NFL
By: Mark T. Wilson
Make a list and choose one TV villain that you think was or is the best ever in a TV series. My choice will always be Raymond Reddington from The Blacklist. If you haven’t watched an episode, I strongly urge you to. And if you have, then you know exactly why he is at the top of this list.
There have been many villains over the years on a TV series that may stake claim to the title as the best or worst ever (depending on how you want to classify them), Reddington was on another level. Viewers were caught in his web the moment James Spader hit the screen in The Blacklist. Don’t believe me, head over to YouTube and watch the opening scene.
Picture a guy walking into FBI Headquarters knowing he was on the Most Wanted List just to get his eyes on his daughter. Turning himself in to make sure she was safe was the plot of the show but oh boy did it turn into more than that.
Raymond Reddington was a master of just about anything you could think of. A disgraced spy, rich beyond words, savvy, intelligent, soft-spoken, dangerous, well-respected, and feared, all simultaneously. He was the guy you wanted to see behind bars or worse but what it boiled down to was we didn’t know or understand his story.
Reddington is the only villain who could lure you into a conversation about the smell of a flower he found in Europe and then put a bullet in your head before the story was over. The man was that smooth and calculated. Remember how LOST fans hated Ben at first as the leader of the others then he did a 180 and became a fan favorite. Who liked J.R. Ewing on Dallas at first glance? It’s hard to find anyone who loved Cersei Lannister or Ramsay Bolton from Game of Thrones. Reddington had a way of pulling you into his world, unlike any other villain.
He had this soft side that viewers were pulling for. His love for Elizabeth Keen was evident early on. His loyalty to Dembe was understood and his admiration for those he respected was often put on display. Was he evil? Hell yeah. The man ran a criminal enterprise that rivaled no one else’s. He was wanted by the government, rival criminals, and hell, his own daughters tried to kill him and even had him thrown in prison. Reddington was not all good.
Viewers knew why they hated Cersei or J.R. but with Reddington, you were torn every week. Then the big reveal of who Reddington was and it all made sense. As Katarina Rostova, viewers of The Blacklist understood the reason why he/she did what they did and that made you look at everything differently. It’s the same reason we all rooted for Franklin Saint of Snowfall or Walter White from Breaking Bad. They sold drugs and committed murders but we still wanted them to walk away unharmed in the end.
As stated earlier, there were a ton of great characters whose evil ways will always tug at the heartstrings of viewers. But there will never be another Raymond Reddington.
Indeed was