Popular TV series The Blacklist beat the Coronavirus pandemic with animation on their season finale.
When production shut down due to the global pandemic, the show creators had to think of how to salvage the situation. That’s where animation came to the rescue thanks to the hard work and dedication of the team.
The team was able to turn things around with animated scenes for the 19th and final episode of the 7th season which aired on May 15th 2020.
The finale is vital to the story arch for upcoming Season 8. It needed to pull several storyline strings together for this American crime series that began in 2013.
The show follows Raymond Reddington (James Spader), a former military officer turned criminal, who voluntarily surrenders to the FBI and offers his services as an informant of the most dangerous criminals in the world his blacklist. He insists on working exclusively with one particular FBI profiler by the name of Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone).
During the episode, Liz was forced to officially pick a side between Reddington and Katarina Rostova, after the task force’s latest case put her smack-dab in the middle of those two. In a move that initially seemed to take Liz herself by surprise, she chose Katarina; by the end of the hour, though, she had completely accepted this new alliance, even revealing to her comatose grandfather (the late Brian Dennehy, in his final appearance) that “anyone who is in [Katarina’s] way is in my way. That includes you, and that includes Reddington.”
Meanwhile, Red’s ongoing health issues — cerebral oedema, Red’s doctor told Liz — took a turn for the worse, prompting him to collapse mid-conversation. His doc prescribed new meds for the hand tremors, but he also urged Red to be more honest with Liz about his medical concerns.
The finale for Season 7 was a blend of live-action and animation, giving half of the scenes a comic book quality. The episode called it, “An unusual solution for a trying time,” and it worked well enough, bouncing from live to animated characters.
The fluidity was achieved via a well-known storyline, animated characters that for the most part resembled their live counterparts, and voiceovers that made for smooth transitions.
The 7th season was initially planned to be a 22-episode season but was turned into a 19-episode season considering the circumstances.
The Blacklist has been renewed for the 8th season that will hopefully come in 2021.