The Blacklist: Will Raymond Reddington’s true identity be revealed in the two-hour finale?

The Blacklist, which streams in India on Netflix, will end its 10-season run on July 14, with a two-hour finale. The show, which began in 2013, was about one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals, Raymond Reddington (James Spader) surrendering to the authorities with a promise to collaborate and track down other criminals. Reddington, aka Red, has his own list of notorious criminals that he thinks need to be stopped from having a free run – a blacklist – one that he will share only with a particular officer – Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone), a rookie FBI profiler.

The Blacklist, though, was never only about the names on Red’s blacklist and the task force deployed to carry out these investigations. It was also about his mysterious connection with Elizabeth, and, most importantly, who Raymond Reddington really is. With only two episodes to go to draw curtains on the show, audiences are nowhere close to finding out his real identity.

One of the early revelations on the show was that Raymond Reddington is Elizabeth’s biological father, after he had a relationship with her mother, Katarina Rostova, a KGB agent sent in to seduce him. However, according to Mr Kaplan (Susan Blommaert), a former trusted aide of Red, he’s not the real deal. In the season 5 finale it is revealed that the bones in the duffel bag that Mr Kaplan had belonged to the real Raymond and that the man pretending to be him is someone else. The question that has remained since is who is this someone?

A popular fan theory is that Raymond maybe Katarina after all, because her whereabouts remain unknown and in a later season when Elizabeth asks him if he’d known her mother, he replies that he did indeed. In the season 8 finale, when Elizabeth is shot and killed, there is a flashback of her mom holding her as a baby, as Red kisses her on the forehead, which fans say is proof enough that Katarina had surgery to transform into Reddington.

Some fans, though, are inclined to believe that the real Raymond may have just faked his death and that the character James Spader has so brilliantly played over the last 10 seasons is the real dea, after all. Hopefully, we will know for sure come July 14, when the two-hour series finale drops, with Raymond Reddington as the last name on the blacklist.