After 10 seasons, the detective series finally bowed out in 2023. While this final burst of episodes is finally available on Netflix, we decipher the end of this essential fiction of the small screen.
One fine morning, an enigmatic man presents himself to the FBI. This is Raymond Reddington, one of the most wanted criminals in the world. He offers to offer them his famous “black list”, bringing together dangerous assassins. In exchange, immunity, and above all one condition: work with Elizabeth Keen, a young profiler who has just been hired.
This is how the very first sequence of Blacklistin 2013. While the tenth and final season was finally put online by Netflix, almost a year after its broadcast in the United States, we analyze the end of the series, supposed to answer all our questions (or not).
Warning, this article contains spoilers for all 10 seasons of Blacklist. If you haven’t seen the final episode yet, go ahead!
How the series ends Blacklist ?
In the final double episode of the series, the criminal flees the FBI agents with whom he has worked hand in hand all these years. Although the police are very hesitant to pursue him, they still end up tracking him down.
Dembe, the criminal’s bodyguard, is then seriously injured after being shot by Arthur Hudson, a member of Congress who was investigating the fugitive’s schemes. Devastated, Reddington then shoots Hudson back, killing him on the spot.
If Dembe ultimately survives his injuries, his friend manages to escape to Spain (note that the series had never set up outside the United States before). Reddington is then ill, suffering from an unknown illness that gives him only months to live.
Does Raymond Reddington die at the end of Blacklist ?
Yes, the famous hero in the hat dies at the end of the final episode. We then see him wandering around a ranch, before coming face to face with a wild bull, which charges at him. Raymond Reddington chooses not to move, and therefore dies after this accident, welcoming this death as a liberation.
Moments later, Donald Ressler, an FBI agent and one of the most important characters in Blacklist, then discovers his bloody body. He retrieves his famous hat, a few meters away, and places it on the face of his former friend, before warning Harold Cooper, his boss at the FBI.
So, certainly, Blacklist has already faked the death of its main characters, such as that of Elizabeth Keen at the end of season 3. But this time, the final shot of Reddington leaves little room for doubt: the character played by James Spader (Avengers: Age of Ultron) is indeed dead. In conclusion: Red is Dead. Yes, as in The City of Fear.
Who is Raymond Reddington really?
Over the course of its 10 seasons and 218 episodes (just that), the detective series has continued investigations, but has above all developed a common thread around the relationship between the criminal Raymond Reddington and the profiler Elizabeth Keen. She finally (really) died at the end of season 8, leaving the character in the hat totally bereaved. But even after this abrupt death, a fundamental question remained unanswered: who is Raymond Reddington? Is he Elizabeth Keen’s father?
Well bad news: the end of Blacklist does not directly answer this question. After season 8, the series more or less stopped giving us clues about this. So the conclusion leaves us with two main theories, giving fans the chance to choose which one they prefer. Here they are.
Raymond Is Reddington just…Raymond Reddington?
Since the series does not give us clear answers, these must be found in the clues scattered throughout the 10 seasons broadcast. Fans therefore assumed that the famous Raymond Reddington would perhaps be… quite simply the real Raymond Reddington, namely the father of Elizabeth Keen.
Problem: the series has already taught us that he died in December 1990, shot by his own daughter, aged only 4, while he was attacking her mother. And in episode 22 of season 5, we even see “Raymond” burning the bones of the real Reddington (are you still following?). This hypothesis therefore seems unlikely in reality, even if Blacklist has accustomed us to twists and turns and criminals who change their faces.
Is Reddington actually Elizabeth Keen’s mother, Katarina Rostova?
Another theory has fans excited: what if Raymond Reddington was Katarina Rostova, who would have changed her face thanks to very elaborate plastic surgery?
Remember: at the end of season 8, while a woman claiming to be Elizabeth Keen’s mother tries to convince her to kill Reddington, we learn that it was all a lie. The criminal then kills the fake Katarina. He then explains to Elizabeth that he will leave her a letter from his real mother, revealing the whole truth about her, if she agrees to kill him publicly. But while she hesitates to assassinate him, another criminal shoots the former profiler, resulting in the death of Elizabeth Keen.
The identity of the real Katarina Rostova, who was thought to be dead before learning that she actually faked her suicide, is therefore still unknown. This therefore leaves room for the hypothesis that she and Reddington are in reality one and the same person. Especially since the end of season 8 also tells us that Katarina built the character of Reddington from scratch to protect her daughter, Elizabeth. The question then remains: who has taken on this role all these years?
Why is this theory the most likely?
Personally, we have a slight preference for this theory, more credible than the previous one. So here are some examples of signs that point to the Katarina hypothesis.
First of all, Reddington knows two important allies, both present on the Blacklist, who could have helped him carry out this change of identity: Hans Koehler, a surgeon capable of changing faces and to whom Raymond claims to have already had recourse (season 6, episode 1), as well as Eric Trettel, an alchemist whose specialty is being able to modify DNA.
We can also notice that during the death of Elizabeth Keen, in episode 22 of season 8, the ex-profiler sees images of Katarina and Red, in which the two characters take the same postures. The final kiss placed by Reddington on Elizabeth’s head, as she takes her last breath, is a disturbing reminder of the young woman’s childhood memories with her mother.
Finally, in the final episode of the series, Reddington talks on the phone with his granddaughter, Agnès. She tells him that he is a “real mom”to which he responds: “You know I can’t help it.”
Despite everything, this lack of real response greatly disappointed early fans, who were impatiently awaiting the finale. We can even fear that the series simply did not have the audacity to confirm that this main character was in reality a transgender man, at the risk of alienating some of its very conservative viewers. However, this could have been a further step in LGBTQIA+ representation on screen, especially since Blacklist was an extremely popular series. Damage.
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