History Characters / TheBlacklistMain

** Lampshaded at the start of the second episode with the use of Music/TheRollingStones' "Sympathy for the Devil". That said, in the same episode, Liz pegs him as being as comfortable in a Taliban cave as a swanky hotel.

* BigGood: How many of the characters see him, he himself tries to be LawfulGood.

* NiceHat: Never seen without one when he has to go outside.

%%* FieryRedhead

* YourDaysAreNumbered: In Season 2, it's revealed he has a previously un-diagnosed brain tumor. He was originally planning to retire, but Reddington convinced him to come back and do some good while he was still able. It turns out that he was being [[gaslit]] by Tom Connolly and the Cabal, and there's nothing wrong with him.

---> You know, for what it's worth, I spent four months on that ship chained up. And I never told her about us. Not one word.

* GoodIsNotSoft

* BirdsOfAFeather: Seems to think this regarding Samar (as depicted under the ButNotTooForeign entry below), but disregards that beyond their cultural background, their overall personalities (mild-mannered NonActionGuy vs. tough-as-nails ActionGirl) aren't really that much alike and she (initially at least) seems to be more attracted to more hands-on types like Levi or Ressler.

* CIAEvilFBIGood: She's TheUnfettered compared to the FBI agents, including her willingness to inflict ColdBloodedTorture on suspects.

[[spoiler:As of Season 8, it's suggested that he's a mysterious underworld figure known as N-13. The final two episodes of Season 8 heavily imply that he is actually Katarina Restova, Liz's mother.]]

* AnimalLover: He seems to have a pretty pronounced soft spot for our feathered and four-legged friends, siccing the task force on The Mombasa Cartel for no particular reason aside from "why not us [be the ones to take them down]?" and he enjoyed the company of a few of his doggy day care clients in season 5 as well. There's occasional passing comments ruing the endangered status of some species, and he even makes a friend out of a rat in his jail cell at the beginning of season 6.

* DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler:The season 5 finale reveals that this man is an imposter and the bones inside the duffel bag belong to the real Raymond Reddington.]]

** In terms of his role as the "Concierge of Crime," he better evokes a more badass, modern-day [[Franchise/SherlockHolmes Professor Moriarty]].

* {{Fiction 500}}: He spends more on his schemes than the US spends on waging the War on Terror. And every one of those schemes nets him ''exponentially'' more money than he spends.

* IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: Reddington not only invokes this, he takes it to the villainous extreme. His wife has moved on, and he accepts this. But when he discovers that the man she's now with has a mistress on the side? He takes him aside very politely, and tells him in no uncertain words that if he does not dump the excess baggage and dedicate his life to making the woman happy, ''he will kill him where he stands.''
-->You make her ''happy.'' That is the ''only'' reason you are still here.

** Lampshaded at the start of the second episode with the use of Music/TheRollingStones' "Sympathy for the Devil." That said, in the same episode, Liz pegs him as being as comfortable in a Taliban cave as a swanky hotel.

** He does it again to one of his friends, [[spoiler:Mr Gregory Devry]], who was SecretlyDying of a cancer.

** As demonstrated by actions towards the end of "The Stewmaker." Harm Liz, and he will get you for it. [[spoiler:According to the season 4 finale, he is in fact her biological father...or at least, the original Raymond Reddington was. The current Reddington was Liz's biological ''mother.'']]

* PetTheDog: In "The Courier," Reddington reveals that he bought the house of a struggling writer and let him live there for free after his mother died.
** Reddington is usually a sarcastic and unhelpful {{Jerkass}} to everyone, but when Luli, Dembe and Elizabeth's lives are threatened in "Anslo Garrick," he cracks pretty quickly.

** Reddington promises [[spoiler:to take care of Grey's family before he executes Grey for betraying him]].

** A major one in regards to Dembe [[spoiler:saving him from DyingAlone on a street in Kenya, paying for his medical bills and financing his education]].

* PopculturalOsmosisFailure: While Reddington is WickedCultured, modern pop-culture and technology is completely lost on him not having the foggiest idea what ''StarWars'' is about. Liz at one point refers to him as a "walking anachronism" and Lampshades the irony that he doesn't know what a JediMindTrick is despite being a [[ManipulativeBastard certified master at it]]
* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: What he occupies himself with during "The Good Samaritan Killer." [[OocIsSeriousBusiness No slick suits, charm or suaveness]]. Just him, a gun and a desire for revenge.

* StepfordSnarker: He nearly always acts mocking, but it's noticeable the sarcasm is a facade for ''something'', be it manipulation, sadness, guilt, anger or whatever. Lampshaded by Anslo Garrick.

* TranquilFury: His reaction upon coming face-to-face with the Stewmaker. Also his demeanor during "The Good Samaritan Killer." Red is awfully (outwardly) calm while killing several people.
** In the climax of "Mombasa Cartel" Red has a chat with the main villain about [[spoiler:how screwed up Dembe's early years were (the man had indirectly caused them when his subordinates sold Dembe to sex traffickers)]]. And while affable, the undercurrent of pure outrage at what happened to his subordinate just bubbles below the surface.

** Reddington proceeds to mock the FBI agents for taking [[spoiler:the wrong photos in analyzing evidence after the general's daughter gets abducted by Serbian-speaking mercenaries]].

* VillainProtagonist: As episode 2 shows, he might be a protagonist, but he's still a villain. He ordered an assassination on Floriana Campos and played the [=FBI=] and the Freelancer against each other.
** Take note of his RoaringRampageOfRevenge in "The Good Samaritan Killer." While he's no less affable, every single person who had a direct involvement in his kidnapping--the man running the surveillance outpost, the paramedic who removed his chip, the doctor who provided the interrogation drugs, and Grey, who betrayed him--ends up dead by his hands.

[[caption-width-right:350:''"My job isn’t to trust my gut. My job is to uphold the law."'']]

He left the FBI after Season 8. But he came in Season 9.

* HonorBeforeReason: Ressler is constantly being needled by Reddington, and is constantly chafed by having to work with a criminal he chased for years. But in "Anslo Garrick," Red encourages him to just go, saying Ressler would probably be glad to see him die. Ressler replies, "You're an FBI informant. That means you're under my protection.", putting his personal feelings for Red aside.

* LawmanGoneBad: He's posed as one twice so far. In "The Stewmaker," he pretends to be a {{double agent}} who's actually Reddington's inside man at the FBI. At the beginning of "Anslo Garrick," he plays a similar role, this time at the State Department.
* MadeOfIron: It became a {{running gag}} to have him suffer a preposterous amount of physical damage and then shrug it off with a minor thought. At least until "Anslo Garrick," where a merc shoots him in the leg with a shotgun. He would have bled to death if Reddington hadn't performed emergency treatment, and even then, he needed surgery in a proper hospital.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Because “Frank Sturgeon” knew so much about the investigation into Laurel Hitchin’s death, Prescott realized Sturgeon was actually a cop.

** Further confiremd in "Kuwait" when Reddington [[spoiler:aka the actual one]] debriefed him on an op he participated in Kuwait back in 1989.

* SacrificialLion: Almost becomes one in "Berlin: Conclusion." However, he lives and now walks with the use of a cane.

* WhatYouAreInTheDark: In season 6 at Red's trial he calls on Cooper to confirm the immunity agreement, betting Cooper would put his decency before his career. Red was right and Cooper does exactly that.

* BigDamnKiss: With Samar, in the season 4 finale. At long last.

* ClearMyName: Briefly made a fugitive in Season Six, after the Reddington Task Force is placed under arrest.

* VillainRespect: Despite one being an international criminal and the other an FBI agent, Red has shown repeated confidence in Aram's computer and hacking skills. Aram in turn is usually more nervous around Reddington than afraid, not to mention being the only character who calls him "''Mr.'' Reddington."

* FakeGuestStar: He first appears in episode 2 and, while he doesn't get too many lines or much screen time, he has been in pretty much every single episode since that.

** A Season 5 episode reveals that he’s bizarrely good at mini golf, enough to beat Red in a tournament.

-->'''Cooper:''' Just...Dembe. Like Music/{{Prince}} or Music/{{Madonna}}.

* ActionGirl: After one episode as a psychological profiler (see ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything), Liz took this role. Although noticeably a rookie in the early entries, she leveled up rapidly to badass by "Anslo Garrick."

* TheAntiNihilist: In Season Three, she's on the run and labeled a fugitive, one of the Most Wanted terrorists pursued by her friends and colleagues, and yet she still tries to remain good.

* BloodKnight: It takes her time to acknowledge this, but she finally admits as much in season 5, when it's killing and planning that brings her out of her depression. It's implied that's what reconnects her with Tom, as they resume their relationship [[spoiler: ''after'' she held him captive as revenge for manipulating her]].

* CareerVersusFamily: In the first episode, Liz and her husband are attempting to adopt a child when Reddington enters her life. Though considering that Zamani almost kills her husband, who is then later exposed as some sort of world-class criminal (assuming he's not being framed), those plans are apparently on hold...and later end up permanently so when she discovers that he really is dodgy.

** [[spoiler:This is played straight in the season 8 finale "Konets" after being shot in the back.]]

* DidntThinkThisThrough: Most of her plans when she attempts to act on her own have disastrous consequences that cause nearly everyone trouble. First seen in Season Two when she secretly imprisons Tom that leads to an innocent harbor inspector's death when he stumbles upon it, and more blatantly in Season Six when she intentionally gets Reddington arrested and facing the death penalty, believing he can get out of it in time, but becomes horrified when he can't.

* TheDragon: Liz also kinda-sorta takes on this role as as second Dragon to Reddington in season 3.

* {{Frameup}}[=/=]{{Scapegoat}}: What happened to her courtesy of the Alliance/Cabal at the end of Season Two. She is forced to go on the run, dying her hair blonde. It isn't until Season Four when she gets a pardon from the President of the United States that she is reinstated as an FBI agent.

* HeroicSacrifice: Destroys her professional life in the Season Two finale by murdering the Attorney General in order to prevent him acting on his threat to have the entire Task Force framed and jailed on false criminal charges.

* InTheBack: [[spoiler: At the last part of "Konets", Liz is shot twice in the back by Vandyke.]]

* NewMeat: She's not completely new to the Bureau, but she is barely a month out of Quantico after she spent three months stationed in New York with the FBI's Mobile Emergency Psych Department. Julian Gale himself lampshades the peculiarity of a new agent suddenly being placed in such an important Task Force.

* CharacterDeath: [[spoiler:Dies in episode 8 of season 5 by Ian Garvey.]]

* HazyFeelTurn: He can't possibly be called a good guy, but by the end of season 2 it seems like he's throwing his lot in with Liz for better or worse.

* SacrificialLion: She is pretty prominent throughout the first season, but she is killed after she gets [[SlashedThroat her throat slashed]] in "Berlin: Conclusion."

[[/folder]]

* AntiVillain: Reddington is a [[WellIntentionedExtremist Type III]], as he knows no bounds to achieve his goals, but his goals are noble. It's {{lampshaded}} by Cooper at the end of "The Cyprus Agency," who remarks about how vile and amoral Reddington is, but without his help, the FBI wouldn't have saved all the women and children the Cyprus Agency was taking advantage of.

** A minor one but while a FatherToHisMen, Red expects his employees to live up to his standards and deliver results. He gets annoyed at [[spoiler:the tracker he's using in one episode and snaps at him regarding the state of the DMV office he's based in]]

-->'''Reddington:''' (''chuckling'') Of course not. [[MoodWhiplash I'm a criminal.]]

%% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample * DoctorWhomage: The ''Doctor Who'' fandom has noticed that Red shares quite a few similarities with the Doctor, with all incarnations from the First to the Sixth.

Liz is later assassinated by VanDyke at the end of Season 8.

* KilledByRequest: Megan Boone wanted to leave the series to pursue other ventures.

** [[spoiler:Following the collapse of his empire, he moves into a low-key hotel and has charmed ''every'' guests there with none the wiser that he was notorious criminal. This include games he'd plays with children and the young couple who invite him to party with and from all accounts genuinely enjoy they're company.]]

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: How he views Reddington after he starts to work with him.

He left the FBI after Season 8.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The very first scene of the series. A well-dressed, harmless-looking late-middle-aged man walks into the FBI headquarters, asks to see a high-ranking assistant director, gives his name, and calmly sets down his briefcase and removes his hat and coat (to the bemused stares of onlookers) while she checks his identity... only to suddenly be flagged as one of the FBI's most wanted and suddenly surrounded by armed response officers. And tellingly, he's already assumed the position the very second they show up. Raymond Reddington is a criminal, is elegant and refined, is a lot more dangerous than he seems at first glance, is brazen, is cool and collected under pressure, and is clearly several steps ahead of everyone else.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The very first scene of the series. A well-dressed, harmless-looking late-middle-aged man walks into the FBI headquarters, asks to see a high-ranking assistant director, gives his name, and calmly sets down his briefcase and removes his hat and coat (to the bemused stares of onlookers) while she checks his identity... only to suddenly be flagged as one of the FBI's most wanted and suddenly surrounded by armed response officers, kneeling the very second they show up. Raymond Reddington is a criminal, is a lot more dangerous than he seems at first glance, is brazen, is cool and collected under pressure, and is clearly several steps ahead of everyone else.

As of Season 9, he's recruited into the FBI as a special agent.

[[folder:Liz]]
!!Elizabeth "Liz" Keen [[spoiler:née Milhoan]] [[spoiler:aka Masha Rostova]]
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/keen_elizabeth.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"Why involve me? I'm nobody. It's my first day. Nothing special about me."'']]
->'''Played by:''' Creator/MeganBoone

A rookie [[FBIAgent FBI agent]], having just graduated from Quantico a month ago (apart from several years working for the Bureau in other capacities). She's been trying to start a family with her husband (through adoption).

[[spoiler:She's the daughter of Katarina Rostova and the actual Raymond Reddington.]]

* ActionGirl: After one episode as a psychological profiler (see ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything), Liz took this role. Although noticeably a rookie in the early entries, she leveled up rapidly to badass by "Anslo Garrick."
* ADayInTheLimelight: The episode "Misere" shows what was happening to her ever since she got Skip to defect from Reddington and work with Townsend to hunt down Reddington and at the same time, wonder if she'll be way worse than Reddington is.
* AntiHero: Starting to become one after the death of Tom. After Navarro dies of an injury, Liz disposes of his body using The Stewmaker's MO.
** In "The Capricorn Killer", Liz's therapist is [[spoiler:revealed to be the mastermind behind several murders, and sought out Liz as her patient in order to recruit her. Liz later lets her go and covers her involvement in the murders, and in return she agrees to join Liz's own personal network of shady allies.]]
** As of Season 8, she's willing to resign from the FBI to go after Red for killing Katarina. This is despite Cooper's warnings that whatever she'll do, her long-term prospects will be ruined eventually.
* TheAntiNihilist: In Season Three, she's on the run and labeled a fugitive, one of the Most Wanted terrorists pursued by her friends and colleagues, and yet she still tries to remain good.
* BecameTheirOwnAntithesis: From sweet and innocent newcomer to the type of person who would cover up murders and intentionally let criminals escape.
* BatmanGambit: In "Thrushes", she leaks the rendezvous point with Kirk on purpose so that Reddington's mercenaries can close in on him on his actual meeting place.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: She's usually very soft-spoken and polite. But as "Berlin" shows us when she poisons and blackmails Vogel, you do ''not'' want to be on her bad side - she can be just as dangerous as Reddington if you piss her off.
* BloodKnight: It takes her time to acknowledge this, but she finally admits as much in season 5, when it's killing and planning that brings her out of her depression. It's implied that's what reconnects her with Tom, as they resume their relationship [[spoiler: ''after'' she held him captive as revenge for manipulating her]].
* BrainyBrunette: She's an FBI profiler, after all.
* BrokenBird: After Tom's death, she declines returning to the FBI and even gives away custody of her daughter, retreating to rural Alaska. When she realizes criminals have entered her house, she straight-up kills them all.
* ButNotTooForeign: She's revealed to be Russian-American.
* CareerVersusFamily: In the first episode, Liz and her husband are attempting to adopt a child when Reddington enters her life. Though considering that Zamani almost kills her husband, who is then later exposed as some sort of world-class criminal (assuming he's not being framed), those plans are apparently on hold...and later end up permanently so when she discovers that he really is dodgy.
* CharacterDeath: [[spoiler:Dies after giving birth while wounded. Subverted; she faked her death.]]
** [[spoiler:This is played straight in the season 8 finale "Konets" after being shot in the back.]]
* ChronicHeroSyndrome: Never allows for an innocent to be hurt, even if it means a criminal can escape.
* ClearMyName: Became a fugitive in Season Three and briefly again in Season Six, after the Reddington Task Force is placed under arrest.
* CorruptTheCutie: As the series progresses, she goes from naive newcomer to taking elements of the DarkActionGirl.
* DaddysLittleVillain: With Sam, she learns to be very good at pick-pocketing. With Reddington, she learns to think like a criminal. With Kirk, she learns her Russian heritage.
* DamselOutOfDistress: At first she does require rescuing, but it didn't take long before she becomes quite capable of resolving conflicts on her own.
* DeterminedWidow: Tom's death really brought out the DarkActionGirl traits, she ends up torturing gang members and even killing one of them in her mission to learn who was responsible for his death.
* DidntThinkThisThrough: Most of her plans when she attempts to act on her own have disastrous consequences that cause nearly everyone trouble. First seen in Season Two when she secretly imprisons Tom that leads to an innocent harbor inspector's death when he stumbles upon it, and more blatantly in Season Six when she intentionally gets Reddington arrested and facing the death penalty, believing he can get out of it in time, but becomes horrified when he can't.
* TheDogBitesBack: Ian Garvey tortured and killed Tom in front of her, she comes after him and his associates with a vengeance. An argument could be made that she does this to Reddington too, his frequent lies may have contributed to her decision to tip off the police, so that she could investigate without him sabotaging her.
* TheDragon: Liz also kinda-sorta takes on this role as as second Dragon to Reddington in season 3.
* DrivenToVillainy: After multiple hardships that ended with her in a coma and Tom dead, she declines rejoining the FBI, because she knows what she's about to do won't be what a good or even lawful cop would do.
* EveryScarHasAStory: Liz has a burn scar on her hand that she initially presents as the result of a childhood accident. However, we later find out that the scar was given to her by her father. The scar's shape later appears on the box her husband had hidden under the floorboards.
* EvilerThanThou: She crosses multiple lines when interrogating the criminals she suspected of being responsible for Tom's death.
* {{Expy}}: Liz is blatantly the Clarice Starling to Reddington's Hannibal.
* FairCop: Given her actress.
* FakingTheDead: So far, she's done this twice that we've seen.
* FauxActionGirl: Borders on this quite a lot. Many of the blacklisters have gotten the better of her at times, requiring either Ressler or Reddington to get her out of a jam. As of Season 2, she's gotten better about fending for herself and using her profiling skills to either buy herself time or get the villain to make a mistake.
* {{Frameup}}[=/=]{{Scapegoat}}: What happened to her courtesy of the Alliance/Cabal at the end of Season Two. She is forced to go on the run, dying her hair blonde. It isn't until Season Four when she gets a pardon from the President of the United States that she is reinstated as an FBI agent.
* FriendToAllChildren: She's ''very'' good with kids and is notably less merciful when a Blacklister uses children in their operations.
* GreatDetective: She's certainly a very skilled investigator.
* HeartbrokenBadass: She definitely GrewASpine after Tom's death.
* HeroicSacrifice: Destroys her professional life in the Season Two finale by murdering the Attorney General in order to prevent him acting on his threat to have the entire Task Force framed and jailed on false criminal charges.
* HeroWithBadPublicity: In the first parts of Season Three, she's branded as a rogue FBI agent. Though she was "cleared" thanks to Red's intervention, some people don't agree that she's not a double agent working for the FSB.
* HyperAwareness: She very often notes things that are basically invisible to everyone else.
* IdiotBall: Grabs this quite frequently. Two major examples would be the time when Frederick Barnes was able to make her give up her gun, violating protocol and letting the man get away (though this is arguably a case of HonorBeforeReason as she ''did'' save Barnes' hostage's life) and when she lets her emotions get the better of her when she has her husband dead to rights, with her attempt to do a JackBauerInterrogationTechnique blowing up in her face when he breaks free and goes for her gun.
* ImportantHaircut: Gets one at the start of the second season.
* InTheBack: [[spoiler: At the last part of "Konets", Liz is shot twice in the back by Vandyke.]]
* IWarnedYou: Many criminals underestimate and dismiss her, the later ones realize she wasn't kidding.
* KickTheSonOfABitch: She might not have intended to, but she has no regrets killing Navarro.
* LoveMakesYouEvil: It's what started her on her RoaringRampageOfRevenge
* MaternityCrisis: The stress of being pursued by armed men led by Mattias Solomon himself caused her to go into labour.
* MathematiciansAnswer: On the question of whether she doesn't have a criminal record because she wasn't a career criminal, or because she just hadn't been ''caught'', she answers "Yes."
* MeaningfulName: ''[[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/keen Keen]]'' means "eager/enthusiastic, interested, intelligent, insightful." All terms that apply to our agent.
* MoralityPet: To Reddington. Based on the conversation she had with Tom, he claims this too.
* MsFanservice: Frequently found wearing tight, somewhat low-cut, short-sleeved T-shirts under her jacket.
* MysteriousPast: She claims her foster father Sam was a criminal, which shocks her employers because that never came up when she was being recruited (it could have been a serious obstacle). It seems like Sam didn't have a record simply because he was never ''caught''...and it seems that Liz might ''also'' not have a record for precisely the same reason with hints that Sam passed on some skills to her and that she spent some time as a ConArtist before joining law enforcement.
* NewMeat: She's not completely new to the Bureau, but she is barely a month out of Quantico after she spent three months stationed in New York with the FBI's Mobile Emergency Psych Department. Julian Gale himself lampshades the peculiarity of a new agent suddenly being placed in such an important Task Force.
* NotHelpingYourCase: Singleton suspected the former FBI agent to be lying about the circumstances surrounding Tom's death, as he learns about the things she's done in her investigation, he grows increasingly suspicious.
* NotWhatItLooksLike: When Liz and Ressler tries to stop an assassination attempt on the president, the man responsible for the attempt is secret service. Naturally when TheCavalry arrives, the agent accuses Liz and Ressler of the assassination attempt, and they are arrested.
* ParentalAbandonment: She was raised by a foster father. She only has fuzzy memories of her real parents, but she has started to suspect that her real dad might be Reddington. A DNA test at the end of Season 4 confirms this. Before this, Alexander Kirk claims to be her real father, though a blood test proved it to be false. He was the husband of her mother though.
* TheProfiler: Part of her formal skill set. She trained and was about to become an ''official'' FBI profiler, but after Reddington dragged her into his game, she's now more of an ActionGirl. Her profiling skills still come up occasionally, though.
* ProperlyParanoid: Thanks to the events of "Berlin", Liz is paranoid to the point that she changes residences and keeps her Glock 19 in case someone wants to off her. She even oversaw the lockup of Tom in a secret location.
* RealLifeWritesThePlot: Megan Boone's pregnancy was written into the series.
* RogueAgent: At the end of Season Two, law enforcement/intelligence agencies branded her after she assassinated Tom Connolly.
** Liz goes entirely rogue in Season 8 just to take down Red for killing Masha. She's been warned by her colleagues that she can get arrested or killed.
* SherlockScan: OncePerEpisode to trace a criminal down.
* TheUnfettered: In Season Two, Liz is willing to intimidate or hurt criminal/terrorist suspects just to get the needed answers.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Ressler]]
!!Donald Ressler
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ressler_donald.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"My job isn’t to trust my gut. My job is to uphold the law."'']]
->'''Played by:''' Creator/DiegoKlattenhoff

A veteran FBI agent who was in charge of the Reddington case. He is now included in a secret task force alongside Liz to follow through Reddington's blacklist.
----

[[folder:Tom]]
!!Tom Keen AKA Jacob Phelps [[spoiler:and Christopher Hargrave]]
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/phelps_jacob.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"You think I murdered a KGB defector. Like I'm Bond. Tom Bond and just between Social Studies and recess I go around assassinating people."'']]
->'''Played by:''' Creator/RyanEggold

Liz's husband, a grade school teacher who at first appears to be warm, loving and sensitive. However, he's been hiding something from his wife; he has an EmergencyStash of guns, money and passports secreted inside their house, and he's somehow involved with the murder of a Russian defector in Boston. Or is it all a FrameUp? With Reddington's help--or, perhaps, in spite of it--Liz searches for the truth...

!!'''WARNING: Only spoilers from the current season (Season 8) are whited out.'''

"Rassvet" suggests that he's ex-Russian Embassy employee Ilya Koslov, who masqueraded as him in order to ensure the safety of Liz and Katarina, but later episodes brings this revelation in doubt.

[[spoiler:As of Season 8, it's suggested that he's a mysterious underworld figure known as N-13.]]

** This is played straight in the season 8 finale "Konets" after being shot in the back.

* EvilOldFolks: He's quite old, and probably one of the most dangerous men in the world. [[spoiler:He's also Elizabeth's biological father, which makes him Agnes' grandfather.]]

* LukeIAmYourFather: A DNA test at the finale of Season 4 reveals that Reddington is actually Liz's biological father. [[spoiler:Subverted in the Season 5 finale when it is revealed that he is an imposter and the real Reddington has been dead for over 20 years.]]

** As demonstrated by actions towards the end of "The Stewmaker." Harm Liz, and he will get you for it. [[spoiler:According to the season 4 finale, he is in fact her biological father.]]

** Even Knowing that Cooper is considering Revealing that he is an imposter he decides to save him from his old army friend. After their adeventre ends with Cooper's friend dead Red assures him YouDidEverythingYouCould and tells him he is a good man now so he shouldn't dwell on any of his past mistakes. After this Cooper decides that perhaps Red isn't as bad as he thoughht and choses to keep his secret.