Following a decade on the air and hundreds of masterful James Spader monologues, The Blacklist is officially coming to an end. NBC announced in February that Season 10 is its final season of the hit thriller series.
“After 10 years, hundreds of Blacklist cases and more than 200 episodes produced, we’re honored to reach our conclusion,” said showrunner and executive producer John Eisendrath is a statement. “It’s been incredibly fun to create the strange, devious, and delightful Blacklisters to challenge Raymond Reddington and our FBI Task Force each week. We would like to thank everyone at NBC and Sony, our extraordinary crew who make the impossible happen every day, our endlessly inventive writers and producers, and our remarkable cast who brought life to these characters. We appreciate our dedicated fanbase who came along for this wonderful ride and are excited to share this final season with them.”
Lisa Katz, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming’s president of scripted content, said in a statement: “It isn’t often that a series resonates so deeply with an audience that it airs for 10 seasons, but The Blacklist proved to be a perfect combination of highly talented producers, stellar writing, a cast that never failed to deliver, and a crew that always rose to the occasion. A huge thank you to our partners at Sony, everyone from the past decade who made this show an integral part of NBC’s storied history and, of course, a special nod to James Spader, whose performance remains nothing short of spectacular.”
In an interview with NBC, Spader finally revealed exactly why he believed the show had to end with Season 10.
“I think if the show went beyond this year, it would turn into a very different show,” he said. “And I think that the thing that has been nice about this show was that we’ve never really had a really clear paradigm for the show. Tonally the show shifts a lot from episode to episode, and I think that even the show has taken strange turns, and I suspect that the show, if it went much further, would just become something that would be less recognizable to me.”
Since The Blacklist’s first season, Spader (who’s also an executive producer) instantly hooked fans as the enigmatic fugitive Reddington, who secretly helps the FBI Task Force take down hundreds of the world’s most skilled and elusive criminals, a.k.a, his infamous Blacklisters. The tenth season will feature the series’ landmark 200th episode (airing Sunday, March 19), and show Red “confront unparalleled danger” when his role as a an FBI informant is at risk of being exposed. Fans will also be treated to the return of multiple criminals of Blacklist’s past throughout the season.
Source: NBC
