Saw this on Facebook while trying to understand the ending:

“Just like a man can't kill his grandpa by travelling to past bcoz that'll contradict his existence... Similarly, tannahaus can't be successful in his experiment bcoz that'll contradict its own existence as the end result is always J nd M preventing the accident...
So, if the accident doesn't happen everything is normal...
But,if the accident happens it will eventually lead to prevention of the accident in the first place... So, no matter whatever we try the DESTINY is that no such accident ever happens in the first place...”

So basically it’s like your grandfather stopped you from ever traveling back in time to kill him?

What do you think about this, and if it you don’t agree, how did you understand the ending not being a paradox?

I just rewatched Dark. For some reason I strongly remember a scene from old times (1888 or older) where some workers are building the railroad at the entrance of the cave. Am I just misremembering or did I somehow miss it?",

I’ve seen mixed responses for why Noah couldn’t kill Adam. One side argues that he was nervous and jammed the gun and or that he has had no experience with a gun of that nature. The other side believes that fate, as said by Adam in that scene is the sole reason for the gun not firing.

Is this situation just like the Jonas scene when he tries to unalive himself with a gun but it doesn’t fire due to fate intervening due to his future self existing? (+ younger Noah interrupts)

Could it also be a little bit of both? As in, fate drove Noah to mishandle the gun?

I've been thinking about this since I finished the show and I'm curious if anyone has read it this way before.

What if there never was a repeating loop in the first place? At least not in the Groundhog Day sense. What if the characters just believe it repeats, but it actually only ever happened once?

Here's how I got there. Nobody in Dark ever experiences a classic reset in any sense. There's no moment where time jumps back and someone wakes up remembering the last round. Every character lives their life exactly once, from young to old. And when you look closely, everything they know about previous iterations comes from an older version of themselves. Old Eva tells her younger self what has to happen because it happened every time. But she only knows that because she once was young Martha and an old Eva told her the exact same thing. She tells her younger self what her younger self will one day tell herself. From the inside that feels exactly like repetition, but it doesn't have to be one.

Same with Claudia. She doesn't need countless cycles to find the way out. She remembers her older self promising that Regina will live if everything goes right, and from there she figures out there has to be a third option. That's the same kind of handing things down as with Eva. So she didn't figure it out "this time". She always figured it out.

The show kind of hints at this itself. S2E6 is literally called An Endless Cycle, and it opens with Adam asking if beginning and end are just different words for one and the same moment. A circle has no end, but it's still just one circle. Same with the ouroboros, it's one snake and not infinitely many in a row.

The obvious counter is that Claudia and Eva both talk about it happening countless times before. But I think the older ones just explain their world to themselves that way, because from where they stand it's the explanation that makes the most sense. As far as I can tell nobody in the show actually has proof that it repeats. It's basically the characters' own theory. And the characters in this show are wrong about how time works all the time. Jonas thought he could bring Mikkel back. Ulrich thought he could stop everything by killing Helge. Claudia tried to save Egon and caused his death. Adam spent his whole life believing the origin was Jonas and Martha's child and was completely wrong. So one more mistake, even a really fundamental one, doesn't seem that far fetched to me.

I see two weak spots myself. Claudia is the one character who actually gets it right in the end, so "they're often wrong" is hardest to apply to her. Though being right about the origin doesn't mean she's right about everything, and calling a circle endless is still true even if there's only one. The other one is that whenever characters are wrong in Dark, the show usually lets us know at some point. This one it never corrects. Then again, it never confirms it either.

If this holds, a few things fall into place. Nothing really changed in the end. Adam not killing Eva is just how it always went, and "supposed to" was only what the characters believed. And the two worlds never existed and always did at the same time, which honestly fits the whole show pretty well.

Has anyone read it like this before? Or is there a scene that actually shows an earlier iteration that I'm missing?

∆ a tribute video i made for the show ∆ ends with the darkest scene of god of war ∆ song ∆ bicep ∆ opal ∆ four tet ∆

I loved seasons 1 and 2. Great characters and great mystery. I enjoy time travel stories and Dark is the best time travel story I have ever encountered... That is until the very last scene of season 2, when it abruptly becomes a lazy sci-fi. Moreover, new characters from season 3 are less interesting and there is a lot of boring filler, like long takes of just Marta2 freaking out or characters having obscure discussions about their secret plans. In the first two seasons, every scene was giving me something to think about or it was emotional (or both), but large parts of season 3 you can just skip and lose nothing.

Some scenes of season 3 are still great, but I did not like the introduction of an alternative universe and the super pocket-sized time machine. I hate that it does not have the restriction of travelling back or forward in time of exactly 33 years, as that rule made all the epochs feel interconnected in a very interesting way. I quickly lost interest in the main plot.

I stopped watching when I had about 3 more episodes to go, because I completely stopped caring. That was about 6 months ago. I started thinking about Dark again today and I was wondering if I should at least read a summary of the ending?

These are the DNA percentages (in theory, I’m not a genealogist) (assuming my sleep-deprived brain did all the math right) for every character in the main part of the Knot.

(I left out Charlotte’s family tree loop for the sake of my own time, and also because I think it’s already been discussed before that Charlotte is 2/3 Noah, 1/3 Peter, and Elizabeth is 2/3 Peter, 1/3 Noah.)

I spent 11 hours working out math calculations for this damn family wreath tree in Sketchbook, so here you go.

I'm trying to put together an interpretation of the ending, and am stuck on some of the finer points on what rules this show operates on in regards to superpositioning of characters, i.e. when character split due the apocalypse loophope.

The schrodinger's cat thought experiment works well because the cat is entire sealed inside its box and does not effect the world outside the box. However in Dark, there is more explaining to do. The main question I ask myself for this is - when there's a superpositioning event, does that affect just the character(s) involved at that immediate moment, or does it essentially create a new parallel universe?

The latter option doesn't seem to work, because both branches are often needed for the timeline to function. For example, when Jonas splits the first time (basement | alt-world), one version goes on to become Adam, and the other goes on to sire Unknown. If either of those things were missing for a given reality at any point in the show, it would fall apart.

So that implies that the characters split, but continue to operate in the same universe from that point onwards. I can't figure out how to align that with schrodinger, as both Jonas's certainly go on to be observed and influence the world around them without resolving back into a single state. But I'm willing to give the show a little latitude on that and see where it takes us.

Martha killing Jonas is an interesting scene to keep in mind for this, as it includes a pre-split Martha, multiple post-split Marthas, and a post-split Jonas, all interacting together in the same physical space.

This mostly works, but there are a few scenes I can't seem to resolve into this model. One is the scene where Adam and Eva are together, and Adam is "supposed to" kill Eva for the loop to continue, but doesn't. I realize Adam has split again at this point, but (1) Eva has not and (2) they are in the same physical space where Adam would be killing Eva. This could be explained if there was a whole other version of the universe for this split timeline, but based on earlier points, that is ruled out. Another example is when Magnus and Franzisca are picking up Martha, and the final Jonas steals her away.

On possible explanation is that something really did change for the next (final) iteration of the loop, and those other outcomes are now NOT happening. That's not my interpretation of how the loop works though for many other reasons, so I'm hoping for an explanation that could be consistent without requiring a "change" like that.

I speak good enough German (my second language; English is my first) that I could understand 95% of the show, but that other 5% was pretty damn important for me to understand what was going on, so I threw on the English subtitles. They are really good. Typically, if I'm seeing/hearing English and German in juxtaposition, at least some of the translations will confuse my brain or downright annoy me, but that almost never happened while watching Dark.

There is, rightfully, a ton of praise on this subreddit for the casting, direction, acting, etc. (basically everything about the show) so I just wanted to point out that, for all my fellow English speakers, we were spoiled by these subtitles. Incredible work by Nathan Fritz.

Do you think Hannah somewhat cared for Katharina in a way? Yes I know she cheated with her husband, but I always found it interesting how she felt the need to tell Katharina about the time travel and what happened to her son, eventhough she had no benefit from that. And then in the 50s she gives the St Christopher necklace to her mum and looked quite emotional when talking to her. Or maybe she was horrified by the fact that a young girl had to get an abortion and giving the necklace was an act of kindness towards her.

Might be a dumb question, but has anyone ever compiled and/or identified the footage we see in the intro of each season? I'm aware they are taken from different episodes, but I'm curious as to what each individual footage shows: from my knowledge, I know there's one in the season 1 intro that shows Ines bandaging Mikkel's hand.

Sorry if this writing is a mess and im terrible at this stuff

Its still amazing as ever and very sad, one of the best tv shows ive ever seen, nothing can top it besides attack on titan, thats on the same level but its amazing, its perfect to me, nothing wrong with the show, the story and ending is perfect and this time i understood it more, last time i was very confused and i still am but not as much as last time, i understand it more and ive never seen a story like this, the time travel stuff is so cool, the acting and actors/actresses are amazing, the castings are perfect for the older and younger versions, ive never seen anything like it, i know jonas and martha are related but i love them together but this will be an exception from what happened and claudia is the mvp, amazing character everything is perfect, 10/10+

I watched the show 2 years ago, i kept delaying rewatching the show, idk why, i usually wait a year to rewatch shows to forget stuff and since its been 2 years i forgot so much about the show which im happy i did, before watching the show, i was going to watch a recap of it by man of recaps and halfway through the season 1 recap i thought it was awesome so i went to watch it and i didnt realise it was in german, so i contemplated not watching it the show but it had a english dub so i watched it in english but this time i watched the show in german and its so much better in german, i switched to english every once and a while and it sounded so weird and didn't sound right lol

This show is also close to my heart because it helped me discover im asexual, this may sound weird, before watching the show i was questioning if i was or not until martha came up with bangs, i thought she was the prettiest woman ive ever seen and i realised i never found her sexually attractive and that made me realise I never found any else sexually attractive and I became obsessed with bangs and that made me confident somehow, so yeah it has a very special place in my heart (i apologise if thats inappropriate)

I just cannot find a series with such historical complexity and great cast as dark. ANY RECOMENDATIONS are welcome.

Anyone reading this? I've done a cursory read and there's some good stuff here: my favorite chapter was probably the one about the costume design: it made me perceive the look and feel of the show in a new way. I also liked the chapter about "toxic nostalgia," and the one about what "heimat" means, and the chapter about auteur TV will be helpful in analyzing how the show succeeded on an industry level. There's a quite a bit of repetition of the basics, and I am not sure we need the names of the actors in parentheses all the time, but on the whole I'd say there's a lot to sink your teeth into here.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-18950-9

So I finally finished Dark yesterday evening and I'm still sorting my thoughts, so here goes. Sorry in advance, this got long.

First of all, Season 1 was honestly hard to get through for me. Not because of the story but because of the whole mood. Everything grey, everything raining, almost no color at all. Season 2 changed that quite a bit. Suddenly there were scenes with actual color in them, sometimes even independent of what was going on in the scene. Whether that was supposed to mean something or not, I don't know, but I really appreciated it.

What hooked me from the start was the time travel concept itself. I can't think of any other movie or show that follows the Novikov self consistency idea this stubbornly and actually sticks with it. One timeline. Everything that happens in 1986 always happens in 1986, all at the same time. The characters don't know about it and it's not even really the topic, but it's always there. That was by far the most fascinating part for me. And the Schopenhauer line, that you can do what you want but you can't want what you want, pretty much sums up the whole show.

That's exactly why the second world bugged me so much when it showed up. Around S3E5 I was pretty annoyed. Not because it was too complicated, I had no trouble following it. It reminded me of that thing where shows add some new gimmick in the final season just to squeeze out a bit more fascination. I kept thinking of The Man in the High Castle (I only know it roughly, never finished it), where the parallel world idea started out great and then they kind of got lost in it. It felt like Dark was throwing away the one thing that made it special to me.

Having seen the ending now, I have to take a lot of that back. I'm actually a fan of the two worlds now, because they actually knew what to do with it in the end.

What still bothers me is the exit itself. For most of the show everything is pure determinism, action follows reaction, no exceptions. And then at the very end there's a way out of the loop. I know the moment where time stands still during the apocalypse was technically always there and Eva used it the whole time to keep the knot alive. But we only learn about it in the very last episode, so it still feels a bit like they built themselves an emergency exit. Personally I would have found it more interesting if the resolution itself had been deterministic too. Like a loop within the loop, on a level so high none of the characters could ever guess it. Tease it, and then reveal at the end that nobody ever did anything on their own.

The way I ended up reading it is kind of like a gearbox. The origin world is the drive shaft. The two worlds are gears that turn a fixed number of times, every round slightly different, so knowledge can build up until someone finally understands the zero point, breaks out and moves the next tooth in the real world. Yes, that's not 100% Novikov anymore. But I like a concept that allows the exit from the beginning way more than one that needs a break to be resolved.

And Tannhaus's machine actually did exactly what he built it for. He wanted to save his son and his family, and in the end that's what happened. Through a ridiculously complicated chain of events, but it happened. And once its purpose was fulfilled, it erased itself.

Also the Tannhaus family thing, this one kept me up a bit. Season 3 shows that the lodge goes back to the Tannhaus family before 1888, and the show never goes further back than that. So that part of history was never touched by any travelers. If all three worlds share the same history up to the first interference (Napoleon, the war of 1870/71, all of it), then the lodge should exist in the origin world too. Which means H.G. Tannhaus in the origin world wasn't some random clockmaker who came up with a time machine out of nowhere. He comes from a family that was obsessed with time for generations, and as far as I understood it started with grief there too. The show never says this outright, but it fits so well that I'd almost bet the writers had it in mind.

Same reason I don't see the ending as absolute. The knot is untied, the loop is gone, the two worlds never existed and somehow always did. The origin world just goes on, linear again. But nothing in the show says some future Tannhaus or anyone else won't build a machine again at some point. There's no clear answer, more like a grey maybe. And the dinner scene kind of supports that. Hannah's dream, the déjà vu, the yellow raincoat, and then she says she thinks Jonas is a nice name. Something stays behind.

I still can't really put the ending into happy end or bad end. The people at that dinner table got their happy end. Jonas and Martha got nothing, not even being remembered. And if you look at the war against time purely by the goals, Adam actually won. Both worlds are gone, which is what he wanted, and Eva lost. Just not with his methods, since his whole plan was based on being wrong about the origin. Right now the character I find the saddest is Martha. But the show did a surprisingly good job at making sure nobody is really good/pure. Everyone has their tragedy, but everyone also has their dirt.

The scene where Jonas and Martha fade out with that cover of What a Wonderful World was beautiful. I just wished it was longer. When everyone dissolves, only the people disappear and the world around them just stays. We get like four people plus Jonas and Martha and that's it. We spent so much time with these places over three seasons, I would have loved to see the cave, the power plant or the spruce forest disappear too. All those trees dissolving into light could have been a really nice visual. Two entire worlds are gone and we only basically see a handful of people fade out.

And then Irgendwie, Irgendwo, Irgendwann over the credits. Both songs were perfect choices.

Still, it's probably the best time travel story I know. I can't think of a book or movie in this niche that's better written or better thought through. And yet I feel a bit strange about it. It's extremely confusing, and I think that's both necessity and intention, it plays with you on purpose. Great ending that closes everything, even if the way out of the Novikov idea feels like a bit of a back door depending on how you read it. But still very okay.

Hi everyone. I watched this masterpiece so much that it inspired me to make a song. I posted it on YouTube, so here’s the link if you want to give it a try:

https://youtu.be/n5lIkp4v-4c

From my perspective, it gives no spoilers. I kept it very vague. The overall vibe/sound feels DARK-ish more than the lyrics themselves, so I feel pretty confident in giving it the tag [NO SPOILERS], however, please correct me if I’m wrong, I sincerely wouldn’t want to ruin anyone’s experience in watching the series

Hi, gang! I'm going through Dark for the first time, and took a break for a few weeks toward the end of Season 2. Since I started back up yesterday, the show on the Netflix app no longer runs in Dolby Atmos. Atmos works with other shows on Netflix without issue, however Dark will only run in 5.1 despite still showing Atmos on the info page. I've checked this on two different setups in my house with the same results. Is anyone else having this issue?

I tried Netflix support but they were no help beyond showing me how to flag the issue using a web browser.

Ok so until this episode dark wasn't confusing at all but now I have some questions.

Future Jonas travelled back to 2019 before mikkel died in that same timeline/universe and basically kidnapped mikkel and then Mikel went to 1986 and whole that S1 shit but how tf doesn't Mikkel/Michael from 2019 or any years previously recognised jonas face as like " this the mf that kinda kidnapped me bro ".

I would say Egon. He was truly the best person but his life got messed up by all the time travelers. As Claudia said “you are too good of a person and the world doesn’t deserve you”

As we know, this show has A LOT of material. Anyone want to have a go at making some really good memes/gifs and circulate these across the inter-webs?!

Hey, i’ve watched dark a couple of times, but apparently i go brain afk too often. things like Charlotte being Elisabeths daughter and mom, or the unknown being Marthas and Jonas Child totally missed me.
I’m watching dark with my girlfriend, who watches it for the first time. she just asked me a good question.
We‘re currently in episode 5, a bit more than halfway through.
You can spoiler me, but if you do, try to give me the episode where this will happen so i can focus on it 😅

Why does Jonas travel to Marthas world, even tho the middleaged jonas never went there? Adam must‘ve went there, for their Child being conceived. so does every second jonas travel through worlds? But it has to be a new jonas, because in s1 and s2 they *are* the same person, just different ages. Everything Jonas lives through already happened to the older jonas.
Also, why are there 2 young Marthas?
Are these Questions gonna be answered, or are these all interpretation things?

Thank you

I designed my own family tree (for Adam’s World only).

Its pixel resolution is so big (15578 x 9689 because I made it in Freeform) that I think it’s messing with Reddit’s ability to properly display it, so I hosted it on Imgur as a backup. Here’s the link to the family wreath tree if Reddit won’t cooperate!

https://imgur.com/gallery/dark-2019-season-3-family-tree-aka-family-wreath-3JJSG6I