The Blacklist season 7: Four unanswered questions from season 1
For the sake of this article, though, we’re looking at the past — far into the past, in fact. We want to take on some of the largest loose ends from the first season, ones that could actually be linked to one another. Will there be some sort of callback to them? Within the scope of this article, we’re going to do our part to touch on some of these and also theorize as to just what they mean.
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The Takoma Park House – Early on in the series, we saw Reddington go far out of his way to burn a home that stored a number of painful memories. It was a huge, epic scene … but it wasn’t spoken of all that much after the fact. The same goes for the young girl who was seen in flashbacks blowing bubbles — one that is known among the fandom as “Bubble Girl” because of what transpired.
What did Diane Fowler know? – Or, to be specific, what did she know about Reddington’s family? That’s something she told Reddington before he killed her and he simply ignored it, feeling as though he could gather whatever information she actually had elsewhere. That was a gambit he was happy to take, but we’re still not 100% the information is out there.
The ballet girl – Apparently, Reddington has a habit of contributing to the ballet, but only for a single production — there was a young girl who performed there at one point, but per the timeline presented to it, it doesn’t fit precisely how old Liz is. Was this just a timeline error? It’s possible, since we learned later on that Liz did do ballet when she was much younger.
Reddington’s confession to Madeline Pratt – In Pratt’s self-titled episode, Reddington told her a story about a bloody incident around Christmastime where he came home after running out of gas. Did this bloodbath actually happen? It does fit with the tragedy that happened with his family and the Takoma Park House, but he also may have made most of it up for the sake of getting himself out of the bind. We’ve also speculated that a part of this story may have been an event from his old childhood, told from a different point of view.
Are all of these linked?
It’s possible that Bubble Girl and Ballet Girl are the same, and that the family Diane Fowler was speaking about was the one featured in these tiny flashbacks. We’ve got a feeling that they all could be tied in some way to Jennifer Reddington and Carla a.k.a. Naomi Hyland, who became a big part of the story in season 2. Yet, Reddington’s never shown much affection for Jennifer and with Fowler’s information in particular, he had a big emotional reaction before killing her.
Another possibility is that some of these are tied to Liz and the show’s misdirecting you by giving you memories of several different people in a short period of time. Or, if Ilya Koslov really is Reddington, then maybe these memories are an unexplored part of the timeline, something worth a further deep-dive when we get into the new season.
What’s one of your biggest unanswered questions when it comes to The Blacklist season 1? Be sure to share in the comments below. (Photo: NBC.)