Half Asleep, a child no more than 4, sits nestled in her mother’s arms looking at the remnants of a toaster that wrecked havoc on their home not a mere 20 minutes before. The mother looks towards the father with signs evident in her eyes of relief and inner giddiness. It was because of them of course that the toaster lay motionless with a tremendous amount of smoke bellowing out of it. The daughter could feel the warmth between them all. One full of love and happiness. Of goals and a wonderful future ahead. She hoped this lasted forever. She felt the world around was safe. This was the life that a young Sydney Bristow knew. One that would be as short-lived, as distant, a memory mixed in with a web of lies and deceit.

Her world began in the brisk West Virginian air of April 17th, 1975. A young daughter to an English professor and a salesman, Laura and Jack Bristow. When she was still learning the ropes of this incredibly new world, at the tender age of 2, her family packed up and moved to the West Coast. Her father had been transferred to Los Angeles. This was a place bustling with as much unique culture as there were people. This is where Sydney would grow up and prosper.

She was a very vibrant young child; one that would quickly become involved with as many things as she could manage. She played the piano, she acted in school plays, she danced, and she began a love in books that she would eventually take with her into adulthood. Then when she least expected it, the year 1981, her young little world shattered around her, leaving a giant cap of memories that she would cling onto. Her mother had died. It had been a car crash. A crash caused by a car chase with someone pursuing her. Sydney didn’t understand for a long while what had happened, other than her mother, her biggest supporter in her entire world had vanished.

Left with pictures, small little memories, her mother’s books, and a broken heart, Sydney’s entire world began to change. First, a father already known for being absent, left her in the care of a nanny more times than not. Going on trips that would last upon weeks, months, or even close to a year. When he was there, he was distant, would give her small things to work on, she would rarely see him. Rarely feeling the love that she had once felt from him. She dedicated her world to school and knowledge. She found school to be intoxicating. She loved learning, of experiencing things, of knowing the world around her. She would study the arts, study the world, and study languages, a skill she unquestionably had a knack for. She was undoubtedly smart, a genius in some respect, that would be self-reliant, self-sufficient, through all of her teen years. She graduated highly in her class and focused her attention to college.

This is where she would meet Francie Calfo. Her roommate her first year at UCLA, she would soon become Sydney’s reliable ally. Her friend, when she needed her the most. Her family, when she desperately needed one. As she got her social and personal situations worked out, it was no longer necessary to figure out why her father never saw the need to raise her, she had moved on from her turbulent childhood. She excelled in everything, gaining knowledge in areas that she never knew she could succeed in. With her knack for learning languages, she began speaking them easily. Confident by each one she would master. She would be equally skillful in history, in math, and every other subject that she tried. It was there, in her years at UCLA that she would begin to encompass on the path that would guide her to the career she was destined for.

In 1994, while studying she was approached by a man. A man that said he worked for the government. They were interested in recruiting her in their program, they said she fit a profile. She thought about it for a small while and decided to join. She wanted something more for her life, some excitement, and a challenge that she yet had a chance to endure. The place where she began her work would be SD-6. A place that she thought to be a black-ops division of the CIA. Run by a man named Arvin Sloane. She would soon be working for the front company, Credit Daulphine, doing paper work and odd jobs for 6 months. After she cleared all their background tests and clearances she was allowed to advance. She clearly advanced quicker than most. Soon she was being sent out on missions, field ops, for the agency. She loved it. It gave her life substance and meaning, that she was saving the world, and helping her country out.

While she began living the world of college student and SD-6 spy, she could tell no one of her other job. She was supposed to be “working at a bank”. So she kept her studies up, majoring in an a subject she was quite fond of, English Literature, and still receiving missions that would send her places, covered of course to be a job for the bank that needed done. During this time she started to fall for a fellow agent name Noah Hicks. A crush at first, he became something more, and soon they were inseparable. She was with him for just a short time; before the business took him elsewhere but it was a learning experience all around and she would soon meet a person she would want to spend the rest of her life with.

First as she was on her way to graduating from UCLA, she met a student named Will Tippin. A journalist major, who would begin working for the Times. They were very good friends. He became one that she could rely on as well.An inquisitive mind that liked her, for just being herself. Francie, Will, and Syd were this small, little family all moving into
this crazy real world together. When Syd soon landed in Graduate School at UCLA, she wanting to get a MA (Masters of Arts) in English Literature, she met a med student who would become her world, instant family. His name was Daniel Hecht. She had a fantastic relationship with him. One filled with “cupcake” dates and sweet sincerity. The only secret that Sydney kept from him was that she worked as an agent for what she thought to be the CIA. It was the one thing that could possibly sever their relationship and worse, kill them both. So she never told him, until, he asked her to marry him. With that question, she knew, no more secrets, no more lies. The only problem, one she would soon find out, is that the emotional undertaking of such truth would soon find Danny Hecht lying in a bathtub, dead.

Her life that seemed to get less normal by the second, suddenly turned upside down. What she thought she knew, she had no truth of. Everything was a lie. She found out
SD-6 was not CIA, but was actually working against America, against the CIA. Her father, not a salesman, but an actual spy himself. Working to bring down SD-6 just as badly as she now wanted to. She found out that her father would go on missions when she was young. Long, deep cover missions. She also later discovered that she was programmed as a Project Christmas subject that made her easily accessible into becoming a spy. From what she learned, to how easily it was to encompass new skills. She found out that her mother was being chased for a reason, chased because she was running from the government. A KGB agent sent to infiltrate the CIA and to gain info on a Project being worked on, the same Project that Jack, her father, used on his own daughter.

She became engrossed in her work. Spending every waking moment wanting to exact revenge on the person that killed her fiancé. Soon she walked into the REAL CIA and got into contact with a junior agent Michael Vaughn. A person known as a handler. He would set up counter-missions for the CIA that could steal information that SD-6 gained. This situation worked out for 2 years. Her father and her gaining information vital in the takedown of SD-6 and its other groups known as “The Alliance”. For every passing mission Sydney and Vaughn got closer. The chemistry undeniable. But they lived in a world that would not allow them to be together. So they trekked on, taking SD-6 information out one by one. Sydney soon relieved how deeply involved Will Tippin as well was involved in all of this. He had been investigating Danny’s murder, what he found was the conspiracy. He had in turn also found out that Sydney herself was a spy. Which added to the level of danger. She found out her mother was alive, and soon was in CIA custody. Yet another obstacle for Sydney to deal with. In a last ditch effort to find info to take the SD-6 cell down; she was guided to a server that would in turn give out all locations of “The Alliance” groups. Soon the CIA was in all the headquarters of the groups, including the one that Sydney had worked in for 8 years of her life.

She had gained the respect of the CIA, she had spent 2 years fighting for them, and she soon held a full position with the agency, alongside her handler and new boyfriend, Vaughn. They were the world to each other. Everyone knew it. Some would even pose the question that they were meant to be together. Then that world for Sydney changed again.

In bringing down SD-6, she had taken down Sloane, who had more on his agenda than some would suspect.Obsessed with the world of a 17th century monk and his works, Rambaldi, he had known that Rambaldi had predicted a “Chosen One”. A person that looked incredibly like Sydney herself. He killed Sydney’s friend, Francie, replacing her old friend with a person who looked identical, a clone. There trying to gain access into Sydney’s world again. This Francie soon tried to kill Will, and tried to kill Sydney, but in turn was shot herself, after having a knock out fight with Sydney. One that would leave a knocked out Sydney to be kidnapped by an organization.

So yet again the world of Sydney changed, she would be positioned to take on another identity, Julia Thorne, and work for the very organization that took her away from her old world, The Covenant. Two years it took, two years to find a way to get out of that place, but by then the love of her life, Michael Vaughn was married. She tried to regain everything she lost, her memories of those two years, all erased. She soon found that it she had a sister, from her mother’s affair with another man, a person very well known to her, Sloane. Dealing with the repercussions she tracked down her new family only to find out that there was a prophecy that involved her as well.

After everything was said and done, Sydney and Vaughn were finally looking to make their life together permanent. Engaged and happy, Sydney and Vaughn traveled to Santa Barbara on vacation, but their world got turned upside-down again. Vaughn exposed that he wasn’t who she thought he was. He was once named Andre Michaux. Then someone sideswiped their car, leaving Sydney unconscious and Vaughn being taken away by a group named “Prophet Five”. Stunned and shocked by the revelation, Sydney tracks down Vaughn and they work together to uncover why people are after him. With everything going on, it seems only fitting that Sydney gets a call from her doctor, saying that she is pregnant with her and Vaughn’s first child. Not yet safe, Sydney and Vaughn tracks down one of his father’s friends, who knows who “Prophet Five” is. Before he gets an answer Vaughn is gunned down. With a child on the way, and without her love by her side, Sydney fights to find out who wanted Vaughn dead, along with the prospect that she can’t be the person that she has been for years. They track down someone involved with “Prophet Five”, a girl much like Sydney herself was; who doesn’t know that she was working for a group that’s full intent was to attack America and its government. Her name is Rachel Gibson. Sydney takes her under her wing, training her to think like she does, act like she does, become different characters just like she had done for so many years. In a sense she took on the role of handler to the young agent, even more so as her pregnancy went along. For the next 7-8 months, the news on Prophet Five was stagnant, until Sydney herself is kidnapped. From there we find out that her mother has a part in the group that gunned down Vaughn and in turn was the one that kidnapped Sydney, of course Jack and Sydney didn‘t know this until later on. Within a few days of that experience, promptly saved by her father and Dixon, Sydney gives birth to a baby daughter, Isabelle, while on a mission with her parents, for “The Horizon“, yet another artifact of Rambaldi. Her mother showed her true colors on the mission and Sydney was forced to live with the reality that her mother was never going to be the woman she wanted her to be. She wasn’t going to make that same mistake. Within the next few weeks after the birth, Sydney finds herself saving her best friend, Will Tippin, from a bomb implanted in his brain, and saving the world from Anna Espinosa, who is transformed into the exact replica of Sydney herself, and Vaughn finally comes back into the mix when Anna flushes where he was hiding out while healing from the gunshots that caused him to be dead to the world for Sydney‘s entire pregnancy. With Sloane then curing Nadia of her coma-tose state,, you would think that Sydney is finally able to be happy. However, Sloane then re-emerges into power with the help of Prophet Five and the group of high government officials secretly located in all of the world’s top agencies. Nadia is then killed by Sloane and Sloane goes on an all out barrage of Rambaldi, to finally realize Rambaldi’s words. Sydney, Jack, and Vaughn rush to stop Sloane’s madness, which will only end in tragedy as her father, Jack is shot by him. Sydney shoots Sloane, who then falls in some goo Rambaldi’s grave is covered with. Even worse, Sloane was working with her mother and Irina finally had everything set up to bring the United States and its government down. Sydney has to leave her father behind and stop her mother before its too late. As she runs off, Jack makes sure Sloane will never hurt his daughter again, and sacrifices himself to stop an all powerful, invincible Sloane. Sydney, not knowing her father’s fate, faces her mother in an all out, beat out, fight and she comes to the realization that her mother will always love Rambaldi and its mystery more. Irina would sacrifice her life for Rambaldi and his work, something that Sydney could not even stop from happening. Within the next minute, Irina is dead, flying through a glass ceiling while reaching for the key to Rambaldi’s messed up world, and crashing onto the cement below. The world Sydney has dealt with for 7 years is over. Sydney and Vaughn move away from the mess that consumed their life for so long. Raising their daughter on a far off beach somewhere, happy and in peace. Still partially keeping in contact with the agency, now ran by Sydney’s old partner and friend, Marcus Dixon, Sydney has full control of her work. With only a few jobs here and there, Sydney and Vaughn have time to have another child, this time a son, named appropriately enough, Jack. In a world of death and lies, there was just one who saw through it all, and persevered in the depths of incredible odds. A woman who was loyal to herself and her beliefs as the world around her always changed for the worst. She put others before her, keeping her family and friends as safe as she possibly could, and in the end she survived. She is Sydney Bristow. A daughter. A friend. A wife. A mother. A spy. A legend that will live for many years to come.