The Blacklist returns for its Tenth Season, it’s second without Megan Boone, in a two-part episode centering around Wujing‘s (Chin Han) mission of revenge against Raymond Reddington (James Spader). “The Night Owl” alerts the task force to Wujing targeting former Blacklisters who Raymond fed to the task force, including the latest being held in an international black site on U.S. soil, and recruiting them to his cause. The second focuses on Wujing building up the money for a prolonged fight against Red making use of private poker games and corrupt officials to get his hands on his old resources.
If the first two episodes are any indication, we’re likely to see the return of several former Blacklisters over the course of the season. There are new faces as well with the introduction of Anya Banerjee as MI6 Agent Siya Malik, and daughter of Meera, who joins the team at the end of the first episode. Siya will play a major role in the second episode, and prove capable in the role. We also get a cameo by Amir Arison and a subplot involving a teenage Agnes to further help illustrate that time has passed since the end of the previous season.
Banerjee is a nice addition to the show that still struggles from the absence of one of its two major characters. The cameo by Arison is unexpected, although, a couple of episodes in, it doesn’t appear that his character is coming back into the fold beyond this one appearance. I’d expect the Wujing storyline to get dragged out over the course of the season, but the style of his revenge does raise several questions about why he doesn’t just expose Red to the underworld immediately and what “proof” he could possibly hope to find or deliver that would be more convincing than what he has already learned.
