Robert Langdon

In the series, Langdon is still a professor early in his career. He goes to Washington thinking his mentor, Peter Solomon, invited him to give a talk. At the Capitol, he finds Peter's severed hand. The kidnapper, Mal'akh, wants him to crack a Masonic secret hidden around the city.

Langdon works alongside Katherine Solomon, Peter's daughter and his ex, while Inoue Sato's CIA and officer Nuñez join the story. Peter is rescued midway through the season. In the end, Mal'akh turns out to be Zachary, Katherine's brother, and Langdon concludes that the whole quest was symbolic.

The series was built as a prequel to the films, with Ashley Zukerman in the role. It ends there: Peacock canceled it after the first season, so Zukerman's Langdon lives only in those ten episodes.

In Paris for a lecture, Langdon is called to the Louvre, where curator Jacques Saunière has been killed. Captain Fache treats him as a suspect. Cryptologist Sophie Neveu, Saunière's granddaughter, warns him and helps him escape.

The two pull a cryptex from a bank and seek out Leigh Teabing, who claims the Grail is Mary Magdalene. In London, Teabing is revealed as the Teacher behind the murder, and Langdon opens the cryptex with the word APPLE. At Rosslyn, he learns that Sophie descends from Jesus. In the end, he kneels above the Louvre's inverted pyramid, over Magdalene's tomb.

Along the way, Langdon cracks the anagram Saunière left beside his body, gets to the Mona Lisa and flees Paris on Teabing's private plane.

Because of the Priory of Sion case, the Vatican calls Langdon when four cardinals are kidnapped before the conclave and a sample of antimatter goes missing from CERN. With scientist Vittoria Vetra, he uses a Galileo book from the Secret Archives to follow the Path of Illumination through Rome's churches.

Three cardinals die, but Langdon pulls Cardinal Baggia out of the Piazza Navona fountain in time. After the blast in the sky, he and Vittoria find the footage proving that Camerlengo McKenna planned it all. Baggia becomes pope, and Langdon is lent Galileo's book, on the promise that he'll return it one day.

Mid-chase, Vittoria suspects the late Pope was poisoned with a drug overdose, and the two confirm it at his tomb.

Langdon wakes up in a Florence hospital with a head wound and visions of hell. Dr. Sienna Brooks helps him escape an assassin. In his pocket is a projector showing Botticelli's Map of Hell, left by billionaire Bertrand Zobrist, who built a virus.

The trail runs through Dante's death mask, which Langdon himself hid and can't remember hiding, and leads to Venice and Istanbul. There, Sienna betrays him, and Sims reveals that the amnesia was induced. In the Basilica Cistern, Elizabeth Sinskey's WHO team contains the virus. Langdon goes back to Florence and quietly returns the mask.

Along the way, he also realizes that Christophe Bouchard, who claims to work with Sinskey, wants the virus for himself.

In Dan Brown's books, Langdon leads six novels starting with Angels & Demons (2000), always wearing his Mickey Mouse watch. In the books, Angels & Demons comes before The Da Vinci Code. Netflix is making a series based on The Secret of Secrets, with Morgan Spector in the role.