It looks like NBC has decided to finally send a little spinoff love somewhere other than Dick Wolf’s Chicago Whatever series for once, as Deadline is reporting that the network is developing a spinoff to its hit drama series The Blacklist. Details about the spinoff are pretty light, but it will star Famke Janssen in a role similar to the one that James Spader’s Raymond “Red” Reddington plays on vanilla Blacklist, which is to say that she’ll probably be a bad lady who wears a hat and uses her bad lady knowledge to help good people stop other bad people. Janssen’s character will be named Susan “Scottie” Halsted, because nicknames are required in the Blacklist universe, and she’ll work with The Blacklist’s Ryan Eggold in the same way that Spader’s character works with Megan Boone’s Liz in the normal show. Deadline also says that The Blacklist’s Edi Gathegi (he plays Matias Solomon) will also make the jump to the new show if it gets picked up.
Janssen will be introduced in The Blacklist’s May 12 episode, which will act as a backdoor pilot for this new series, and Deadline expects NBC to decide whether or not it will pick up this spinoff for a full series order before that. If it doesn’t, the pilot will remain a weird, self-contained adventure like that one episode of The Office that was all about Dwight’s family.