Katarina Jones

Katarina Jones is a scientist specializing in temporal research, and the leader of Project Splinter. She was born as Katarina Werner in Dresden, Germany. Her former husband was Elliot Jones, creator of the time machine. Together, the two have a daughter, Hannah, whose death during the plague set Jones off on her mission to reset time.

Early Life
Katarina Werner was born in Dresden, Germany. Throughout her young adult years, she studied medicine, but realized she had no interest in pursuing the field. She moved to America and began work in quantum splintering. At some point, she met and fell in love with Elliot Jones. Their love affair did not last long however; they were married for six days. Following their separation, Katarina was pregnant with their daughter, a pregnancy that she intended to terminate.

Katarina ultimately kept the child, but Hannah died at the height of the plague in the Spearhead facility. Initially, Hannah died circa 2017. After the timeline change in 2016, these events are pushed back to 2020.

Season 1
Shortly after her divorce, Katarina meets with her father in a restaurant. He urges her to return to Germany and pursue medicine again, something Jones is adamantly against. She believes her studies are best spent trying to slow down time on the molecular level, rather than curing bodies that were designed to die. Later that night, Jones is held at gunpoint by Cassandra Railly, who explains that she needs her help. Jones is taken to see James Cole, who is dying, and claims to know her from the future. Jones agrees to help save Coles's life after Cassie shows her copies of her research which had not yet been published. Together, they track down the younger version of James, and cure the older Cole by way of a blood transfusion from his younger self. After Cole is cured, Katarina decides to keep her baby. She bids farewell to the duo, refusing to learn any more about her own future.

Katarina soon gives birth to Hannah. Soon after, the plague breaks out and Hannah dies. Meanwhile, Jones joins Spearhead. After Colonel Foster's coup, Jones leaves in pursuit of the temporal facility. Her new goal: complete her husband's work and travel back in time to stop the plague from ever happening, saving her daughter. Over a period of time, she sends an unknown number of people back in time, but they do not survive.

During her research of the plague, Jones comes across an audio recording from Cassandra Railly recorded in 2017. In it, she seemingly mentions that the plague starts with a man named Leland Frost and begs Cole for help.

In 2041, Jones' men capture James Cole and José Ramse when they attack a group of her subordinates. Jones recognizes Cole's name from the message Cassandra Railly left in 2017, as well as his face from her experience in 2015, and recruits Cole for Project Splinter, claiming it to be his destiny.

By 2043, Jones sends Cole on his first trip through time, with the goal of finding and killing Leland Frost. Their work proves to be more complex than initially expected, resulting in Cole undergoing multiple more jumps than initially anticipated as the conspiracy deepens.

Soon, the machine's core begins to deplete. Jones travels to Spearhead with the hopes that she will be able to obtain their duplicate core. Foster is less than cooperative, turning Jones away. Jones, however, does not believe in Spearhead's mission to cure the disease, favoring instead using time travel to stop the virus from ever happening at all. She is even unsatisfied with Spearhead's cure of the 2033 mutation, mainly because while this will allow humanity to rebuild, it won't bring back her daughter. She instead lies to her team, burns the evidence of the cure, and massacres Spearhead, seizing the new core.

The mission continues until the facility is invaded by the Messengers, with the help of Deacon and the West VII.

Season 2
As Jones's control of the Temporal Facility weakens, she fears that the Messengers will mess with time in ways she can not foresee. She injects herself with the time travel serum, untethering her from time, and allowing herself to see any changes to the timeline caused by the Army of the 12 Monkeys. After the facility is reclaimed, with the aid of Cassie and Deacon, Jones goes to work on repairing the machine, a process that takes eight months. In the meantime, she and Cassie continue their research. They pinpoint the release of the virus to the Chinese New Year in 2016 after finding a police report citing an insane woman claiming to have a virus. Jones sends Cassie back to 2016 to kill Jennifer.

Jones continues forward with her mission after learning that Cole has turned his back on them. She allows Ramse to be tortured by Deacon and entrusts Cassie with carrying forward in the quest to destroy the virus. Soon, she is visited by the elderly Jennifer Goines. Jennifer delivers the coordinates of where to find Cole in 2016, and Jones sends Cassie to retrieve him.

Jones is visited by Jennifer again, who teaches her more about time. Jennifer's lesson helps Katarina understand the true purpose of the Messengers: that they want to collapse the very fabric of time.

After the facility is invaded by The Witness and several of Jones's former test subjects reappear within its halls, Jones comes to the conclusion that everything that has happened is her fault. She instructs Cassie to go back in time to 2020 and kill her before she can ever invent time travel.

Cassie and Cole return from 2020, they reveal to Jones that their plan failed. No matter how many times Cassie tries to kill the younger Jones, the day would just reset. Cole explains that they had to "do something, but nothing." They take Jones into the woods to meet the Daughters. They explain that Hannah initially died from bacterial meningitis and that she was actually immune to the virus. Instead, they faked her death, resuscitated her, and turned her over to the Daughters. Jones had to believe her daughter had died in order to create time travel, so she could never know until now. Jones is reunited with her long lost daughter about over two decades.

As the red storms begin to gather, Jones and Cole begin to clash with the others about the next course of action. Jones believes that they need to stop the final paradox in 1957, while Cassie and Ramse adamantly believe they should find and kill The Witness at Titan. Ultimately, Jones sends Cole, and Cassie, who has a change of heart, back to 1957 to try and stop the final paradox. Ramse, Hannah, Deacon, and others, leave the facility to brave the red storms and find Titan. Jones stays behind in the facility, just as the red storms engulf it, destroying the entire facility and killing her.

As a result of Cole changing the timeline and stopping the final paradox, the red storms recede, undoing the destruction of the facility and Jones's death. She must, however, wait eleven months for Cassie and Cole's real time tethers to catch up. She spends the year without any other human company, but does adopt a stray dog. When Cole and Cassie return, they also come with new information: the entire team in search of Titan is headed for a trap. Jones programs the machine to the coordinates for Titan and the three splinter off to save their friends. Cassie is kidnapped by the Army of the 12 Monkeys during their rescue mission. Upon returning to the facility, Jones tracks Titan's temporal signature. She discovers that the city, and Cassie, are in 2163. She readies the machine and sends Cole off to save her.

Season 3
During season three, after months of searching, she sends Cole to find Cassandra, in 2163 on Titan. Later, she finds Jennifer who had been stranded in the 1920's, when she enacted a one man show at a Paris Theater. Jones goes with Cole to rescue her from one of the Horsemen. When Ramse brings Olivia to the temporal facility, Jones imprisons her in a dungeon similar to the one that Olivia had grown up in. After breaking her, Olivia gives Jones and the team how to find the Witness. Jones then assigns Cole and Ramses and sends them to 2007 to kill the witness.

In effort to obtain the word of the witness, Jones later agrees to send Jennifer back to 1989, while posing as her own mother at an auction so that Cole and Cassie can get access to the Word and make a copy. Later, she learns how to disrupt the personal time machines and prevent the horsemen from changing the timeline and killing various Primaries. Eventually, Jones discovers in 2046 that the Witness is Athan Cole and Cassie's son. In effort to prevent Cole's son from preventing destroying the world, she imprisons cassie, then goes to 1953 to kill or capture Athan.

Season 4
In 2046 Cassie Revives a dying Jones, and later Deacon delays Titans forces allowing the team to escape from 2046 by splintering the whole facility away. Together, Cole, Cassie, and Jones infiltrate their own faculity in 2046, making sure not to interfere with their own timelines. She then interacts with her past self, then uses the 2043 machine to send Cassie to 1971 to kill a young Olivia. Eventually, she sends her daughter back in time to 2007 with a letter to be opened in 2009. Eventually, Jennifer in a fit of near insanity, discovers that her writing is in fact the location of all their splinters, and that all the primaries programs, could be used to erase Cole from time, which would correct everything, as he created time travel.

During a massive battle between Jone's Group, and the 12 Monkeys, they eventually prevent Olivia from using titan to destroy time, in which Olivia turns full circle, becoming the body in which the virus originated. During the time of sending everyone back to their timelines, she finishes her work, but during her last conversation with Cole, she dies of radiation poisoning, a result of the machine.

When Cole is erased, Jone's new timeline see's her living happily with her daughter, presumably back with her family, that she never had.

Trivia

 * She was 37 years old when, in her own words, 'the world died' in 2017. This would make her year of birth about 1979 or 1980, depending on if she had a birthday or not at that time.

Behind the Scenes

 * Series co-creator Terry Matalas explained via Twitter how Katarina keeps getting a supply of cigarettes, even 30 years after the plague apocalypse, long after any stockpiles would have run out: she grows her own tobacco, and hand-rolls them into homemade cigarettes. There was a deleted scene that explains this.
 * Matalas also confirmed that Katarina's stray comment that she solved her final time-travel issue in a whiskey-induced "hallucination" wasn't an idle comment. Apparently, it was some other time travel event influencing her, and we'll see it later.