An Attempt at a Timeline (The Blacklist)
!!Please note that the timeline hasnt yet been updated with the information that was revealed in S2E1 and S2E2!!
I’ll edit this when more information is revealed in the forthcoming episodes. In case I’ve missed something, please, let me know :)
07.02.1960 - Date of birth: Raymond Reddington. Reddington’s DOB is shown on the most wanted poster as well as in his entry in the FBI system (S1E1)
05.07.1983 - Date of birth: Lucy Brooks (S1E8)
1983/1984 - Year of birth: Elizabeth Keen
(John Eisendrath said in an interview that Liz is thirty: ” […] At the same time, we want to allow Liz to explore what it means to be 30 and have your marriage destroyed and all your hopes and dreams gone and having to start over.” - as his comment is worded as it is, not like “what it means to be thirtysomething”, “around thirty”, “to be in her thirties” - and it is very close to Megan Boone’s real age 31 (1983) I will work with this age for the timeline until it is confirmed to be otherwise.)
1984 - Reddington graduates from the Naval Academy at the top of his class by the time he is 24 (S1E1) The Naval Academy is a four-year coeducational federal service academy which implies that Red entered the academy in 1980 at the age of 20 (x) Today an applicant has to be unmarried and is not allowed to have an obligation to provide support to a dependent at the time of enrollment (x).
After he graduated, Reddington is groomed for admiral (S1E1)
22.03.1987 - Swan Lake is preformed at the Elise Le Blanc School of Ballet. Reddington holds a program of that event in his hand as he remembers a girl (age unclear - appr. between 6 -12) dancing at the end of S1E16 when he watches one for him privately given preformance of Swan Lake with adult dancers on the stage. His connection to the girl in the memory is unclear. One of the dancers says backstage to another dancer "He’s one of our biggest donors. Never comes to any other performance. Same show on the same day every year. They say his daughter was in the show years ago.”
It is unclear if this “gossip” is true.
1987/1988 - Liz is saved from the fire and brought to Sam Milhoan by an “old friend.” Sam takes her in and raises her as his own. (S1E8, S1E22)
(Note: The year of the fire is infered from the information that Liz was adopted by Sam at the age of four.)
Christmas Eve 1990 - Reddington claims he came home to see his wife an daughter; on the way, he ran out of gas and walked the last 4-5 miles through high and heavy snow. When he arrived at home he saw only “blood. All there was, was blood”. (S1E14) According to Ressler and the official files, Reddington never arrives at home and vanishes on Christmas Eve. (S1E1)
It is unclear which version of events is true or what Red did/happened to him in the years between Christmas Eve 1990 and his reemergence 1994 on the radar screen of the FBI. However, it is strongly indicated that something happened that night in Reddington’s family home. The concrete fate or whereabouts of Reddington’s wife and daughter are never mentioned on the show until S2E1. Then it is revealed that Naomi Hyland, the former Mrs. Reddington is still alive and had entered a witness protection program together with here daughter. It is unclear in which year they entered the WiSec, if it was 1990 or 1994 and what concrete circumstances preceeded this decision.
a) in S1E7 Reddington buys the house again with the sole purpose to blow it up. Seconds before the explosion he says, "I spend every day trying to forget what happened here. This should help." Before the house is destroyed, he remembers a girl with long blonde curls playing in the garden, most likely his daughter.
b) in S1E13 Diane Fowler claims to know the truth "about that night, about what happened to your family." Seconds before shooting Fowler Reddington confesses that he wants to know that truth "more than anything in the world."
December 1990 - The Stewmaker takes a photo of one of his victim, apparently a young girl (age unclear - the actress in the picture was 12 at the time the ep was shot according to imdb). In 2013, Reddington removes that photo from the Stewmaker’s trophy book at the end of S1E4. The pictures holds the caption: "#79 12/90". The same photo is seen in Berlin’s/The colonel’s pocket watch at the end of Berlin, Conclusion (S1E22). The same pocket watch that at least once and maybe still contains the picture of his dead daughter who fell in love (!) with a dissident towards the end of the Cold War.
(Note: in the commentary on the DVD it is - at least for me - confirmed by TPTB that the girl in the picture is supposed to be the colonel’s daughter which means the age of the actress in the picture can no longer be considered to be a clue)
14.06.1992 - Date of last arrest, Raymond Reddington; charge: espionage (S1E1) (Note: this and the date of conviction might be a glitch in the canon timeline as Ressler states that after Christmas Eve 1990 Reddington “disappears from the face of the earth until four years later”)
1993 - Fitch and Red see each other for the last time until Anslo Garrick part 2 (S1E10)
24.09.1993 - Date of conviction, Raymond Reddington; incarceration status: arrest on sight (S1E1)
1994 - Four years after Reddington’s disappearance, classified NOFORN documents appear in Maghreb, Islamabad,Beijing; the leaks are traced back to Reddington (S1E1)
2008 - 2013 - Donald Ressler is a case agent on Reddington at the Washington Field office.
2008 - Ressler and his team try to kill Reddington in Brussels (S1E1)
2009 – 2013 - Elizabeth Keen works for the FBI as head of the Mobile Emergency Psych Unit in New York (S1E1)
12.03.2011 - Tom Keen’s bachelor party is held in Las Vegas (S1E6)
2011 - Elizabeth and Tom Keen are married some time between March and December 2011 (S1E6, S1E15)
23.06.2012 - Victor Fokin is killed at the Angel Station Hotel in Boston; the murder weapon is the same gun Elizabeth discovers later in the box, that was hidden in the floor of her house. Elizabeth and Tom Keen are in Boston at the same time of the homocide. Tom Keen claims to have had a job interview at the hotel when Fokin was murdered. (S1E6, S1E5) Tom Keen is cleared by the FBI in the Fokin case in S1E6, when Gina Zanetakos claims to have been hired by Reddington who denies any involvement in it. The matter is not adressed anymore on the show. However, the reveal of Tom Keen’s true allegiance with at least fake!Berlin and his later actions let it appear likely that he was truly responsible for Fokin’s murder, along with Reddington’s claim that he has never lied to Elizabeth (S1E17).
Summer 2013 - Raymond Reddington abandons Madeline Pratt in Florence where she is waiting for him to make a “fresh start” (S1E14)
August 2013 - Elizabeth Keen graduates from Quantico; she is reassigned from New York to Washington D.C. (S1E1)
September 2013 - Reddington turns himself over to the FBI. It’s the same day, Elizabeth Keen is supposed to have her first day as a profiler (S1E1)
Major open questions in regard of the timeline:
1) What were Reddington’s jobs/missions as an officer for the U.S. Navy after he graduated in 1984? According to Ressler (S1E1), Reddington was a highly respected officer at the time he disappeared in 1990. Those six years of work/service remain so far undefined. (Note: there is information in the original pilot script but we don’t know how or if this was changed.)
2) What happened to Reddington/what was he doing between December 1990 and 1994?
3) Is the date of Reddington’s last arrest (14.6.1992) a simple glitch in the timeline? According to Ressler, the first documents that could be traced back to Reddington appeared four years after his disappearance – that would be 1994.
