If you’re a network that boasts one of the most popular shows on TV, you’ll probably lock down future seasons for that show without question for as long as possible. That appears to be the case with NBC, where the powers that be have decided to offer up another round of episodes to The Blacklist, which will debut its Season 4 next year.
Oddly enough, this news didn’t actually come from an NBC press release, nor one of Red Reddington’s many informants. It came from the guy who created Red, Jon Bokenkamp, who revealed the renewal on the podcast The Blacklist Exposed. And apparently it wasn’t a recent impulse decision.
We knew about that a while ago. It’s one of those things that’s hard to keep quiet. But yes, we’re renewed through the fourth season. Hopefully we don’t tank that out. We’ve got a lot of story to tell.
The Blacklist is one of those shows that could easily go on forever, so long as the writers can keep expanding Red’s background and creating more characters to give him and Liz trouble. Season 3 has done things a little more differently than Seasons 1 and 2, relying more on serialized storytelling and creating more of a balance with the procedural elements.
As is the case with many shows these days, The Blacklist isn’t bringing in the ratings that it did in the beginning. Season 1 brought in between 10-12 million for most of the episodes, while Season 2 saw it dip to anything between 7-11 million; the show reached its biggest audience ever (25.7 million) as this year’s post-Super Bowl programming. But beyond the Season 3 premiere, which saw an audience 7.7 million-strong, the viewership has mostly hovered around the less-than-7-million range here in the first chunk of the season. Still, those numbers are pretty solid for a Thursday night, which also has football, Shonda Rhimes and Big Bang Theory going on. Weaker shows would have fallen out of the running completely.
You can check out the entire episode of The Blacklist Exposed below.
The Blacklist is currently in the middle of Season 3, with that last episode a few weeks back providing quite a bit of trouble for Liz and the FBI. Fans can look forward to seeing the show returning to its usual Thursday night timeslot on January 7, 2016, with Season 4 debuting in the fall.
