NBC’s Timeless Visits Joaquin Murrieta, Inspiration for Zorro.

In the Series Finale, the Time Team Meets the Gold Rush Bandit

The NBC show Timeless follows a group of time travelers who are desperately trying to stop a shadowy organization named Rittenhouse from changing history for the worse. In the series finale the Time Team visits the Old West, and there they encounter the Gold Rush Bandit known as Joaquin Murrieta.

Recently, a community of Timeless fans (#SaveTimeless) reached out to me to answer some historical questions that the show brought up. They asked about Joaquin Murrieta and the elements of his story that relate to the inspiration of Zorro. Here are the questions, and my answers, which were posted to Twitter.

-1. We saw a bit about Zorro in Timeless special, but how did it expand into the story/movie we know today? How much truth is in the myth?

Zorro, which means “fox” in Spanish, is a fictional character first created in 1919 by a pulp writer named Johnston McCulley (1883–1958). McCulley published the first Zorro novel in serial form in the All-Story Weekly magazine. Since that time, Zorro has appeared in dozens of novels, short stories, major motion pictures, a Disney TV series, cartoons, and comics. He’s become an iconic character. His black costume, hat, and duel identity — by day, the foppish Don Diego…