‘The Blacklist’ Season 2: Premiere Date Announced, Framework of Show Shifts
NBC has announced that "The Blacklist" Season 2 will premiere on September 22, 2014. "The Blacklist," which stars James Spader, made its debut on September 23, 2014. It raked-in good ratings and it was one of the top new series from the 2013 fall season new batch.
At the time of renewing "The Blacklist" for Season 2, Robert Greenblatt, chairman of NBC Entertainment said in a statement, "The success of The Blacklist demonstrates that inspired storytelling is alive and well in broadcast television, and I'm impressed on a daily basis by this creative team's imagination and the extent to which they will go to capture this grand vision on film." He hoped that "Red Reddington never runs out of names to bring down on his list."
The first season opened with Red surrendering to the FBI. The final season revealed that the real reason behind the surrender. Red wanted to use the FBI's resources and men to find out about his mysterious enemy, Berlin. He struck a deal with the FBI. Red was granted immunity and in exchange, Red helped the FBI arrest some of the world's most wanted, dangerous criminals. Red called the list of these criminals the 'Blacklist'. The season finale revealed that some of the names on the blacklist had some links with Berlin, and Red was eliminating them to find out about Berlin.
Berlin will be a major arc and perhaps the main antagonist of "The Blacklist" Season 2. However, Jon Bokenkamp, creator of the show, has said that the show is not going to take the serialised route. He also indicated that Red may have other agendas.
"I don't think we'll be more serialised. At times, we maybe got a little more serialized than we would've liked. We will always have a Blacklister-of-the-week," Bokenkamp said to TV Guide.
He also said that the story of Tom and Liz and their marriage has ended. "The framework of the show, to an extent, has shifted," Bokenkamp said, adding, "The cases were connected, but not all of them. Red was using the cases to smoke out Berlin, but in the same way that he's using them to identify Berlin, he may have other agendas. I don't want to give the impression that they're all connected just to that."