The Blacklist New Year’s Resolution: Give us Red’s true identity

The Blacklist Season 7 has one major thing it can do to keep us clued in. It’s New Year’s Resolution needs to be to give us Red’s true identity.

We continue our look at the New Year’s Resolutions various TV crime dramas should make in 2020. It’s going to be some time before The Blacklist returns this year, but that should mean there’s time for some changes. And we’re looking at the series for Day 4 of our feature.

The show: The Blacklist

The resolution: Give us Red’s real identity (and don’t backtrack)

More from The Blacklist News

• Is a new episode of The Blacklist on tonight? (July 20, 2023)
• The Blacklist series finale ending explained: What happened to Red?
• How to watch The Blacklist series finale live online
• The Blacklist spoilers: What to expect in the series finale
• Is The Blacklist canceled? (Will there be a Season 11?)

Why it needs to be made: For the last six and a half seasons of The Blacklist, we’ve wondered who Red truly is. The show’s New Year’s Resolution for 2020 has to be to bring us the truth. And not backtrack on it!

At first, trying to figure out Red’s true identity was cute. We had fun breaking down clues and trying to figure out his real connection to Liz. Then we got an answer. Great! But that quickly followed with a reveal that we were wrong after all. And then we got another reveal, only to find out it was another red herring.

After a while, red herrings get annoying. You just have to talk to Pretty Little Liars about that! We need answers. Real answers.

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One of the biggest problems with TV shows that focus around one big question is that it has to keep going until the very end. For the first three, maybe four seasons, that’s fine. But The Blacklist is in its seventh season. And the big questions and backtracks around Red’s identity have started to get old.

In Season 6, we finally thought we had an answer. While there were certainly still questions and what seemed like inconsistencies, we thought that the show could bring us the answers to the newer questions. Instead, the show has backtracked on the answer that it gave us. Was it to drag the question about the identity out or was this always the plan?

It’s time to stop running this gag. When we do finally get a reveal, there are going to be all these questions whether the writers are lying to us again. It’s like crying wolf.

And what if the show doesn’t ever give us the real answer? The ratings for The Blacklist have dropped again. NBC already gave the show a lifeline when it was renewed for Season 6. There’s the chance that it won’t make it through another season, which could lead to never finding out who Red really is. All those years of investment to get nothing.

So, the next time we get an answer as to who Red is, the writers need to make sure it’s the truth. This doesn’t have to mean the series is over, but it will start to bring closure in case NBC cancels the series.

What do you think The Blacklist needs to do to help the series succeed? Who do you think Red really is? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The Blacklist returns sometime in spring 2020.