Here’s Neil’s complete timeline explained in Christopher Nolan’s mindboggling spy-thriller, Tenet. The events of Tenet are a tad difficult to map, as the film challenges and subverts our understanding of the linear progression of time, and the effects inversion can have on key events occurring through various points in time, with the past, present, and future forming an ever-continuing ouroboros.
At first glance, it might be tempting to liken Tenet to Inception due to its frenetic narrative twists - however, Tenet seems more like a culmination of Nolan’s cinematic oeuvre, consisting of elements of confusing, non-linear wit and wonder evoked in films like Interstellar and Dunkirk. Tenet is a cinematic experience like no other, perennially elusive even on the verge of breakthrough, leaving more questions unanswered towards the film’s denouement.
Just like the title of the film, the plot of Tenet is palindromic in nature, wherein the first half moves forward in a fairly linear fashion, and then goes on to reverse backward, forming a closed-loop by the end. While every character experiences shifting timelines in Tenet, the temporal trajectory of Neil (Robert Pattinson) is perhaps the most confusing and complex one. Here’s a deep dive into Neil’s timeline in Tenet, along with an attempt to answer burning questions.
Neil's On-Screen Tenet Timeline
As the temporal loop in Tenet has no set beginning or end, at least in the way one is conditioned to perceive, it is best to map events in chronological order from a narratorial perspective. Tenet opens with the Opera House siege in Kyiv, wherein The Protagonist (John David Washington) is saved by a refracting bullet ‘caught’ by a mysterious masked vigilante, who is later revealed in a major twist to be Neil himself.
Day 1, Opera House, Kyiv: The Protagonist is able to seize the asset before the Ukrainian Special Forces get their hands on it, but is about to be taken out by one of them. Then on, a masked vigilante, who is, in fact, Neil, saves The Protagonist with the aid of a refracted bullet. The Protagonist notices a gold coin hanging from a red thread from the person’s backpack (a visual cue that will be crucial later on.)
Days 7-12, Mumbai: The Protagonist formally meets British spy Neil, who assists him to apprehend the arms dealer, Sanjay Singh. From the moment the two men meet, there are undercurrents that Neil knows The Protagonist fairly well, to the point that he is aware of his favorite drink and the fact that he never drinks on the job. The two devise a scheme to bungee jump into Singh’s penthouse, where it is revealed that the arms dealer is actually Priya (Dimple Kapadia), who points The Protagonist to Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), who is acting as broker-of-sorts between the present and the future.
Day 14, Norway Freeport, Oslo: The Protagonist and Neil come up with a plan to crash a 747 into the freeport as a distraction, so the duo can break into the vaults. They succeed, making way into an inner vault that has two rooms separated by glass, each housing a turnstile (devices meant to invert and revert a traveler). Two men in Black Ops gear jump out of the respective machines - the Protagonist fights an inverted assailant, who is later revealed to be himself. Meanwhile, Neil chases and unmasks the reversed man, who he discovers is also The Protagonist. Deciding not to meddle with the flow of outcomes, Neil lets him escape while preventing The Protagonist from killing his own inverted self.
Day 21, Tallinn: The Protagonist and Neil perform a daring plutonium heist along a motorway, only to find an orange box containing an asset similar to the one retrieved in Kyiv. Both Neil and The Protagonist see a flipped silver car, and then a black car driving backwards towards them. After The Protagonist is questioned by Sator and his men, and Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) is shot with an inversed bullet, Neil “calls in the cavalry” - a TENET military group led by Ives (Aaron Taylor Johnson) and Wheeler (Fiona Dourif) who shoot Sator’s men and take control of the turnstile.
Neil and The Protagonist take a wounded Kat through the turnstile, inverting themselves in the process to prevent Kat’s death from the bullet wound. After The Protagonist ventures alone to retrieve the silver asset, he ends up giving Sator the final part of the algorithm machine instead. Sator sets The Protagonist and his silver car on fire, which leads to the latter getting hypothermia (as entropy is reversed). However, Neil saves him from certain death.
Inversion, Norway Freeport, Oslo: Neil and The Protagonist, along with a wounded Kat, decide to travel backwards in time in a cargo ship to the week in which the plane crash and vault heist occurred. The Protagonist goes back into the freeport and fights himself as per the events of Day 14. He uses the turnstile in the freeport to reinvert himself, going forward in time now. Neil moves Kat through the turnstile, and now all three of them are progressing through time forward.
Inversion, The TENET Ship: Neil, The Protagonist, and a healed Kat discuss free will, which is a question posited at the core of Tenet. Neil says, “what’s happened, happened”, implying that the past cannot be changed, and presents the problem of the Grandfather Paradox. The Protagonist comes to the firm conclusion that Neil has experienced these events before, as he was always a step ahead during every scenario. As they talk, they piece together Sator’s doomsday plan and formulated a strategy with Ives.
Closing of the Loop, Day 1, Siberia: Two teams of TENET soldiers simultaneously go to a deserted Siberian city and execute a temporal pincer movement, which basically involves Team Red moving forwards in time to witness how events play out, while an inverted Team Blue travels backward simultaneously, each having the benefit of temporal knowledge. While The Protagonist and Ives are on the mission to obtain the algorithm from a cave, Neil is the only other person aware of this, and he watches the other two being sealed inside the cave as they trigger a tripwire.
(a) Neil, Timeline 2: Inverted Neil sees an inverted chief goon laying the cave trap and comes to the conclusion that Sator’s men have a turnstile nearby. Neil finds the machine and reinverts himself, meaning now he is going forward in time. He tries to stop Ives and The Protagonist from entering the cave, but it is rendered fruitless.
Inside the cave, The Protagonist sees Sator’s goon inside a gated metal tomb holding the algorithm machine. A soldier’s corpse lies nearby, who sports the same backpack with the dangling coin and the red thread. Sator, who has traveled backwards to his holiday on the yacht in Vietnam, tells The Protagonist over the walkie-talkie that it is too late, and that he would have never allowed his son Max to be born in a world fated to be annihilated. Just then, the corpse reanimates and opens the gate for The Protagonist, while moving backward. Coming back to Neil, he hitches his van to the cave entrance and manages to pull both Ives and The Protagonist out just in time. They manage to retrieve the algorithm machine without having triggered the end of the world.
(b) Neil, Timeline 2 Merges with The Protagonist’s Timeline: On seeing Neil’s backpack, The Protagonist realizes that Neil is the inverted soldier who opens the gate in the cave, who dies after being shot by the chief goon. He also realizes that he’s the same vigilante who saved him back in the Opera House, and is emotional because of Neil’s death. However, Neil reassures him that they’ve known each other for years, and they’ve had tons of adventures together. It is also revealed that it is The Protagonist who had founded TENET in the future and recruited Neil in the first place. While it is the end of the road for Neil, it is just the beginning for The Protagonist.
(c) Neil, Timeline 3: Neil hitches a lift with Ives as he needs to travel backward again, in order to sacrifice himself in the cave as the reanimated corpse, hence closing his loop. In essence, Neil’s trajectory, temporal or otherwise, was key in saving the world.
Neil's Known Timeline Off-Screen
Having come to terms with the true nature of his role within the history of the world, The Protagonist decides to found - rather, learns that he has already founded - a counter organization named TENET to the one in the future that aims to erase the past. Everything that The Protagonist experiences throughout the film’s events are the result of his own design, which includes the presence of Neil who is traveling backward in time to make sure that the mission goes the way it was originally planned. While these events majorly take place offscreen, they are revealed in the final conversation between Neil and The Protagonist (within the purview of the narrative), in which Neil remarks that this might be the end of the journey for him, but for The Protagonist, it is the beginning of a long, beautiful friendship, which might as well become the subject for a Tenet sequel. Those "adventures" together culminate in the Opera House operation as the last major event prior to Neil and the Protagonist of the present coming together, but would of course involve recruiting other characters and encountering Priya.
What We Don't Know About Neil
After the events of the Tenet, The Protagonist seeks Neil out in the future by traveling backward in time, hence kickstarting the loop all over again. Due to the paradoxical nature of temporal realities and loops, it would make sense for Neil to have certain qualities to be recruited in the first place. Could it be the fact that Neil has a Masters in Physics, hence a deeper understanding of the nuances of the events that occurred/would occur? Neil could also have been a TENET employee of the likes of Mahir (Himesh Patel), but the fact that he’s chosen by The Protagonist to guide him every step of the way during the first half points to a deeper, more emotional connection between the two. Nevertheless, the relationship between the two men is an endearing one, forming the emotional core of Tenet, as Neil is doomed to live out half a friendship wherein the other has no memory of their time together, while The Protagonist is doomed to re-ignite their friendship despite the knowledge of Neil’s eventual sacrifice.
Is Neil From The Future Or The Past?
A popular theory posits that Neil is, in fact, Kat and Sator’s son, Max, who is seen at several points in the film. Apart from physical resemblance, and the fact that Pattinson specifically died his hair blonde for the film, it makes narratorial sense that The Protagonist was close to Kat and her son after the events of the film, leading to the bond between the two. Max would have grown up to be trained and recruited by The Protagonist, only to go back to save his mother, and ensuring the survival of his younger self. The name ‘Max’ could also be short for MAXIMILIEN, wherein the last four letters undergo a ‘tenet’ and become ‘Neil.’ While this theory is purely speculative, it does tie in neatly with Tenet’s narrative, and grants greater depth and meaning to Neil’s character and his ultimate sacrifice, which might’ve been a way to pay for the sins of his father.