The Blacklist season 9: Will Cynthia Panabaker be an adversary?

One of the best things about The Blacklist is that when it comes to recurring characters, they have an incredibly deep bench. There are a lot of fun people on Team Reddington, for example — think in terms of Brimley, Paula, or even Priya, who was recently introduced. We’ve also seen some fascinating criminals and of course, a few notable names attached to the US government.

For the sake of this article, though, we want to spend some time discussing Cynthia Panabaker — after all, she could prove to be one of the most important people entering the new season of the show. What sort of role could she have coming up?

For our new video discussion on Panabaker, why not go ahead and watch that below? Once you do, we suggest that you also SUBSCRIBE to Matt & Jess on YouTube — there will be more discussions there every Tuesday and Friday throughout the offseason.

In that video, one of the primary things we discuss is the theory that Panabaker could have been involved in either hiring Vandyke or pointing out Liz’s location — while we think ultimately the idea of this is implausible, there’s no denying that it makes for a fascinating topic of conversation! We know that Cynthia had a burn notice out on Liz, and she also wants to dismantle the Task Force. Maybe she’s sad the person Liz is gone, but we know that she’s about the job first — she may consider at least a part of her problem at the FBI now resolved.

The big question for Panabaker entering the new season is what she does with the Task Force now. Liz was the go-between between the group and Reddington, so is there any point to anything now? Is she going to reassign Ressler, Cooper, Aram, and Park elsewhere? There’s an interesting case to be made that she becomes a de-facto adversary in season 9 — not because she is evil per se, but rather because she’s keeping everyone apart and not allowing Reddington to do any more work. She could also be calling for his actual arrest, and that could be another problem.

Of course, it’s also possible Panabaker’s been somewhat of a secret villain all along. No matter where the writers take this character, we certainly hope we get more of her. She is, after all, one of the most compelling people within this world!

What do you most want to see when it comes to The Blacklist season 9 and Panabaker?

Be sure to share some of your hopes/thoughts now in the attached comments. (Photo: NBC.)