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The Blacklist Shocker: Megan Boone Leaves After Season 8 (Report)
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As The Blacklist nears the Season 8 finale, perhaps the most pressing questions behind the scenes come after it is revealed that Megan Boone will be leaving after Season 8.
But there is one mystery the screen that has had to be resolved since the NBC drama debut in 2013: Who Is Raymond Reddington Really? We know the real Red died at Liz’s own hand 30 years ago, and the story that KGB officer Ilya Koslov later impersonated Red turned out to be just that – a story.
Wednesday’s episode, however, was temptingly close to revealing the actual, serious, this time not-really-serious answer to the question of Red’s real personality, unless the show purposely stretches the misdirection from. out of all misdirections, then essentially the answer was given to us without it being explicitly out loud: Red could very well be Katarina Rostova, Liz’s birth mother, who probably went under the knife to transform herself into the man, Liz for who has been protected and / or terrorized for the past eight years.
It sounds a bit ridiculous to say it out loud (or type it), but that theory has caught on among blacklist fans since the series began, and in the In the past, hints were dropped indicating their correctness. But the penultimate episode of season 8 teased more than ever that Red was really Katarina, although this suspicion was never clearly confirmed.
During the full hour, Red brings Liz into a building in Latvia from which his widespread Secret service empire is operating and teeming with employees who print, annotate, scan, shred and analyze documents in stacks. As Red Liz explains, the building is a hub for information coming from 17 outposts around the world – information that is aggregated and sent to Reddington, which he then uses to make all of his business decisions. (Liz is apparently going to inherit this operation, but she claims she’s not interested.)
But just as Red begins telling Liz some of the truths she’s been looking for, Liz hears a second, female voice. All activity around them in the Latvian building seems to freeze. Red disappears. The picture fades to black and white. And Liz turns to see a younger version of her mother, Katarina (played again by Lotte Verbeek), who is beginning a long story of her own career as a spy, the circumstances that led Katarina to leave Liz in Sam’s care, and the efforts she made to protect Liz for years.
Throughout the story, she has been joined by Liz’s visions of the real Raymond Reddington (i.e. Liz’s biological father), as well as today’s versions of Katarina, Dom and Ilya, all of whom add more details to Young Katarina’s story and try to unravel some of the lies Liz has told over the years. Among the revelations and clues:
* On the night of the fire when Liz was a child, Liz ran back to the burning beach house to get her stuffed bunny. Young Katarina says that she followed Liz back into the house, “but we were turned around. The flames spread quickly, the smoke, « she says, to which Liz replies: » You were burned. « » We both were, « says Katarina. (And as we saw at the very end of Season 1, Red has burn scars on his back.)
* Katarina was the one who erased Liz’s memory, as the night of the fire was deeply traumatic for Liz on several levels was.
* When Katarina mentions how she and Ilya hatched a plan to get her hands on Reddington’s $ 40 million, Liz says she’d heard this story from Dom before. Ilya replies that Dom lied to Liz about who assumed Red’s identity, but he was honest when he said that Ilya labeled Red a traitor to his country. But Ilya wasn’t actually operated on to pass as Reddington; he just disguised himself as Red and pretended to be him for a few days to fool the banks, which gave Katarina « enough time to see how valuable a new Reddington could be ». Hm …
* Today’s Katarina (the always excellent Laila Robins) shows up to drop this bomb on Liz: She is not Liz’s real mother! She was just an agent named Tatiana Petrova who was recruited by Ilya all those years ago to impersonate Katarina Rostova in Belgrade. If the enemies of the real Katarina, both from the KGB and the Cabal, witnessed the death of Katarina (but in reality Tatiana), then it stood to reason that the KGB and the Cabal would finally stop chasing Katarina.
But Tatiana didn’t die in that car explosion in Belgrade: her husband died and Tatiana was forced to go into hiding for her own life. She says she was grateful (to the fake) Reddington for funding and protecting her all these years, but she chased him when she realized he was hiding the real Katarina. And when Dom finally told Tatiana where the real Katarina was, she wanted to share that information with Townsend, but Red killed her before she could. (Phew. Still with me? To be honest, I’m not sure if I’m still with me.)* Young Katarina says that she has made many mistakes in her life, but that she has let Liz down wasn’t one of them. “I could never do that,” she says. Instead, Katarina created a new version of Raymond Reddington that Liz could protect and take care of. And when Ivan Stepanov – who was Katarina’s handler during her spy years – gave New, Fake Reddington these 13 packets of information that could be used for extortion and influence, those packets spawned a global intelligence network – The Blacklist! – Created to protect Liz.
Despite all the evidence that Katarina assumed the identity of Red 30 years ago, Liz still believes that someone turned into Red while Katarina is hidden somewhere. And when she begs Katarina to tell her who Reddington became, the visions disappear: Townsend and his men have reached Red’s Latvian nest and Liz is shot in the abdomen amid all the shots. Townsend notes that Red’s intelligence empire is a pretty formidable operation, but “it’s nothing compared to your commitment – choosing to live as Raymond Reddington, giving up your life to live as someone else. I can’t imagine loving anyone enough to do that! «
Before Townsend can make a move, Liz grabs a gun that fell on the floor and shoots Townsend in the leg, which she does , Gives Red and Dembe enough time to get to the building’s underground bunker. While Dembe tends to Liz’s wound, Red speaks to Townsend over the facility’s intercom and tells him that he regrets what happened to Townsend’s family. Red says he was young and drunk when he first received the Sikorsky Archives, and while he didn’t actually kill Townsend’s loved ones, he was ultimately responsible for their deaths, and Red is sorry. But informed not long after his apology Red Townsend that the building they are currently in is equipped with chlorine trifluoride, a highly flammable gas.
« What are you going to do? » Asks Townsend as his fate seems to dawn on him. « Destroy all of your information? The source of your power? ”“ The source of my power is right here, ”Red replies, referring to Liz. « It’s not going to be destroyed – especially not by people like you. » And with that, Red presses a button and Townsend and his men all go up in flames.
What do you think, Blacklist fans: The show finally reveals, that Red is actually Katarina? Or do you expect the finale next week to reveal a brand new character who has taken on the identity of Red over the years? And as Boone’s departure approaches, will Liz fall victim to that gunshot wound or suffer a completely different fate? Drop your theories below!
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