Season 9 of 'The Blacklist' Reminds Us There Are Still Loose Ends in Liz Keen's Story

Even though we’re well into The Blacklist Season 9, and even endured a two-year jump since Elizabeth Keen's (Megan Boone) untimely death, it’s clear that Reddington is still mourning her loss.

In Season 9, Episode 8, Reddington (James Spader) is at risk of losing the one person he still loves that’s left in his life, Mierce (Karina Arroyave). This is because he’s still obsessing over what happened to Liz.

Red asks Tadashi, his hacker buddy, to investigate the murderer’s phone. Mierce is worried, naturally, because she doesn’t want Red to return to his obsessive patterns.

Regardless, Red finds out that the killer saw Dembe hand Red’s letter to Elizabeth. Maybe we’ll finally get to find out what was in the letter. Before we think about that, though, we need to backtrack. What happened to Elizabeth on The Blacklist?

Although Red turns himself in to the FBI to protect Elizabeth in Season 8 of The Blacklist, things don’t quite go as planned. (Do things ever go as planned?) Red first asks Liz to kill him and spare him from his illness so that she’ll look “untouchable” to the rest of the blacklist. To convince Liz, Red says he’ll give her a letter from her mother Katrina.

But when it comes down to killing Red, Liz realizes she can’t pull the trigger. Instead, one of Townsend’s henchmen kills Liz, shooting her in the back. She dies in Red’s arms as he whispers something to her — a whisper of which we still don’t know the contents.

At first, fans thought Liz might not really be dead, since The Blacklist loves its fakeouts, but after a two-year time jump, we can be confident she really died. So why did Megan Boone leave The Blacklist?

Talks of Megan, who played Elizabeth Keen, leaving The Blacklist began far enough in advance that showrunners were able to neatly wrap up her storyline. There are still a lot of questions about Liz and Red’s true relationship, as well as Liz’s relationship with her mother, and it seems like Season 9 is still working to uncover those secrets, even after Liz’s death.

But for Megan, it was time to say goodbye to The Blacklist. Not only because eight years of her life is a long time to give to any one project, but because she has new projects ahead of her. She worked so well with NBC and Sony that she was able to secure a contract with them to create her own production company, Weird Sister.

Per Deadline, Megan explained:

“The name Weird Sister encapsulates some of the most important aspects of what I aspire to with my company. Weird Sister is woman-led and embraces difference. I view alternative perspectives & abnormalities as essential strengths in the people I collaborate with, the character-driven stories I want to tell, and the unique worlds I look forward to crafting with a diverse team of collaborators.”

Although many fans and team members of The Blacklist were sad to see Megan leave, it seems she left on superb terms with everyone, as they all shared publicly how excited they are for Megan’s future.

New episodes of The Blacklist air every Thursday at 8 p.m. EST on NBC.