Two-Hour Winter Finale of "The Blacklist" and Redemption Premiere

By Edward Leano, Christian Post Contributor Friday, February 17, 2017

NBC's "The Blacklist" season 4 continues with its winter finale this Thursday, Feb. 23, an hour early at 8:00 p.m. Central Time. The crime thriller series will be having a two-hour show to launch its spinoff series as well. First up is episode 15, "The Apothecary," an apt episode title for the person who Raymond "Red" Reddington (James Spader) will need right now. The premiere for "The Blacklist: Redemption" will soon follow.

Red will not be feeling okay in this episode, and that would be an understatement as he is about to die of fatal poisoning. How exactly was this deadly dose administered to him, and more importantly, by whom? Red intends to find out. He starts by going back step by step through the day's events as he considers the possibility that someone he trusts has actually turned on him.

Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone), meanwhile, races to find clues on the identity of the person who dealt the poison. She works with the Post Office task force team, including Aram Mojtabai (Amir Arison), Donald Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff) and Samar Navabi (Moshan Marnò) to search for the whereabouts of the toxin designer, and if a cure is available.

The fourth season of the crime thriller series premiered last year on Sept. 22, 2016, but has since then slowly slid into a decline in terms of ratings and viewer numbers. TV By The Numbers is of the opinion that it's a coin flip on whether the show will get renewed for another season, or if the spinoff series — "The Blacklist: Redemption" — will have to forge on ahead by itself.

"The Blacklist" have been going through a late-season slump as its numbers for the 18- to 49-year-old demographic has dwindled to 0.92 — far below even the lowest numbers of its first three seasons. The shrinking numbers have been partly attributed to the show's transfer to its new Thursday timeslot, sometime in the middle of season 2.

Watch the promotional video below of "The Apothecary" and the teaser for "The Blacklist: Redemption."