James Spader is very carefully coughing up exactly no details about where “The Blacklist” is heading as its second season begins.
What he will say is that the details he’s not spilling, rather than the original Big Questions, may gradually become the focus of the show.
“The Blacklist” returns at 10 p.m. Monday, carrying NBC’s fervent hope that it will perform as it did last year, when it became the most popular new show of the season.
Spader plays Red Reddington, a mysterious and brilliant con man who turns himself in to the FBI. In return for his freedom, he helps on difficult cases involving particularly shady criminals — many of whom are Reddington’s associates and acquaintances.
Perhaps the main reason Reddington surfaced, Spader says, was to help agent Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone), a bureau newbie to whom Reddington has a personal connection he’s not revealing.
“Red felt that the relationship between Elizabeth and her husband had reached a point where he was concerned for her safety and well-being,” Spader says. “He felt it was necessary to make contact with her.”
His arrival also brought out at least one other significant character, a smooth criminal named Fitch (Alan Alda).
“Red felt he needed to flush Fitch out of the bushes and get him to engage,” says Spader. “I think that will only increase.”
But the show revolves around Elizabeth and Red and the true nature of their relationship, which is as unclear to her as it is to viewers.
Widespread speculation has Red being her real father, though he denied it when she asked.
Spader has said in the past that resolving their relationship that way might be “too easy.”
He’s now backpedaling a bit. “It is very very hard to predict the road map of a television series,” he said last week. “Because it does not have a finite lifespan. Our show could last two years or seven.
“Once you’ve started taking all the back roads, they become much more interesting than even the destination. So it may be that the easiest and the simplest result is the right one. And even if it was predictable right from the start, there should be a satisfaction because the route was satisfying.
“But given what our show is, I don’t think anything is as simple as it may appear.”
Spader did say there will be at least two cliffhangers inside the coming season — one when it ends its first run of episodes Nov. 10 and another when it comes back Feb. 1 after the Super Bowl.
The episode after the Super Bowl will be the first half of a two-parter, with the second installment airing Thursday, Feb. 5. After airing on Mondays the first part of the season, the series will move to Thursdays to finish the year.
