The Blacklist season 8 has come to an end, with the finale streaming on Peacock. News that Megan Boone (who plays Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Keen) was leaving the show had already broken before the last episode aired, but the dramatic nature of her character’s exit was still a surprise.
Season 8, episode 22 of The Blacklist, titled “Konets” (“the end” in Russian), saw Liz make a deal with Red (James Spader) whereby he would give her a letter from her mother telling her everything she needed to know about him, but first she had to kill him.
The plan was as follows: With Neville Townsend (Reg Rogers) gone, Red was worried that this would create a power vacuum in the criminal underworld, leading to a lot of violent jockeying for position that would put Liz in serious danger. If Liz killed Red, however, that would cement her status and offer her protection by making her the heir to the Blacklist. It would also give Red a way out from his mysterious terminal illness.
While Liz hesitated from killing her mentor, however, she was shot in the chest by Townsend’s former henchman Vandyke (Lukas Hassel). Viewers of the NBC show then had to watch as the character’s life flashed before her eyes, including a series of clues that seemed to finally confirm that the real Red was Liz’s mother Katarina (Laila Robins).
What has Megan Boone said about leaving The Blacklist?
Though news broke about her exit about a week before the finale was due to go out, Boone waited until the episode aired before paying tribute to the series she starred in for eight years and nearly 175 episodes.
“This experience, for me, has been an entire life inside of my own life,” she wrote on Instagram, “These eight years playing Liz Keen have helped me better define the world and myself, as she set out to do the same. Liz sought incorruptible familial bonds, and collided with powerful forces to reveal the boundaries where a cruel, indifferent world ended and she began.”
She went on to thank the cast, crew and guest stars (though mentioned no one by name) before ending, “What a list. What a dream. Thank you all.”
She also paid tribute to the show in a Fab TV interview in which she seemed to tease her character’s fate. She said: “[In Season 8] there was a new level of appreciation for being able to just make something that would entertain loyal fans…they really love these characters…they even carry a flame for the characters that…were killed off.
“There are still people talking about Tom Keen [Ryan Eggold] on the internet; I mean, he’s been gone for years and is now a doctor [Eggold leads the cast of NBC’s New Amsterdam]!”
