The Most Wanted Men
“You know, I once shared a bottle of absinthe with a Serbian arms dealer who swore The Blacklist was just a clever front for actual intelligence leaks. He was mostly wrong — but charmingly so.”
Welcome to The Most Wanted Men, a podcast devoted to peeling back the layers of intrigue, betrayal, and designer coats that make The Blacklist such a guilty pleasure. Join our hosts — two very opinionated amateurs with nothing better to do — as they explore the cases, conspiracies, and quirks of Raymond “Red” Reddington’s criminal concierge service of doom.
We’re not here to recap. No, no. We’re here to obsess, to question, to rant lovingly about overlooked plot points and the sheer audacity of a man who disappears into a monastery one week and drops acid in the Louvre the next.
Spoilers? Constant.
Accuracy? Occasional.
Charm? Relentless.
So pour a glass of something expensive, burn your aliases, and press play.
You’re on the list now.
The Most Wanted Men
Frederick Barnes (No.47)
Send an Encrypted Message to the Men
Ah, Episode 7. “Frederick Barnes.” Now there’s a name that sends a chill down even the most fortified spine. You see, Frederick wasn’t your run-of-the-mill madman. He was a scientist—brilliant, methodical, and burdened with the kind of grief that turns a man’s genius into something… grotesque. When a subway car in D.C. became a sarcophagus of foaming mouths and collapsed lungs, it wasn’t terror for the sake of chaos—it was clinical. Barnes had found a way to weaponize a rare, genetically-targeted disease. All in the name of curing his own terminally ill son. Desperate men make dangerous chemists.
Agent Keen, bless her wide-eyed, morally-upholstered heart, tried to see the man behind the mask. She wanted to believe he could be reasoned with. But Barnes wasn’t looking for redemption—he was looking for results. He was ready to unleash an epidemic just to get a pharmaceutical company’s attention. I must admit, I respected his clarity of purpose. Deranged, yes, but refreshingly unambiguous.
In the end, Lizzie learned that sometimes, justice is a bullet. There’s no elegant way to contain a man willing to slaughter innocents to save one life—not in the world we operate in. She pulled the trigger, and perhaps she took a step closer to understanding the cold arithmetic of our trade. As for me? I had tea. Rooibos. It pairs well with moral compromise.