Why The Blacklist Finale Was the Perfect Ending for Raymond Reddington
Who was Raymond Reddington really in the end? The Blacklist finale has answers for those paying close attention.
All good things must end. Whether all good things must end well is another matter entirely. The series finale of The Blacklist was rated poorly on IMDb and fans united in assessing it as one of the worst endings to ever close out a series’ run, especially a run as unique and longstanding as The Blacklist’s: 10 years and 218 episodes, an achievement largely unmatched in today’s TV landscape.
The Blacklist not only earned a decade-long place in fan’s hearts, it’s also been a cash cow. In 2014, Netflix secured The Blacklist in a $2 million per episode deal that was, at that time, the largest ever in the platform’s history, even surpassing Netflix’s acquisition of AMC’s The Walking Dead. The Netflix premiere of season 10 of The Blacklist hit the platform on Feb. 11, 2024, and spent some time on the streamer’s Top Ten feature..
It’s not only the raging bull in the series finale that sees “Red” and charges. What fans and critics see as a lack of subtlety and a disappointing sunset for the enigmatic character, Raymond “Red” Reddington (James Spader), is a symptom of looking only at the forest and missing out on the trees. For example, remember the pilot episode and little Beth who had a chemical weapon strapped to her body at the zoo? She gave Agent Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone) a plastic, animal charm bracelet and said, “The bull is pokey. Be careful.”
The Blacklist Was Inspired by The Real-Life Whitey Bulger
The character of Raymond Reddington is modeled on the notorious Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger who, in 1999, was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list behind only Osama bin Laden. Back in 2013, showrunner/executive producer John Eisendrath said this to Collider about the influence Whitey Bulger had on the creation of The Blacklist:
“There have been many police procedural or crime shows that center around the heroes who are trying to catch the criminals. And the idea was kicked around to center a show that is about catching bad guys, but with a bad guy at the center of it […] So, there was a real world influence that affected the shaping of the show that was already being thought about. How can you put someone that you don’t trust in the center of a show about trying to find criminals? And here was an example in the real world of just such a person.”
What if you take an infamous criminal and make him loveable? This is one of the greatest successes of The Blacklist. By all standards, Raymond Reddington is evil. Yet, his story and James Spader’s masterful embodiment breathing life into such a character creates a criminal that we can’t help but root for.
A fugitive for 20 years, Whitey Bulger was eventually found living quietly in a Santa Monica apartment with his girlfriend. Fans hoped that Red might continue his fugitive life for the foreseeable future with his girlfriend, Weecha (Diany Rodriguez), sequestered on their mountaintop. We know that he intended to meet her there by the “rainy season” as he promised her when they parted company in the penultimate episode. But the far worse Whitey Bulger-like
fate is the one where Red is captured and sent to a jail filled with criminals he betrayed to the FBI. Bulger was in poor health and wheelchair-bound when he was transferred to a high-security prison, but he only lasted hours before he was brutally murdered by his enemies behind bars.
Raymond Reddington may parallel Whitey Bulger in life but, in death, Red dies free from the violence of bad men and is nobody’s victim.
