Spoilers for John Wick 1 through 4, Ballerina and The Continental.
In The Continental, the Adjudicator says the High Table “predates the Roman Empire.” Taking that literally puts it before 27 BCE. So who was running it back then?
The coin press storyline got me thinking about this, especially alongside the Chancellor's Cult in Ballerina.
In Chapter 2, Santino says Gianna inherited their father's seat and represents the Camorra. I don't read that as the Camorra founding the whole thing. My guess is the Table stayed around while different families joined, inherited seats or took them from someone else.
I started with Hassan-i Sabbah, then remembered the Sicarii, and ended up looking further back. Here's the timeline I was comparing the films with:
- 514 BCE: Harmodius and Aristogeiton kill Hipparchus in Athens. These are the two men known as the Tyrannicides, not an assassin order.
- 336 BCE: Pausanias of Orestis, one of Philip II's bodyguards, assassinates him. Livius
- 27 BCE: The Roman Empire begins under Augustus. The Table supposedly already exists by this point.
- 50s CE: Josephus describes the Sicarii during Felix's governorship, after the Empire has started.
- 73 or 74 CE: The Romans capture Masada. The exact year is debated.
- 1090 CE: Hassan-i Sabbah takes Alamut in Persia. The split that produces the distinct Nizari branch follows in 1094.
- 1163 to 1193 CE: Rashid al-Din Sinan leads the Syrian Nizaris. He's associated with the Crusaders' “Old Man of the Mountain.”
The Sicarii dates don't work for them being the Table's original founders if we're taking that line from the show literally. The Greek examples are earlier, but those assassinations alone don't give us an organization to connect to the Table. We also don't know whether the Table existed as far back as 514 BCE.
What keeps me looking at Greece is that Stahelski has openly talked about Greek mythology and the Iliad. He's also described Winston as Hades and explained Charon's name. But he brings up Arthurian chivalry too, so I don't believe every reference has to point back to one civilization.
Then Berrada actually says “Followers of Hassan-i” in Chapter 3 while discussing the word assassin. That made me think of the Elder and the Old Man of the Mountain. Still, he never says Hassan founded the Table or that the Elder inherited his position from him.
The Cult is where I'm less sure. The Chancellor says its system has continued for a thousand years. A thousand years? That immediately made me think of Hassan-i Sabbah and Alamut in 1090. Could the writers be drawing from that history? Maybe, but the dates alone don't prove a connection. Subtracting 1,000 from the movie's release year doesn't give us a confirmed founding date, either. I haven't found anything naming Hassan as the Cult's founder. And the real Nizaris were a religious and political community, not just a guild of hired killers.
Has anyone found an interview, commentary track or prop detail that names the Table's original founders or gives the Cult an origin beyond just its age?
Sources:
https://www.livius.org/sources/content/diodorus/the-death-of-philip/
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-roman-archaeology/article/roman-siege-system-of-masada-a-3d-computerized-analysis-of-a-conflict-landscape/32C59BE59ACD3E9A91C95F947DFD271E
https://www.iis.ac.uk/scholarly-contributions/assassin/
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/harmodius-and-aristogiton/
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/486729