YMMV / The Blacklist

• Adorkable: Aram. He's a trained FBI agent who rides his bicycle to the black site, plays hacky sack with his computer nerd buddies on the weekends, stores cat videos on his work laptop, and is the tiny guy in his relationship with Samar.
  • Later on Herbie, Aram's Suspiciously Similar Substitute takes on many of the same quirky attributes, being in a professional Foosball league, a book club, and generally being awkward around anyone and everyone.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • "The Deer Hunter." Does Liz really feel No Sympathy for the Anti-Villain killer and believe she's just as bad as her Asshole Victims? Or is it just a ploy to piss her off and lure her in close enough for a chokehold?
  • "Lady Ambrosia." Theodore's Murder-Suicide against his Evil Matriarch mother at the end. Genuine Roaring Rampage of Revenge? Or desire to invoke Redemption Equals Death ^note Ambrosia's M.O. involves claiming that the kids whom she kills and then has Theo throw down her well are actually just reincarnated as butterflies. on both her and himself?
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • An in-universe example. Reddington has been on the FBI's Most Wanted list for decades, yet at the beginning of the series he surrenders to them without a fight even as a dozen heavily-armed police converge on his position. No doubt they were flabbergasted. In "Anslo Garrick", it's revealed that Red is this to Ressler personally as well, since he spent years unsuccessfully hunting him, even ending a relationship in the process, only for him to allow the FBI to arrest him on his own terms.
  • The Director falls under this as well, unsurprisingly. Despite the fact that he's been the audience figurehead of the Cabal and the primary mastermind, he isn't the type to get his hands dirty, and once the Cabal cuts their ties with him, Reddington callously tosses him off a plane.
  • Similarly to the Director, Laurel Hitchens. She’s a major thorn in the task force’s side for multiple seasons, but Ressler winds up killing her almost by accident — furious about Revan Wright’s death and Hitchens’s Smug Snake attitude, he strikes her in anger, causing her to crumple to the ground and hit her head hard against the wall. She dies of the ensuing head wound moments later, without ever putting up a serious fight.
• Arc Fatigue: A major fan complaint, especially in the later seasons. The Myth Arc regarding Reddington, Katarina, and Liz has been going on for the entire duration of the show, and after eight seasons, few, if any, questions have definitively been answered, while new mysteries appear on a regular basis. With Liz's death in season 8, many viewers are concerned that the arc will never receive a satisfying conclusion.
• Ass Pull: The show ends with Reddington getting killed by a bull in the middle of nowhere. While some praised it as an example of Red going out on his own terms, it was widely derided as being one of worst series finales ever and proof that the writers simply had no idea how to resolve the mystery of Reddington's identity satisfactorily.
• Awesome Music: The ending theme post-Pilot episodes composed by Dave Porter.
  • The use of Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around" to underscore Red's Roaring Rampage of Revenge in "The Good Samaritan Killer".
  • "La Grange" is used when Reddington's child soldier abductors take out a pursuing Humvee in the forests of Cameroon.
  • "You Were Born" is used in the end of "The Front" while Reddington watches an old film reel of his family, which gave him the inspiration to track down his missing daughter.
  • X Ambassadors' The Heist, played to a montage of cases in "The Major".
  • Season 3 opening with The Doors Peace Frog
  • The Season 1 finale uses Pearl Jam's "Just Breathe" and the Season 2 finale uses Elton John's "RocketMan" as its ending themes.
  • Disturbed's cover of "The Sound of Silence" sets the scene for the climax of "Ian Garvey".
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Liz Keen and her actress Megan Boone is the major one among fans. A strong, sensitive character or an incredibly incompetent, hysterical, weak fool who only gets by courtesy of Reddington? Those who like her believe that her actions are understandable, if not always logical, and her shortcomings can be explained by the fact that she's a total newcomer to the criminal underworld she was unexpectedly thrust into. Her detractors, meanwhile, take issue with her perceived incompetence, hypocrisy, and ingratitude for both Red and her teammates, as well as the fact that she has many informed strengths that are told and never shown (e.g. she's supposed to be a profiler, but she's rarely shown profiling anybody.) Not helping matters is the fact that she receives more praise and leeway than many other characters, which her fans think is deserved and her detractors think is Character Shilling. As for Megan Boone, a significant portion of the fanbase considers her inexperienced, wooden and hopelessly out-matched by the more experienced James Spader, while others believe that her performance is at least passable and she eventually settled into the role.
  • The whole task force. Are they capable, compelling FBI agents, or bumbling, incompetent morons who only exist to steal the spotlight from more interesting characters like Red? Ressler is a particular point of contention; his fans claim that he's a smart, good-at-heart By-the-Book Cop who borders on The Woobie after everything he's been through, while his detractors claim that he's a dismissive, self-righteous Hypocrite with enough Jerkass moments to make him completely unlikable.
  • As of the later seasons, Reddington himself. The Arc Fatigue surrounding him, his unwillingness to give Liz (and thus the audience) any answers to the questions they've been asking him for years, and his continued meddling in Liz's life have made him controversial in some parts of the fanbase (although James Spader's performance is still almost universally praised.)
• Broken Base:
  • Liz's death in "Mr. Solomon" sparked a debate among fans of the show, especially since she was pregnant at the time. Some believed that the writers "killed" her in order to save her for a future arc. Others believed that she (in-universe) faked her death in anticipation of warnings given to her by Red. Rumors started on the internet that Liz may return for the fourth season, and the fact that she faked her death was eventually confirmed in the finale.
  • Liz's actual death in season 8 following Megan Boone's departure. Liz had always been a Base-Breaking Character, and many fans were happy to see her go, but others are concerned that her apparent death will prevent the show from reaching a satisfying conclusion for its central arc. Some also simply believe that Liz deserved better.
• Complete Monster: The Blacklist contains the most dangerous criminals to ever appear on the face of the Earth, but there are still a few that manage to stand out above the rest:
  • Season 6: Bastien Moreau, aka "The Corsican", is an assassin, No. 20 on the list, who forces surgeon Hans Koehler to give him a brand new face. Murdering Koehler and his team, then his own subordinates, Moreau intends to murder a diplomat by bombing the UN and killing everyone present even if it goes against his ideas of anti-globalism at the core, so he can keep the image. Moreau has a long history of terrorist attacks in the name of nationalism, murdering a German diplomat before realizing he is being used and attempting to turn on his employers and Reddington at the end.
  • "The Freelancer (No. 145)": Floriana Campo is one of the worst, despite not even being on the list. She acts as a human rights activist by day, fighting against the Everhardt Cartel, but by night actually runs said cartel, which is one of the largest slave trading cartels in the world. As the leader of the cartel, she has hundreds if not thousands of men, women, and children kidnapped, has her insignia branded on their back, and sells them to her wealthy clients either as sex slaves or as manual labor. Through these methods, she has ruined the lives of many, just so she could make her own life luxurious. When her husband gets too close to discovering the truth, she murders him in cold blood. She has proven to be so vile, even Reddington despises her.
  • "The Cyprus Agency (No. 64)": Owen Mallory, formerly Michael Shaw, is No. 64 on the list. He runs a supposed adoption agency called the Cyprus Agency. Initially believing that the Agency kidnaps children just to sell them to the wealthy, when FBI task force led by Elizabeth Keen delves into the agency's darkest secrets they find out the truth is far worse. Instead of kidnapping children, the agency kidnaps women all over the world regardless of age and puts them into comas, where Owen himself would rape them so they can produce children, even injecting sedatives to prolong the comas and the process. He has done this to many women, and if some of the women die he simply has his employees dispose of them. He also isn't very good to his employees either, as such when he has his employee kidnap a college girl and said employee makes a mistake, Mallory callously shoots him. When Elizabeth finally catches him, she sees how many women he kept in comas and raped, which is in the dozens, and those are just the women still alive. When she asks him why he did all this, he says that as a child in the adoption system he felt that he wasn't perfect, and by kidnapping all these women to rape, they could make his children, thus "ensuring his legacy" and making it so he won't feel that way anymore.
• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: A pattern that emerges on the show is Liz gradually learning to warm to and trust Reddington, only to learn that Red has (often needlessly) been keeping important secrets from her and / or the FBI, leading to Liz undermining or outright betraying Red either to uncover what he's keeping from her, or for revenge against some imagined or actual crime he's committed against her or her family- rinse and repeat for 8 seasons. Not helping is the fact that Liz and the other FBI agents become increasingly complicit in Red's numerous criminal dealings as well as turning a blind eye to acts of kidnapping, torture or murder carried out by Red or by their own shady American or Israeli colleagues, while on the other side of the coin is literally hundreds of terrorists, assassins, hackers, thieves, human traffickers and other hardened criminals that make up the Blacklist. There are several points in the show where every character is acting ignorant, stupid or outright evil and it can be difficult to root for anyone because everyone is some shade of awful.
• Don't Shoot the Message: Season 5 had an episode that tried to address the wage gap—Samar found out by accident that she was being paid much less than Aram after the people in payroll mixed up their checks, implicitly because "all brown faces look the same" to them. Sexism and racism are both important issues, but the way the episode tries to address them comes across as incredibly clunky and awkward—the subplot comes out of nowhere, is not at all subtle, necessitates use of the Conflict Ball to work, and is ultimately broken by the fact that Samar and Aram don't even do the same job or work for the same organization^note Aram is a tech specialist, Samar is a field agent; Aram is thoroughly FBI, Samar is "on loan" from Mossad, which makes comparing their paychecks meaningless. And then there's the fact that the entire plotline turns out to be an excuse for a Samar/Aram Ship Tease moment, and Samar only gets a raise because Aram had feelings for her, not because the FBI wanted to pay its agents fairly. The TL;DR is that workplace racism and sexism do deserve attention, but an awkwardly-placed, nonsensical wage gap storyline that winds up getting played for romance is probably not a great way to do it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Dembe, Red's bodyguard, may be The Quiet One, but he has a loyal fanbase.
  • Mr. Kaplan has her fans too.
  • Matthias Solomon, the Cabal's gleefully sadistic pet sociopath, was so well-received that he not only survived both Tom Keene and Red, he got top billing in the spin-off series, Blacklist: Redemption.
  • Baz as well due to his badass tactics in helping Reddington and the task force out. Many were shocked to see him shot by Kaplan. The producers confirmed that Bazzel Baz won't come back next season.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • The rather bizarre theory that spawned on Tumblr that Tom Keen and Donald Ressler are actually each other. The theory goes that Tom has a secret ear piece that he uses to communicate with Ressler, and that many of his lines are actually Ressler talking. According to the people who created/believe the theory, this makes Agnes Keen Ressler's daughter instead of Tom's and Liz is actually married to Ressler. There is little to no evidence in the series to support any of this, and the theory is quite widely disputed by other fans on the Internet.
  • "Redarina" is the theory that Red is not Liz's father but her mother, and had a sex change and drastically altered her appearance to survive. Though this theory is blown open with countless plot holes, it nevertheless persisted for years until the finale, when a throwaway line from Reddington is just vague and ambiguous enough to either confirm the theory or be written off as him referring to himself as a general parental figure, depending on the viewer. A couple of writers claimed that they intended to make the theory canon and "force-fed" the audience clues, but many viewers, whether they support the theory or not, write this off as a last-ditch effort to cover their own behinds by making season after season of disappointing writing look somewhat coherent in hindsight.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: A relatively minor one in season 4, after Samar realizes that she's being paid far less than Aram despite doing a similar (arguably even more dangerous) job. The difference between their salaries is 32%, and after Cooper talks to accounting, Samar is offered a 16% raise. But the episode ends with the revelation that a.) Aram asked for Samar to get a raise, not Cooper, and b.) the only reason she's now making 16% more is because Aram took a 16% pay cut, making them even. So Samar did get better pay in the end, but Aram had to take a pay cut to make it happen, and she's still making less than he was before.
• Evil Is Cool: Reddington himself. He's a very suave, mysterious criminal who takes being captured by the FBI in stride. He also keeps his cool in seemingly nerve-wracking situation and only raises his voice when he needs to. He even knows how to get what he wants by playing both the Feds and the criminals on his blacklist.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • What happened to Reddington after he went underground? When did he meet some of the blacklisters like Zamani, and why did he create the Blacklist in the first place?
  • Liz's Convenient Coma in season 5 resulted in a year-long Time Skip, which the fandom quickly filled with missing moments fics.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Lizzington (Red/Liz) is the most popular ship in the fandom, mostly thanks to the chemistry between James Spader (Red) and Megan Boone (Liz), as well as the fact that much of the show is focused on their dynamic. It even surpasses the canon Liz/Tom pairing in terms of popularity, despite repeated hints that Red might be Liz's father (or maybe even her mother.
• Friendly Fandoms: Strangely enough, with Doom At Your Service, a fantasy romance K-drama. This is because Doom At Your Service has a character called Kim Sa-ram, and the ship name for Samar/Aram is also Saram, so the two end up in one another’s tags pretty frequently, and it’s not uncommon for Blacklist fans to stumble across K-drama content and vise versa. They’re usually good sports about it, leading to this trope.
• Harsher in Hindsight: "The Cabal", also known as "The Fulcrum" In-Universe, who appeared in Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, seemed like a subject of Satire of a world government in 2014, but as of 2020-2021 COVID-19 Pandemic and the conspiracy theory of "The Great Reset", with QAnon-type conspiracy theorists believing that a cabal engineered the COVID-19 Pandemic and the "You will own nothing and be happy in 2030" theory, this now seems a lot darker than when it was around 2013-2014 and 2015-2017 in the series. Made especially more shocking by the fact that conspiracy theorists online are spreading this misinformation and theory quite a lot across social media.
• He's Just Hiding: After the apparent death of Liz in season 3, this became a fairly frequent reaction. The large number of unresolved plotlines relating to her is probably a rather large part of the reason, as is the fact that she's already faked her death once before, as is the fact that killing her off puts this show nearly in Game of Thrones-level Anyone Can Die territory. However, with an entire episode focusing on Reddington's highly OOC grief over her death, it's seeming less likely.
  • Ultimately Played Straight. Liz is revealed to be alive and hiding in Cuba in the season 3 finale. Mr. Kaplan faked her death in order to protect her from Reddington's lifestyle. Unsurprisingly, Red is furious when he finds out about it, not just because of the perceived betrayal of one of his closest friends, but because, by sending Tom and Agnes to reunite with her in Cuba, Mr. Kaplan has unknowingly led Alexander Kirk to Liz and Agnes.
  • In full effect again after season 8, in which Liz was apparently killed off for real because actress Megan Boone left the show. There are still many unresolved Liz-centric plotlines, and the Myth Arc hasn't yet reached an end. While there's no indication that Boone will return, some viewers have speculated that they'll recast Liz or reveal that she's alive and on a bus off-screen.
• He Really Can Act: Elizabeth Lail wasn't too known for her acting. But watch her play the tragic antihero Natalie Luca and you'll see Elizabeth Lail is talented despite being only 24 years old.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A meta example. In "General Ludd", William Sadler plays a dying man who's confined to a hospital bed. Then, on the Elementary episode "Blood Is Thicker", which was broadcast three days later, Sadler played... a dying man who's confined to a hospital bed.^note Technically, the Elementary character wasn't actually hospitalized, but the comparison still fits.
• Jerkass Woobie: Mark Hastings (the "pardoned" victim) in "The Judge." Sure, he corruptly railroaded an innocent man, and his own captor is a sympathetic Anti-Villain; but still, his utterly broken state now is extremely hard to watch, especially whenever his innocent family (who have spent over a decade worried about him) are around. Thankfully, his final shot shows him gradually getting better.
• Just Here for Godzilla: James Spader's performance as Raymond Reddington is widely touted by fans and critics as a major highlight and one of the only things holding the show together.
• Magnificent Bastard: Raymond "Red" Reddington starts the show by turning himself over to the FBI to assist them in taking down a supposedly-dead terrorist, who is just the first out of many in the eponymous Blacklist. He follows that up by constantly manipulating the Feds and criminals to pursue his own agendas. Raymond goes against the worst criminals in the world, constantly outplaying them and leading them to ruin while working towards his own master plan, using others as bait or pawns in his schemes. In one famous incident, he outwits human trafficker Floriana Campo and leaves her poisoned out of his revulsion towards her business, but not before destroying her good name and watching her beg for her life. Despite his ruthlessness, Raymond truly respects those who work for him and cares greatly about series heroine and FBI agent Elizabeth. A man with nerves of steel, Reddington rarely ever loses his temper or composure, frequently playing cop and criminal for his own mysterious ends.
• Mentor Ship: At least, in fanfic. Take a look at the fanfiction sites and you'll see that most stories are Reddington/Liz. Given that they have what could be seen as Belligerent Sexual Tension, it's not hard to see why.
• Narm: Many scenes could be considered narm-y (see Narm Charm below), but "Ian Garvey" really takes the cake. The scene where Liz and Tom are attacked in their apartment features extensive slow-mo and repeated close-ups, which makes the whole thing seem very melodramatic... then it starts cutting to shots of their attackers dancing, and while that was probably meant to contrast the carefree, But for Me, It Was Tuesday nature of the villain's henchmen with the violence of what they're doing, it just comes across as really silly. Then there's a similarly drawn-out, slow-mo montage of Liz and Tom being brought to the hospital, then the reveal that Liz is in a coma, then Liz wakes up from the coma a year later apparently no worse for wear, then it's revealed that Tom is dead. By the time the episode is finally over, it feels like it's been going on forever.
• Narm Charm: The show runs on it. Campy super villains, not so stellar special effects, the FBI are a bunch of blundering pawns and the main protagonist is a charismatic, wealthy, well-dressed Affably Evil Anti-Hero who is almost constantly successful at manipulating American law enforcement into doing what he wants.
• Older Than They Think: In "Eli Matchett" The idea that a corporation letting out a virus to wipe out crop only to miraculously save the world with a crop that is immune to the virus was done in an episode of Leverage.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • In "Dr. Linus Creel", Keen and Ressler track down a creepy Psycho Psychologist who goes about deliberately sabotaging people's entire lives as part of sick experiment. And the creepiest part is, it's all funded by The Government. It doesn't help that many people believe the idea that The Government caused the spike in mass shootings as a way to justify their stronger laws on gun control.
  • The whole situation with Lord Baltimore is something that could theoretically happen to anyone under the right circumstances. You could very well be a Split Personality being used as a cover by a criminal-for-hire and you would have no way of knowing. Have fun with that idea.
  • The assassination method used by Karakurt when he uses his hands to transmit a fatal virus.
  • The reveal on Reddington when it's revealed that the Reddington from season 1 is not the real person, but a fake.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: Lizzington is easily one of the most popular ships in the fanbase, despite early hints that Red is Liz's father.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: So many.
  • Lizzy + Red = Lizzington
  • Keen + Ressler = Keenler
  • Ressler + Red = Resslington
  • Dembe + Red = Dembington
  • Samar + Aram = Saram
• Retroactive Recognition: The creepy would-be truck-bomber child in season 2's "The Kenyon Family" is played by an even-younger Gaten Matarazzo, prior to his rise to fame in Stranger Things.
• Replacement Scrappy: Alina Park. She was brought in to replace Samar Navabi after Mozhan Marno’s departure, and many fans immediately took a dislike to her, comparing her unfavorably to both Samar and their shared predecessor Meera Malik. Park herself was seen as boring, hypocritical, and poorly-written, especially compared to Samar, who had a detailed backstory and complex motivations. The fact that many people found Samar’s Put on a Bus situation deeply unsatisfying didn’t help. While fans disagree about exactly when the Seasonal Rot started to a set in, many saw the replacement of Samar with Park as a major downgrade that hindered the show, and audience ratings started to drop not long after it happened (albeit mostly due to Arc Fatigue, but still.)
• The Scrappy:
  • Madeleine Pratt. A whole lot of Character Shilling leading to a whole lot of Informed Ability. The show tries to show her as a Chessmaster above almost all others, but everything shown on screen is disappointing and not as impressive as the show seems to think it is. She's also the first Blacklister to get away at the end of the episode, despite an embarrassingly weak showing.
  • Agnes Keen, at least initially. The first few episodes following her birth focused on her getting kidnapped, and she was more or less a human MacGuffin for half a season, causing some viewers to dislike her. Some fans also worried that adding a baby to the cast would drastically change the dynamic of the show.
• Seasonal Rot: Viewers disagree on when the show first started to decline, but it's clear that its viewership and ratings have both dropped. The eighth season currently has a 34% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, while earlier seasons were rated much higher (oftentimes over 90% fresh.)
• Special Effect Failure: Any time there's Stuff Blowing Up (and since this is an crime action-drama, that happens quite a lot), the CGI is painfully bad. Case in point: the plane bombing at the start of "General Ludd."
  • Three words: Megan Boone's wig. It was subject to much mockery during the first season (including one poll on whether it should have its own credit) and was ditched after the season two opener when Boone was able to switch to her own hair.
  • Due to the COVID-19 pandemic forcing a sudden stop to filming, the season 7 finale has a large portion of it animated in CGI instead of filmed live-action. It looks absurd, almost to the point of being an exaggerated example.
• Spoiled by the Format: Somewhat averted with this show's use of two-parters with a single Blacklist Name - despite the Antagonist Title, the show avoids using "Part 1" and "Part 2" to differentiate multi-parters, which are instead titled normally for the first episode (eg: "[Insert Name] ([Insert #]); after the episode ends on a cliffhanger, however, the 2nd part uses "Conclusion" in place of the number. This enabled the show to surprise people when "Anslo Garrick" took two episodes to resolve (despite being a mid-season finale, it was still something that hadn't been done before on the show), and would help the writers if, in the future, they pulled another two-parter for a villain at an unexpected time in any future season).
• Strangled by the Red String: Samar and Ressler hook up at the end of "Zal Bin Hasaan" with little build-up. This was seen as a bizarre move by audiences, because of both romantic undertones she already had with characters who weren't him, especially Aram.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Some people felt like this in relation to Anslo Garrick, who was quite an interesting and fearsome antagonist killed way too early. Subverted, however, with Berlin (the first blacklist name who was still loose after his Antagonist Title episode ended), and also with Fitch, in hindsight - he dies in his title episode, but we didn't know he was on the Blacklist - thus, his Arc got some decent mileage and development, building it up until its intended conclusion.
  • One episode featured beloved character actor William Sadler as Liz's adoptive father, but he died in that same episode. There is always the possibility of flashback, though.
  • Reddington's associate Grey was killed off midway through Season 1 after a revelation that he was (unwillingly) serving as The Mole to Red's enemies.
  • Baz, a fan favorite, was unceremoniously shot and killed by Mr. Kaplan with very little fanfare (so little, in fact, that many viewers had no idea he was dead until the showrunners confirmed that his actor wouldn't be returning.) Many were disappointed with his end, believing that he was an interesting and funny character in his scenes with Red and Dembe.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Stewmaker. Despite being a hired corpse-dissolver for various criminals, he still doesn't kill any of said victims himself — and even when he eventually does attack someone (Liz) directly, at least there's still no real indication that he's going to actually dissolve her antemortem. Therefore, some fans can't help but agree with Liz's You Monster! reaction to Red ultimately dissolving Stewmaker alive in his own acid, which is supposed to come off as a Karmic Death instead. It also doesn't hurt that Stewmaker is genuinely Affably Evil, has an Obliviously Evil mindset regarding his reputation on the Blacklist, and literally invokes Pet the Dog toward his — well — dog.
  • Samar after Liz faked her own death. When Liz returned to the task force, almost everyone welcomed her back with open arms, save for Samar, who was infuriated with her to the point of requesting a transfer off the team. The other characters are mildly annoyed with Samar for this, since Liz had understandable reasons for doing what she did. But Samar was devastated by Liz's apparent death to the point where she broke down sobbing upon hearing the news, and later served as a pallbearer at her fake funeral, making it easy to see why she was so angered by the deception — she mourned Liz for days, only to find out that none of it was real. Of course, Samar eventually forgave Liz and decided not to transfer, but Liz's perceived ingratitude for Reddington and the task force has always been a major reason why she's such a Base-Breaking Character, and the incident put a bad taste in many viewers' mouths.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Liz. Sure, she gets dragged into a world in which she has no experience and her reaction is initially understandable, but portions of the fan-base loathe her due to her perceived incompetence, her over-emotional nature which often causes her to make major mistakes, and the fact she constantly gets played for a fool by Reddington despite attempts to play up her status and skills. Also, her seemingly constant reliance on male characters has made her the subject of much criticism, especially from female viewers. Many fans also believe her to be ungrateful, especially towards Reddington; she constantly blames Red for the danger she's in, despite insinuations that she's actually in danger because of her parents and the circumstances of her birth, which makes her seem like an ungrateful brat considering everything Red did to keep her alive and clear her name in the first half of season three. After she's freed, she and Red hug, and then she very quickly becomes resentful of him...for taking basic steps to protect her after her birth name becoming publicly known has made her a target.

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