In 2017, before the premiere of the spin-off series ‘The Blacklist: Redemption’ on NBC, lead actress Famke Janssen joined a panel interview in Toronto. During this event, she had a discussion with The TV Watercooler about her upcoming role as Susan ‘Scottie’ Hargrave and the direction the series would take.
The actress revealed that the then-new show would have some similarities to the original one but also be its own thing for the newcomers. Then, she explained the plans for her character by saying:
“If you go back to earlier episodes of ‘The Blacklist,’ you’ll see that the characters have evolved over time. And they have to. They’re human. We all evolve over time. Whatever Susan/’Scottie’ is now, if we go [on] for years, she’ll probably change and evolve with me too.”
Scottie’s story kicked off in the third season of ‘The Blacklist’ but didn’t last long in the spin-off. The show’s premiere received a 0.8 rating among adult viewers and became the third lowest-rated NBC series for that year with an overall rating of 1.2.
After this performance, NBC decided to cancel ‘The Blacklist: Redemption’ in May 2017. Ryan Eggold returned to the main series as Tom Keen, and Famke Janssen followed through with a reappearance in the fifth season.
As for ‘The Blacklist,’ the show’s storyline went through some changes over the years, as James Spader mentioned in an NBC interview. The ratings of the last few seasons dropped, with the ninth season getting an average of 4.77 million viewers, causing the writers to wrap up the story in the tenth season.