Tony Almeida’s fate to be revealed in 24: Live Another Day DVD Extra

Hopefully he’s in Day 10. I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around how they came to the conclusion that what the fans were really clamoring for was a Cheng return and Audrey in danger for the four hundredth time.

I can accept Tonys Fate as being in prison forever, of course I thought the same thing about Cheng. Mandy just feels like the one villain that we know for sure got away with everything, being under Ctu’s radar was her main advantage however.

If Wilson was alive and free, why wouldn’t he have had both Tony and Renee killed?

That’s great to here I wonder depending on the ending we get I guess if they’ll fill in a gap with Jack also. To give the ending kinda of a bridge….. For a possible season 10 if they decide to return. sense they were there threw june….. lol as far as Tony those pics don’t look like a prison look. His look in season 7 looks more like a prison look.

What was the point in bringing back Audrey?
She is so boring .

You know what…? I think if Keifer doesn’t come back for another season that a season with Tony as the lead could actually work really well! Imagine Tony calling all the shots and with his past he has plenty of layers and dynamics to take over as the main hero! But of course Id rather just have another seasons with Jack Bauer kicking some @$$!

Alright (err “a’right” ;)), here’s the Tony idea. It wound up a whole thing and is on the long side so if you don’t need an argument for why Tony could have gone free after Day 7 in order to roll with what could have happened to him beyond that, you can skip down to the underlined line and go from there, as that’s the bulk of the theory. Cheers for reading.

In order for it to make sense for there to be a scene on the DVD that tells us more about Tony, Day 9 almost has to have had an effect on his story. There also has to be something that, well, happens in the DVD scene, as I really doubt they filmed five minutes of Tony staring at his cell wall. If you go backwards off of this, there’s a way Day 9 actually gets Tony out of prison.

What we’re all assuming is that Tony went to prison following Day 7 but the show actually never tells us that he did and, instead, suggests subtly that he may have been free up to and including the events of Day 8. Technically, we never saw Tony get arrested. Even in the final splitscreen where we see him for the last time to date in canon, we (likely intentionally) cannot see his hands. He’s sitting there looking despondent but he’s been given medical attention (no shirt, arm in a sling) and someone’s been nice enough to drape their overcoat over his shoulders. The way it is filmed, however, makes it so we can’t see whether or not his hands are cuffed and the background is completely black, making it impossible to tell where, exactly, he is. The last shots of Tony on both Days 3 and 7 are structurally the same with the pertinent details altered. On Day 3, he’s clearly there in handcuffs in holding. On Day 7, his hands are off-camera and the background is black, leaving him in the state of perpetual question mark that he’s been in ever since.

There’s also that, as far as I can remember, no one involved with the production of the show said *where* Tony was between Days 7 and 8. They’ve only just said in the last few days that he’s in prison. Prior to Fury, Katz, and Coto all saying in the last few days that there is where Tony is, we technically didn’t know where he was. All they said about Tony’s character between Days 7 and 8 was that they got that we wanted him back but that he wouldn’t be in Day 8– something they told us flat-out prior to Day 8 beginning, just as they also told us that Logan would return. (Which… instantly made a lot of people realize that Day 8 wasn’t going to be Shiny Happy Sunshine Day. When Jack’s soul has gone AWOL and Beezlebub returns, things ain’t lookin’ too good for Jack.) Anyway, the point is that no one ever actually said Tony was in jail after Day 7, they just said he wasn’t going to pop into the Day 8 story, which totally made sense because Jack had to go to the dark side a bit as a character and he wouldn’t have gone there if Tony had been around.

Also keep in mind that President Taylor at the end of Day 7 had just lost two kids to Alan Wilson with Olivia’s arrest and that she was in Tony’s same boat. Alan Wilson was the man behind the people who murdered her son. In Allison’s last scene on Day 7, she says to Ethan “His name is Alan Wilson!” in this “let’s go get the bastard!” tone of voice and seems determined to do whatever is necessary to do so. In the meantime? Renee locks herself into the interrogation room with Wilson and tortures him. She “almost killed” him, according to Day 8, and we can imagine he was in pretty rough shape after she was done with him, considering we’ve seen her rage issues. Since she and Tony both escaped any retaliation from Wilson, it’s likely that the guy might be so bad off that he’s virtually a vegetable at this point. This leaves Tony as the only person left alive as of the end of Day 7 with any information on Wilson’s associates and any plans the group had in-progress. He didn’t know everything but he knew enough to be valuable to Allison Taylor, whose life Tony helped to save on Day 7 with his White House attack tip. Not to mention that he outed hundreds of moles within the federal government. People have been pardoned for a lot worse crimes on 24 than Day 7 Tony. Let’s say that in exchange for Wilson cabal info, Taylor pardons Tony and he goes free.

Like their strongest parallel on Day 7 (the Taylors), Tony and Jack “get divorced” between Days 7 and 8. They’re both a little miserable but can barely look at one another over how completely awfully they both behaved, so they each go their own way. This results in Jack doing pro-active things like napping while he’s supposed to be babysitting and loafing around like an aging beatnik in his Hotel Chelsea penthouse. But, at the onset of Day 8, what happens to Jack? He gets a little love letter from his other half when a guy from the Salazar mission shows up at his front door with (unbeknownst to Jack) a pocketful of (Sangalan blood?) diamonds and tells Jack exactly who Jack is– that he’s “the guy who always does the right thing.” Oh, and this guy’s last name is pronounced “a ruse.” (Oh, and Jack ignored the living hell out of this accurate statement for the rest of the day. Next time, Tony, send flowers.) On a day where the main theme is Arlo’s “Who is Jack Bauer?” question from 8.01 that ends with Logan comically gasping in cartoon villain-esque horror “THAT’S JACK BAUER!” in 8.24, the question is really answered by the Tony-proxied, professional identity forger Victor Aruz, who showed up in 8.01. Jack Bauer is the guy who always does the right thing. Even when his story arc on Day 8 is about him ignoring that truth and making a series of colossally terrible decisions. None of which he would have made if his relationship with Tony wasn’t going through a messy and kinda broken stage. (See also: Allison Taylor telling Ethan on Day 8 that she’s trying to get world peace not just because it’s an awesome thing but because it’s what she and Henry used to stay up nights dreaming about. Yeah, Allie… Henry’s really proud of all the great choices you made on Day 8…)

There are a couple of other moments on Day 8 that also suggest Tony was not in prison, including a comment on Jack’s life made by Renee, but to get into them here is a whole other thing on Tony and family and irony and Day 7, so just roll with the Allison Taylor and Victor Aruz suggestions above because here’s where we get to the real meat of it all: when Tony did go to prison.

Following Day 8, Jack is desperate and has to get out of the country. While he would never have called Tony to help with his revenge spree (because he knew Tony would talk him out of it, uber-ironically), he now can contact him for help because what’s Tony going to say? Not like he hasn’t been there, done that. Tony owes Jack one and Jack is desperate and there’s also a whole conspiracy here that Tony would be happy to help screw over, so he helps Jack flee to Eastern Europe. Document and identity forging, money, plane tickets, etc.. All stuff Tony could do in his sleep. (Plus, it’s hilarious: Tony sent Jack an identity forger from their secret mission as a message, Jack ignored said message and went crazy, and now he needs Tony to forge him a new identity so he can go start a new life like it’s a nightmarish version of the end of Day 4.)

So, now, both Chloe and Tony are culpable for helping Jack following Day 8…

…and Chloe is totally screwed. She and Morris don’t have a lot of money (something mentioned canonically in early Day 8 when Chloe talks to Renee) and they are shown to have few options for people who could help them during Chloe’s Arrest, when their best chance is Morris’ ambulance chaser lawyer acquaintance who might know a good defense attorney. The minimum sentence for aiding and abetting a federal fugitive per the FBI guy who arrests Chloe is fifteen years. On Day 9, Kate reads from Chloe’s file that Chloe spent time in prison for helping Jack escape after Day 8. But Chloe herself tells Jack a story of domestic bliss gone wrong, where she was at work when Morris picked Prescott up from soccer practice and they were killed. The little boy that Chloe sees at the train station looks barely older or taller than Prescott did during Chloe’s Arrest– maybe a year or so older– implying that this is what Prescott looked like when he died, making him maybe seven, if that. So a max of two years after Day 8 when the accident happened. As of Day 9, Chloe’s been with Open Cell for at least a couple of years, per her relationship with Adrian and the group. In four and a half short years, Chloe has served a prison sentence, gone home, found and started working at another job, lost her family in a tragic accident, and spent at least a couple of years with an anti-government group. For this to work, Chloe couldn’t have spent more than around 18 months in prison and maybe not more than a few months. How did a fifteen year sentence become a year and a half or less? Tony.

After helping Jack after Day 8, Tony turns himself into the FBI and cuts a deal to get Chloe a greatly reduced sentence while agreeing to take the fall for both of them. For Tony, it’s for having owed Chloe one, even if he was kind of just trying to protect her on Day 7 by leaving her out of his end game plans, and it’s also karmic repayment for what he did on Day 7. He lost his family and sought out revenge– something that Jack and Chloe both subsequently do after Tony does– and his way of making it right is to save Chloe the way he couldn’t save his own family. His wife and son were murdered but after revenge failed and he was able to see that it didn’t change anything, Tony’s on the other side of that pain and begins to use it for good. He won’t let Morris lose his wife or Prescott grow up without a mother or Chloe not to be able to see her son, so he gets them to greatly reduce Chloe’s prison time to a slap on the wrist and takes the hit for her. (This idea is also paralleled/foreshadowed a bit by Morris on Day 7 when he cuts a Jack-related deal with the FBI in order to free Chloe. Chloe and Morris are extreme versions of Jack and Tony and a pair of major paralleling characters to their story. Switching tactics from revenge to trying to do something good with the pain is also akin to what Jack has been doing the last 11 months with his position in Rask’s organization and also now on Day 9 with trying to save the Hellers. It also ties into Day 9 themes like “making it right”: Boudreau has to make it right with his family, Jack has to make it right with the Hellers, Chloe has to make it right for helping to create the override device, Kate has to make it right with helping to stop Cheng because she failed to see what was going on with Navarro. Everyone’s a traitor in some form or another (to their government, to their spouse, to their principles, etc) and they all seek to make it right. This Tony idea is also full-circle back as far as Chloe and Tony on Day 3 when, ironically, it was Chloe who was the least empathetic to what Tony went through to save his wife on that day. On the other side of Michelle’s death, Tony winds up back in prison… to help Chloe and her family.)

So, Chloe goes home after a super-minimal sentence, and starts her life over with a new job and her family, before an accident kills Morris and Prescott. It’s because of Tony, though, that Chloe got time with them that she wouldn’t have if she had been behind bars. Meanwhile, the Heller administration can’t do anything to help the guy who volunteered to take the hit for everyone involved in this sticky international crisis Jack left in his wake, other than maybe to help make Tony’s sentence not the maximum, so Tony was probably looking at fifteen or so years behind bars. Having saved Audrey’s life probably got him some brownie points (and would also continue to tie Day 9 back into Day 4, which the Hellers + suicide theme + jihadists + Audrey’s husband + drones have done pretty spectacularly already.)

Jack, meanwhile, has been on the run, and he probably has no idea that any of this ever happened. (It would be helpful, since someone has to explain it to the audience at some point, which means they have to say it all out loud, which means someone doesn’t know and needs to be told. Jack makes the most sense here.) Because Chloe’s story about the death of her family (curiously) didn’t mention that it had happened after she’d been released from prison, it would seem like she doesn’t want to mention to Jack the fact that she was ever in prison. (Especially since because the moment she does, Tony would have to be revealed as the reason why she’s not in prison any longer, so the writers are just not having the characters chat about it until they want to reveal it.) Since Jack has said nothing about it to anybody and we the audience were told it happened but not given an explanation for how Chloe is now out, they could be holding off on that explanation until it comes up in Tony-related discussion either in the finale (Katz & Coto on Reddit AMA thing implied there might be mention of him then) and/or in the DVD extra scene.

Best of all is how this fits into the DVD extra scene existing post-Day 9 in the first place. If Tony’s been in prison since post-Day 8 for aiding and abetting a federal fugitive in Jack, then what happened a few hours ago to the charges against Tony when President Heller decided that Jack is no longer a federal fugitive and gave him a Presidential pardon? The U.S. government no longer has any grounds to hold Tony in prison. They can’t keep him in there for aiding and abetting a guy they’re no longer saying is a federal fugitive. Keep in mind that, as of the end of 9.11, Chloe doesn’t know that Jack’s been pardoned. Jack hasn’t told anyone about it yet. If he mentions it to Chloe, she help him to realize that there’s a bigger, overall plot reason why Jack had to wind up with a pardon…

Cut to Day 9 DVD Extra Scene: Tony goes free.

If there’s never any more canon, then the story for Tony becomes he saved Chloe and took the hit for Jack by going back to prison. The cost of Jack’s revenge spree became the freedom of his formerly revenge-spreeing other half and Jack’s actions on Day 9 that begin to lead him back to his old sense of self also free his soul Tony in the process. If there’s a Day 10, then they just explained why Tony’s been benched for awhile while everyone else went bananas, as well as unlocked the door– literally– to bringing him back.

That’s a pretty good prediction actually. But it seems like it is just Tony, no other characters that the scene involves