As in the first game,Alan Wake 2makes the investigative part of the story a federal and local affair, pitting together FBI agents Saga Anderson and Alex Casey with Bright Falls sheriff Tim Breaker and his deputies Mulligan and Thornton. Breaker is a bit of a wild card character in the beginningand can potentially even be missed during the gameplay.

Something happens to Breaker pretty early on in the game, and his character becomes more developed through side areas rather than in the linear storyline. It’s a very significant story beat that shares connections to other Remedy games as part of the shared universe.

Updated on May 08, 2025, by Dennis Moiseyev:Remedy’s launch of the Night Springs DLC features an episode dedicated solely to Tim Breaker, well, some version of him. We’ll explain more of what we mean by that and what’s happening to him here in this updated version of the article.

Story spoilers for Alan Wake 2 below.

What Happens To Breaker At The End Of Return 1?

Sheriff Tim Breaker is the lead on the Robert Nightingale murder casein Bright Falls in a coordinated effort with FBI agents Saga Anderson and Alex Casey. When it comes to examining Nightingale’s body in the morgue, things quickly go awry.

Because the Cult of the Tree was interrupted in their ritual on Nightingale’s body, he transforms into a Taken and is set loose in the morgue. And as this all happens,Sheriff Tim Breaker mysteriously disappearsfrom the room.

In one of the major twists in the game,Sheriff Breaker has been transported to the Dark Place. From there, he’ll be present in Alan Wake’s chapters rather than Saga’s.

You can hear himhumming the Night Springs theme songas an indicator that he’s in a nearby room, ready to fill you in on his new finds on Mr. Door,though sometimes his locations can be more hidden.

Towards the end of the game, Saga reunites with Tim Breaker in the Dark Place, where it’s revealed thathe was sent there because he had a manuscript pagehe wanted to give to her at that moment back in the morgue.

The page reveals the secret area Mr. Door uses to travel in the Dark Place, and Breaker believes that Door doesn’t want Saga to read it.

In Initiation 7, Mr. Door himself gets annoyed with Alan because he’s pulled someone close to him into the story, suggesting further evidencethat Saga is important to Door and he’s trying to protect her.

However,since the ending doesn’t reveal the aftermath, it’s unclear if Alan and Saga’s attempt at changing the story and defeating Scratch helps restore reality,so you may assume Breaker is still confined to the Dark Place.

How Is What’s Happening To Tim Breaker Connected To Quantum Break?

In Remedy’s 2016Quantum Break,you play protagonist Jack Joyce, who developed time-altering powers after a time travel experiment at a university didn’t go to plan. His voice actor and character model was Shawn Ashmore,who is now portraying Sheriff Tim Breaker in Alan Wake 2.

It’s definitely no coincidence thatShawn Ashmore is now back in the Remedy Connected Universe.

While publishing rights for Quantum Break still belong to Xbox and Microsoft,Tim Breaker’s character is a creative way Remedy tries to form a connection to Quantum Break.

Tim Breaker sounds awfully close to ‘time breaker,‘a term best describing Jack Joyce in Quantum Break, who did break time through his failed experiment with Paul Serene.

Then, you havethe infamous blackboard in Quantum Breakthat features chalk scribblings of a spiral and Alan’s books Departure, Initiation, and Return,teasing connections to Alan Wake 2 since even then.

Furthermore, Tim explains to Alan that in his dreams, he travels. He becomes"a different person with a different name living a different life in a different world.“This heavily alludes that in one of those worlds, Tim Breaker could very well be Jack Joyce.

In another observation, Tim also suggests that there are"Others I know yet they are different? The red-headed woman?”

The red-headed woman Tim refers to is Jesse Faden,the protagonist from Control and now the director of the FBC, voiced by Courtney Hope. Before Jesse, Courtney Hope was previously the Quantum Break character Beth Wilder, a Monarch agent who crossed paths with Jack Joyce.

In Alan Wake’s world, it’sTim Breaker and Jesse Faden, but in Quantum Break’s world, it’sJack Joyce and Beth Wilder. This is perhaps the conclusion Tim is getting at in his whiteboard theories.

What’s Happening To Tim Breaker In Night Springs, Explained

The direction Remedy decided to go with the Night Springs DLCgives further credence to the multiverse elementthat Quantum Break, Control, and Alan Wake 2 have set up and offers the best explanation for Tim Breaker’s situation.

Remember in the previous section when we made the connection that Tim Breaker sounds like ‘Time Breaker?’ Well, theNight Springs episode is called Time Breaker, and it refers to the name of the video game that Sam Lake is creating in an alternate universe at the fictional game company Poison Pill Entertainment.

The game will star Shawn Ashmoreas Sheriff Tim Breaker, and he will bechased across multiple parallel realities by his nemesis, Warlin Door, the Master of Many Worlds, who’s killing all his multiversal variants.

Just as Sam Lake writes in the scene they’ll be filming next, Ashmore finds a dead version of Breaker in his dressing room andgets sent into the multiverse by Door, where he meets more of his dead selves murdered by Door.

What happens next is the Remedy multiverse of madness,giving you six levels of Ashmore as various versions– REC Agent Branch, Breaker, and himself –all pursuing Door through trippy game design.

The first isan alternate Cauldron Lake environment, followed bya black-and-white version of the Oceanview Hotel,a pixel art side-scroller shooterlevel,a text adventure dimension, and even a battle at the edge of the multiverse.

As Tim Breaker would have in the base game, the Cauldron Lake level also sees his alternate universe version using a whiteboard to record all his findings.

On it, you’ll noticehe encountered Dylan and Jesse Fadenand writes, “I hear their thoughts when they die.”

Breaker is meant to be a multiversal hero, and at one point in the episode, he enters a comic book dimension where you’re introduced to theRipple Effect Corporation (REC), which is essentially the Night Springs version of the FBC.

At the REC, Ashmore’s character meets another version of Jesse Faden who works as an REC agent, and she explains how the multiverse works. She says that the"real and not real exist side-by-side in the multiverse."

The next few panels reveal three versions of Breaker, three versions of Sam Lake, and one featuring Alan, Scratch, and Zane. The narration says,“Many versions of us all… linked by the energies that ripple through realities.”

This essentially further explains whatMr. Door’s purposeis as a character,the existence of the multiverseas being many doors to infinitely many worlds accessed via Lumivista TVs, andTim Breaker’s pivotal role in it all.

Since these episodes are all written by Alan Wake and serve as extra material that he writes from the Dark Place that doesn’t end up in the main book story,you may think of this as the alternate unreleased Tim Breaker and Door story that’s now playable.

Sam Lake also hints in a clever reference here that the previous game Poison Pill Entertainment developed was Quantum Break.

Is Sheriff Tim Breaker Connected To Sarah Breaker?

If you played the first Alan Wake game,you might remember a different Sheriff Breaker of Bright Falls. That would, of course, be Sarah Breaker. And, yes,she is related to Tim Breaker.

Tim Breaker and Sarah Breaker are cousins. He decided to succeed Sarah’s position after she left to join a federal agency.

Sarah made a similar move to her father,Frank Breaker, who was the former sheriff of Bright Falls before joining the Federal Bureau of Control.

It’s also revealed thatSarah was well aware of Mr. Doorand helped with the search after Tim’s police sketch pointed to a Bright Falls local named Warlin Door, who vanished in a lightning strike (presumably for taking Odin’s eye, according to a manuscript).

Knowing that Door was connected to Bright Falls led Tim Breaker to relocate there to continue his efforts.Little did he know he’d get closer to Door than he thought.

How Is Sheriff Breaker Connected To Control?

Some of Tim Breaker’s connections to Control were already drawn above. But the most important and most binding ones areMr. Door and his uncle Frank Breaker.

Tim Breaker’s first encounters with Mr. Door began to occur through dreams,a similar experience Jesse’s brother Dylan Faden had with Mr. Door in Control.

Dylan Faden shares that Mr. Door told him"that there are many worlds, side by side, on top of each other…"(like in the Night Springs DLC). He even went on to explain that in one world, there’s a writer who writes about a cop and another world where that cop exists.

What Dylan Faden was referencing here isAlan Wake and Alex Casey. In The Dark Place, Alex Casey is a fictional literary detective created by Alan, and in the real world, Casey is an FBI agent working with Saga Anderson.

Dylan and Jesse Faden are sibling parautilitarians, which explains why Mr. Door would be in their orbit. ButTim is not a confirmed parautilitarian(even though the Night Springs DLC may make it seem like he is), and yet, Door has still been haunting his dreams like Dylan.

This may have more to do withTim’s uncleworking for the FBC under Head of Investigations William Kirklund, who was overseeing the AWE in Bright Falls in 2010.

Frank was active in Bright Falls during the ‘70sand is implied to have investigated those past AWEs and could’ve undoubtedly crossed paths with Warlin Door.