All the Light We Can See (2020) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

According to the legend Marie-Laure heard as a child at the museum, the Sea of Flames grants immortality to its owner but brings endless misfortune to everyone around them. The only way to end the curse is to return the diamond to the sea, its rightful place. After escaping Saint-Malo with Werner, Marie-Laure places the gem inside a gated grotto flooded with seawater, choosing to lift the curse even though it means giving up the diamond's promise of eternal life.

Foreshadowing: Marie-Laure hears the legend of the Sea of Flames and its curse during her childhood visits to the Museum of Natural History, years before she ever holds the gem.

• sea of flames
• curse
• grotto
• diamond
• marie-laure
• ending

When Werner traces the illegal broadcast in Saint-Malo, he instantly recognizes the science programs and music as the same ones he and his sister Jutta listened to on a broken radio at the orphanage in Zollverein. Tracking the signal to Etienne's house and seeing Marie-Laure heading to the bakery, Werner realizes that betraying the broadcast would mean destroying a piece of his childhood. Unable to reconcile that nostalgia with his duties as a Nazi soldier, he chooses silence and hides the signal's existence from Volkheimer and the rest of the squad.

Foreshadowing: Werner first hears the European science broadcasts on the repaired orphanage radio in 1934, the same programs that will later save him from executing Etienne.

• werner pfennig
• etienne
• radio signal
• schulpforta
• orphanage
• resistance

Daniel was the master locksmith at the Museum of Natural History and was entrusted by the museum with either the real Sea of Flames or one of three exact copies created to protect the original gem. While building a model of Saint-Malo for Marie-Laure, he was arrested by German forces on suspicion of conspiracy and sent away. Although he managed to smuggle a few letters out of prison, neither Marie-Laure nor Etienne ever learns his true fate, and his disappearance remains one of the story's most painful unresolved threads.

Foreshadowing: Daniel warns Marie-Laure that if anything happens to him she must go to her great-uncle Etienne, a precaution he clearly foresaw becoming necessary.

• daniel leblanc
• sea of flames
• museum
• arrest
• father
• disappearance

Werner arrives at Etienne's house intending to rescue Marie-Laure but instead encounters von Rumpel, who has become delirious after ransacking the home for days without finding the Sea of Flames. Von Rumpel is still a Nazi officer searching for the gem and would almost certainly kill Marie-Laure to keep searching or hand her over. After a tense standoff, Werner shoots and kills von Rumpel, choosing to save Marie-Laure rather than protect his fellow German soldier.

Foreshadowing: Von Rumpel's obsession with the diamond is established long before the siege, as his cancer-driven desperation pushes him to track the gem to Saint-Malo.

• von rumpel
• werner
• shooting
• standoff
• nazi gemologist

After being buried alive beneath the rubble of the hotel bombing, Werner repairs a radio in the cellar and hears Marie-Laure broadcasting Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas along with pleas for rescue on Etienne's transmitter. Realizing he and Volkheimer will die if they stay, they blow up the rubble and escape. Werner then follows the broadcast straight to Etienne's house, where he finds her hiding and confronts von Rumpel instead.

Foreshadowing: Werner's childhood gift with radios, first shown when he repairs a broken set at the orphanage, is what allows him to pick up her signal under the rubble.

• werner
• marie-laure
• broadcast
• rubble
• hotel
• rescue

Werner contracted a fever while tracking illegal broadcasts across Europe, and his squad never let him fully recover. After the siege of Saint-Malo he is captured by U.S. forces and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp, where the illness worsens into a grave condition. One night, delirious and disoriented, he wanders out of the hospital tent and accidentally steps on a German landmine, which detonates and kills him instantly.

Foreshadowing: Werner's fever first appears during the squad's signal-hunting missions across the continent, foreshadowing that his body is slowly breaking down long before the final accident.

• werner death
• landmine
• prisoner of war
• fever
• pow camp

The Sea of Flames is a legendary diamond hidden inside the Museum of Natural History that is said to grant its owner immortality while inflicting endless misfortune on everyone close to them. According to the myth, the only escape from the curse is to return the stone to the ocean, where it originally came from. The museum's creation of three exact replicas to protect the real gem shows how seriously the institution takes the danger the diamond supposedly poses.

Foreshadowing: Marie-Laure hears the legend of the Sea of Flames from guides at the museum years before the gem ends up hidden in Etienne's model house.

• sea of flames
• legend
• curse
• museum
• diamond
• replicas

When von Rumpel, a Nazi gemologist searching for the Sea of Flames, stops Marie-Laure on her way home from the bakery and asks if her father left her anything, she instinctively answers 'just a dumb model.' Marie-Laure already knows the miniature city contains the diamond hidden inside a tiny replica of Etienne's house, so calling it dumb is a survival instinct: deflecting the only item von Rumpel might want to inspect. The lie works, and von Rumpel leaves, which is why Etienne soon steps in to take over her Resistance deliveries.

Foreshadowing: Daniel secretly hid the Sea of Flames inside a miniature house placed on the Saint-Malo model, trusting that no outsider would think to look inside a child's toy.

• marie-laure
• von rumpel
• model
• lie
• sea of flames
• bakery

Professor Hauptmann oversees Werner's radio work at Schulpforta and recognizes that the boy is an exceptionally rare technical talent the Reich desperately needs in the field. When Werner asks to leave the school after his two-year promise to Jutta, Hauptmann fears losing that asset and deliberately falsifies his age so Nazi officials will conscript Werner into the Wehrmacht instead. The lie ensures Werner is placed in a signal-tracking squad rather than allowed to return home.

Foreshadowing: Werner's reputation as Hauptmann's most promising student is established long before the conscription order arrives.

• hauptmann
• werner
• schulpforta
• conscription
• age
• lie

Frederick is a kind-hearted but inattentive student who does not conform to the brutal, competitive Nazi ideology enforced at the school. His gentleness and his refusal to perform the violence expected of him mark him as weak in the eyes of his classmates. After enduring sustained bullying, he is subjected to a savage beating that leaves him with permanent brain damage, after which he is sent home to Berlin and never seen again.

Foreshadowing: Frederick's habit of caring for birds and avoiding aggression is shown early on as the very qualities that later make him a target.

• frederick
• schulpforta
• bullying
• beating
• nazi school

Trapped in the attic with von Rumpel searching the house below, Marie-Laure uses Etienne's transmitter to call for help. Because she is blind, she broadcasts herself reading a braille copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas aloud, mixing Jules Verne's story of escape beneath the sea with desperate pleas for rescue. The choice lets her transmit for long stretches while still feeling grounded through a book she can read by touch.

Foreshadowing: Marie-Laure's lifelong love of braille books is established long before the siege, when Daniel teaches her to read by touch.

• marie-laure
• twenty thousand leagues
• braille
• broadcast
• attic

The broadcast Werner picks up on his radio direction-finding equipment in Saint-Malo is not a typical Resistance message. It consists of the same science lessons and music that Etienne's deceased brother recorded years earlier and that Werner himself first heard on a broken radio at the orphanage in Zollverein. Recognizing the voice and the content instantly links the signal to his childhood, which is why he refuses to turn it over to his squad.

Foreshadowing: Etienne has spent years secretly rebroadcasting his brother's educational recordings across Europe, the very programs Werner heard as a child.

• werner
• etienne
• broadcast
• orphanage
• science programs

Werner's Wehrmacht unit is a specialist signal-tracking squad whose orders are to locate unauthorized radio operators across occupied Europe and eliminate them on the spot. The executions are meant to crush enemy communications, punish Resistance activity, and intimidate the local population into silence. The policy becomes personal horror for him when his own misread trace results in the death of an innocent young girl, a moment that begins to break his loyalty to the Reich.

Foreshadowing: Werner's early discomfort with violence at Schulpforta, especially after Frederick's beating, hints that he will eventually be unable to stomach his squad's killings.

• werner
• signal tracking
• wehrmacht
• execution
• resistance
• disillusionment

After Marie-Laure places the Sea of Flames inside the flooded grotto and hands the key to Werner, he sends her away to safety and is later captured, so the gem is left behind. Thirty years later, when Volkheimer returns Werner's belongings to Jutta and Jutta passes the model to Marie-Laure, only the grotto key is found inside; Marie-Laure never discovers whether the diamond actually stayed in the sea or whether Werner secretly took it with him. The ambiguity is intentional, leaving the curse's resolution open to interpretation.

Foreshadowing: Marie-Laure's doubts about Werner's choices begin the moment she hands him the key and walks away without him.

• sea of flames
• grotto
• key
• epilogue
• marie-laure
• jutta
• ending

Marie-Laure refuses to flee because she is guarding the Sea of Flames, the diamond she has just discovered inside Etienne's model house. Leaving with the gem would risk exposing her on the streets during the bombardment and could lead von Rumpel or other German soldiers to capture her. She therefore retreats first to the cellar and then to the upper floors, using Etienne's transmitter to broadcast a rescue plea while protecting the diamond from whoever might still be hunting it.

Foreshadowing: Marie-Laure's discovery of the Sea of Flames inside the model house happens just before the siege begins, giving her no time to escape with it.

• marie-laure
• siege
• saint-malo
• sea of flames
• attic
• transmitter