The Blacklist is one of the most exciting network TV crime thrillers of the last decade. While the series took some bad turns in its final seasons, culminating in a lackluster finale, it’s in the earlier seasons that the concept shone. The story is centered around career criminal Raymond “Red” Reddington (James Spader), known as the Concierge of Crime, and his offer to help the FBI take down the most heinous criminals they don’t even know exist in exchange for his freedom. But his mysterious desire to get close to FBI Special Agent Elizabeth “Liz” Keen (Megan Boone), and those in her orbit like Tom Keen (Ryan Eggold), are a large part of the plot, too. Tom disappears at some point, however, and some fans can’t remember why.
Tom Keen’s Story Takes Many Twists and Turns
Tom Keen appears in the first five seasons of the series, at first as Liz’s husband, and is later revealed to be a covert operative. His real name, in fact, is Christopher Hargrave. Kidnapped from his parents at the age of 3, he entered the foster system and received a new name: Jacob Phelps.
Raymond Reddington hired Jacob to watch Elizabeth, but he was fired when he actually fell in love with her and lost sight of his mission. However, what Red didn’t initially know was that Jacob went to work for someone else and took on another identity, Thomas Vincent Keen, a fourth-grade teacher. He and Liz got married, and Liz eventually learned that he wasn’t who he claimed to be. Interestingly, Tom is one of the first people to know that Raymond wasn’t the real Reddington, but rather an impostor.
The situation becomes complicated when Tom’s allegiances are conflicted. He and Liz are drifting apart, and she isn’t sure about their relationship, which she reveals when he proposes (as himself) in Season 3, the show’s best season. He begins to take up with a woman named Lucy Brooks (Rachel Brosnahan), though it’s revealed she works for the same organization as him. This makes fans question where Tom’s loyalties have lain all along.
A Near-Death Experience and a Whisper
After a near-death experience, Liz lets Tom escape, and he goes back to his old life. But while he’s seemingly dying, he whispers something important to Liz. He tells her, “Your father’s alive.” This prompts Liz to question Red again about her parentage, what really happened in that fire when she was a child, and who her father truly is.
However, Tom doesn’t die just yet, and the rest of this storyline is tackled in the spin-off series The Blacklist: Redemption, which aired during a hiatus between Season 4 and Season 5 of The Blacklist. So, the reason Tom is away from the main storyline for many episodes around this time in The Blacklist is that the character has traveled to New York to learn more about his biological family. However, when The Blacklist: Redemption wasn’t renewed for another season, Tom resumed a larger role in The Blacklist once again. That is, until he officially left the show in Season 5, in the most tragic way.
Tom Does Eventually Meet His End
In Season 5, Episode 8, “Ian Garvey,” Tom is kidnapped once again. He has become a threat to Red because he has managed to find out about and retrieve the suitcase with the bones of the real Raymond Reddington. He wants Liz to know the truth. Though at this time, what that truth is remains a mystery for viewers, though theories run wild.
Just before Tom meets with Liz to reveal what he knows and show proof, he is captured by corrupt US Marshal Ian Garvey (Jonny Coyne) and stabbed in the abdomen. Garvey steals back the suitcase, and Liz never sees it or learns what Tom was about to tell her.
Tom does try to fight back while he is being attacked, but he is strangled as well. Red arrives with Dembe (Hisham Tawfiq) in the nick of time and kills all the attackers. They rush Tom to the hospital along with Liz, who has also been hurt, hoping to be able to save them. But Tom has lost too much blood. When Liz awakens from a coma 10 months later, she asks for Tom. But it’s revealed that Tom didn’t make it. It’s presumed that he’s dead in one of the show’s most shocking moments.
At the time the episode aired in 2017, executive producer John Eisendrath, who wrote the episode, told The Hollywood Reporter that of all the words he had written on the show, two of the most difficult were when Red told Liz that Tom had died. “We’ll miss the intensity, range, and just plain badass-ness Ryan brought to the part,” said Eisendrath. In that first whisper, though, he played a pivotal role in helping Liz dig deeper into her past and her parentage.
