What Fans Should Expect From 'The Blacklist' In 2022

"The Blacklist" stopped releasing episodes of its 9th season on December 9. The show took a break for the holidays and will return in early January 2022. A lot has happened from the beginning of the season to the last episode that aired both on set and behind the scenes.

Season eight of the series saw the rise of Elizabeth Keen, played by Megan Boone, as the No. 1 blacklister and her death while meeting with Raymond Reddington. It also saw the exit of the show's creator, Jon Bokenkamp.

Despite the exit of one of the show's main characters, fans are still very much invested in the series and can't wait for what the show will bring after the break. Keep reading to be up to date with everything that happened previously.

The latest "The Blacklist" season started two years after Keen was killed. Before her death, the former FBI agent was romantically involved with fellow agent Donald Ressler. Her death dealt Ressler a crushing blow, which became apparent when he took up old destructive habits.

Season nine revealed that the former FBI agent was working as a mechanic and not looking good while at it. The season also revealed that he had gone back to abusing prescription painkillers as a form of relief.

Fellow agent Alina Park convinced Ressler to stop using and get clean, but it's still quite evident that he was having a tough time processing Keen's death. According to Matt & Jess TV Commentary, the next episode of the series will focus on just how Ressler handled Keen's death using a series of flashbacks.

Season nine also showed how Harold Cooper was embroiled in an alleged set-up. In the 4th episode 4, Cooper woke up in a parking garage with no recollection of the previous night.

Soon enough, he found out that Doug Koster, his neighbor, was killed the night before via a gunshot wound. Koster had previously been in an affair with Cooper's wife, Charlene. Upon inspection, Cooper discovered that a bullet was missing from his service weapon, so he proceeded to run a ballistics report to find out if the missing bullet matched the one on the crime scene.

The entire situation got even more complicated in the 6th episode when Lew Sloan, Cooper's friend, tinkered with the ballistics report because he thought Cooper's involvement was fabricated. The episode ended with Cooper receiving a phone call where someone accused him of tampering with evidence and blackmailed him.

After Keen's death, Dembe joined the FBI, and Reddington had to get a new bodyguard to watch over him. Season nine showed the two at odds mainly because Reddington felt Dembe had betrayed his trust and disobeyed his orders.

In the 5th season, the FBI agent opened the box that Reddington gave him to safeguard until they officially ended their time as business partners. From then, things became progressively worse between the two of them.

In the latest episode, Reddington became suspicious that Dembe gave Keen the letter where he explained his true identity before she died. The criminal mastermind gave the letter to Dembe with the instructions that he could only give it to Keen after he died. After testing the letter for fingerprints, Reddington found out that he had a match on Keen's.

He didn't take the results lightly before he felt that Keen hesitated to kill him and ended up dead due to the letter's contents. The 6th episode showed the agency trying to track Dr. Roberta Sand, who acted as a therapist to the mob. At the end of the episode, Reddington convinced Sand to be his therapist for a few months. The episode also showed him telling Sand that his "oldest and closest" friend betrayed him.

Since "The Blacklist" season nine started airing on NBC in October 2021, the network has released six episodes. The last episode, "Dr Roberta, Sand, PhD," was released on December 9, 2021. The series won't return to our screens until January 2022. The next episode is titled "Between Sleep & Awake," and it's set to air on NBC on January 6, 2022.

Most of "The Blacklist" episodes in season 9 were named after criminals, so this episode will likely be atypical. Some Reddit sleuths believe that episode seven would reveal how Donald Ressler handled Liz's death through flashbacks.