The following contains major spoilers for The blacklist.
It has been a little over a year since the last episodes of The blacklist debuted, but it’s only been a few months since I finished a massive binge of the entire 10-season series. While I’ve already written about The blacklistThe biggest secret is no secret, but that doesn’t mean the show ended without any unanswered questions for me. I have several, and most of them have nothing to do with how The blacklist ended, but with the way it could have ended.
Many people have problems with the way The blacklist for Raymond Reddington. It was a somewhat disappointing finale for a character who seemed capable of anything. But I think not only about how things could have ended for Red, but also how things could have ended for Elizabeth Keen if The blacklist had ended two years earlier.
Season 8 of The Blacklist was an important conclusion, even though the series continued
The blacklist was officially renewed for season 9 in January 2021, shortly after the premiere of season 8. This means that the showrunner and writers knew for most of the season, and almost certainly before writing the final episodes of season 8, that the series had to go on.
However, they also knew that the series would continue without one of the main characters. Megan Boone, the The blacklistThe Last Man’s co-lead, FBI agent Elizabeth Keene, reportedly told her long before the series was renewed that Season 8 would be its last. This meant that this season marked the end of a major character and the series had to figure out how to continue without her.
Boone’s departure was followed by The blacklist Creator Jon Bokencamp decided to step down as showrunner. He remained as executive producer, but no longer managed the day-to-day operations of the series. Whatever he had said ended with Liz’s death.
Seasons 9 and 10 of The Blacklist almost feel like a different series
After Elizabeth Keene is killed in the literal final moments of Season 8, Season 9 picks up two years later. Raymond Reddington is on the run and the task force that was there to catch criminals he had informed the FBI about has been disbanded. The various characters we had grown to love are at very different points in their lives. They have evolved.
In many ways, the last two seasons of The blacklist you don’t feel like they followed on almost immediately from what came before them. They feel like a modern “legacy sequel.” When a film sequel or a new season of a television series follows decades after the original, the new story often accepts the passage of time and only picks up after much has happened off-screen. That’s what the last two seasons of The blacklist Do.
While it is difficult to argue that the last two seasons of The blacklist are as good as the previous ones, I don’t like them. They are good for what they are, but this time jump to separate the last two seasons from the previous eight only reinforces the idea that the real The story was over.
I have many opinions about The blacklistbut the cynic in me feels that the fans real End of The blacklist due to the curse of a successful television series. Few who have a successful series ever want it to end, and we know that this need to keep the story going sometimes affects the telling. It feels like the series should have ended after season 8, but if that had been the case, would it have ended the same way?
How would “The Blacklist” have ended if season 8 had been the last?
What if there were no seasons 9 and 10 of The blacklistWhat if the show had had the complete freedom that comes with ending a story at that point? Would we have gotten a different ending?
It seems almost impossible to believe that The blacklist would have ended this way if the episode in which Liz died had been the last episode of the series. That the series ended two years later with a rather disappointing fate for Red is one thing, but that the series ends with a heartbreaking ending without any resolution is, while not impossible, highly unlikely.
But if it hadn’t turned out that way, what would have happened? Would Liz and Red’s plan have been carried out the way they had imagined it? Such an ending would certainly not have been a happy one, but it would have been an end.
Maybe The Blacklist could have ended the way Red wanted it to
Imagine Liz shooting Red. It breaks her heart, but Red has strangely made his peace with it. In a final scene, Dembe gives Liz the letter Red promised her, and it reveals what we as an audience already know: that Red was not Liz’s father, as she had previously believed, but her mother, Katarina Rostova, who had turned herself into the crime concierge to make sure her family was safe.
With her death, she has now accomplished that mission. Liz is now the head of Raymond Redington’s criminal empire, having killed the man so many others had tried to assassinate but failed. From this position, Liz is as untouchable as can be to the criminal underworld, and both Liza and her daughter are now safe.
Of course, this is just one way things could have ended, assuming that every episode of Season 8 played out exactly as written except for the ending. Had the show planned from the beginning for Season 8 to be the end, the entire season could have played out drastically differently.
Maybe we could have seen a season that went similarly to Season 10, where Red uses the task force to systematically dismantle his empire for himself, in a way that prevents anyone else from taking it over, but also protects all the people who have supported Red all these years. But in this version, he does it with Liz by his side, free from the past. Maybe the family could have had some kind of happy ending. It’s unlikely, but that’s the beauty of considering these scenarios. In theory, anything could have happened if things had gone differently.
