but sometimes that fluctuates slightly depending on the year. For example, last year gave us a little bit more of Saram as a duo and that’s something we certainly celebrated.
We don’t envy the position that John Bokenkamp and the remainder of the creative team has in how they cultivate episodes — they have roughly 22 a season and they need to tow the line between the larger narrative, Blacklister-of-the-week stories, and then also personal plots for all of the characters. Sometimes these can intersect and blend into each other, but sometimes they remain separate.
For the sake, though, of episodes largely about a supporting character more so than anything, we think that somewhere around 2-3 is the magic number; yet, each character can probably have three or four other episodes where they have a meaty side story to go along with what’s happening with Liz and Reddington. (We tend to think of Ressler as a unique person within this show — he’s somewhere between a lead and supporting at times.) As we move towards the end of the series, we do want to spend the time establishing endgames for everyone. That means seeing Aram / Samar get married, Cooper figuring out his own future, and maybe seeing more of Dembe’s life separate from Red. All of these different characters matter since without them, the journey wouldn’t be the same.
We know that the most-compelling story entering season 6 is that of Reddington being an imposter; yet, we don’t want some other important cogs of The Blacklist to be forgotten about in the process.
How many spotlights should we get for supporting characters on The Blacklist moving forward? Share right now in the attached comments! (Photo: NBC.)