The Blacklist season 6: Where will Dembe go from here?

Is The Blacklist season 6 taking Dembe Zuma to a more interesting place than he has ever been before? Judging from here we are in the story at present, it is certainly easy to feel this way.

Let’s take a moment here to document why Dembe’s position is so interesting — if you need a refresher. (It’s understandable if you do, given that it’s been a good week since the most-recent episode aired on NBC!) Dembe now knows the all-important truth about Liz Keen: He recognizes that she betrayed Raymond Reddington. Now, he’s got a secret he is keeping from Reddington, just like there are many secrets that he is keeping from Liz. Liz can all but give up on trying to pry those out of Dembe’s lips — the man is a fault, and information only seems to transfer in and never out with him.

While we’ve said that, what Dembe now knows does put him in such a complicated, fascinating place — it’s the sort of place he has never been in for most of the series. He’s got this bit of information that clearly, Reddington would like to know. He’s also putting himself in danger by keeping it from him. It’s been documented already (hello, Mr. Kaplan!) what happens sometimes to people who keep things from Reddington. He does not take it altogether well and you do have to think that such a reaction would happen tenfold here. This is probably Dembe’s biggest reason to continue keeping it from him. It bonds him to Liz now, and it also does put him at her mercy in an interesting way. He’s keeping the secret as a favor to her and now, he has to hope that if she does ever opt to disclose some of this information, she chooses to omit the information regarding what he knows.

Dembe’s going to be under a lot of stress in the coming weeks, and all of this leads to an important question…

Speaking of questions, be sure to check out the video below for some of the questions we’d ask many different characters on The Blacklist at the moment. If you like this, remember to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube.

Will he crack?

We don’t think that Dembe is suddenly going to become the sort of character who buckles under pressure and says everything that he knows. However, we would not be shocked in the least to see this information subconscious getting to know, crawling somewhere underneath his skin where he has to figure out and determine how well and how long he can tolerate having it. If his behavior changes underneath all of this, Reddington will know … and if Reddington knows, there is almost certainly going to be hell to pay on the other side once he figures things out.

Be prepared for the next several episodes to contain potentially some of the best performances to date from Hisham Tawfiq — he’s already done a wonderful job with what’s been handed to him but as Dembe continues to walk this tricky line, we’re going to be curious to see if this character does on some level unravel. What would be rather fascinating is if he tries to seek out someone to confine in — it’s unlikely, but then we would have a secret-keeper keeping some secrets that were previously told to him.

Do you think that Dembe will keep Liz’s secret in the long-term?

Be sure to let us know any thoughts/theories you may have on the subject below! (Photo: NBC.)