Season Analysis

The Blacklist

Season 7 Analysis

Season Woke Score

out of 10

Season Overview

After being abducted by Katarina Rostova, Raymond "Red" Reddington finds himself alone in hostile territory, unsure of who, if anyone, he can trust. Surrounded by old enemies and new allies, Red must stay one step ahead of the Blacklist's most dangerous criminal, who will stop at nothing to unearth the very truth Red wants no one to know about. To find it, Katarina will insinuate herself into the life of Elizabeth Keen, who has finally reunited with her daughter Agnes. Katarina’s presence will bring danger to Liz’s doorstep and forever alter her relationship with Red.

Season Review

Season 7 of The Blacklist is dominated by the core mythology of Elizabeth Keen choosing sides between Raymond Reddington and her mother, Katarina Rostova. While the overarching narrative focuses on Cold War espionage, secrets, and betrayal, a significant portion of the episodic content explicitly imports highly politicized themes. The season features a notable episode that serves as an anti-conservative, anti-male political lecture, which strongly affects the scoring. The long-standing trend of Elizabeth Keen's moral ambiguity and constant betrayal of her male protector culminates in her fully embracing the 'dark side' and aligning with her mother to reject the control of men. The Task Force itself remains a diverse but largely non-ideological FBI unit, grounding the plot in standard procedural drama, but the thematic undercurrents are strong.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics2/10

The narrative does not primarily rely on race or intersectional hierarchy for its conflict. The FBI Task Force is racially diverse, but characters' merits as agents and criminal masterminds drive the plot, not their immutable characteristics. The central drama is based on an international conspiracy and personal family secrets.

Oikophobia3/10

Raymond Reddington is presented as a 'multiculturalist, a cosmopolite, and officially stateless' individual who operates outside national allegiance. The show critiques governmental and shadow-world corruption, but the critique does not generally frame Western civilization or America as fundamentally corrupt or racist. The primary conflict is not the deconstruction of heritage but the unraveling of a Cold War-era spy mystery.

Feminism9/10

One episode frames the central Blacklister as a radical feminist seeking vengeance on 'men controlling the lives of females' by surgically implanting uteruses into 'powerful, politically active, socially conservative men' like a conservative politician and a pastor. This narrative explicitly links conservative men with control and portrays sadistic, body-horror retribution as a justifiable response to anti-abortion policies. The season's main arc culminates with the female protagonist, Elizabeth Keen, siding with her mother, who declares she is 'done with men controlling my life,' elevating the theme of anti-male liberation and emasculation.

LGBTQ+6/10

The season uses body-horror to destabilize the biological family unit when men are surgically implanted with reproductive organs and forced to give birth. This plot device is used as extreme feminist-political punishment against social conservatives, rather than celebrating alternative sexual identity. The primary focus is political gender conflict and not queer theory or a general centering of alternative sexualities.

Anti-Theism8/10

A prominent victim of the season's most radical Blacklister is a conservative Pastor, a direct targeting of a Christian leader for his moral and political stance on life, subjecting him to non-consensual mutilation and forced pregnancy. Reddington himself is an implied atheist and proponent of moral relativism, which often clashes with the ethical boundaries of the FBI agents and provides the show's intellectual center, where Objective Truth is dismissed.