The series begins in 2019 with Michael Kahnwald,
father of Jonas, husband of Hannah hanging himself and leaving behind a note
saying 'not to be opened until 4 November at 10:13pm'.
Cut to November 4, when we learn that a red-haired boy called Erik
Obendorf has been missing for two weeks and the case is assigned to police
officer Ulrich – the case is very personal to him because his teenage brother
went missing in Winden 33 years ago and has never been found.
On the 4th, Ulrich's son Mikkel goes missing in the woods near the
caves, then the next day a dead kid turns up in the woods wearing '80s togs and
a nickel with '1986' on it round his neck. He's carrying a Walkman and he has
severe burns around his eyes and his eardrums are completely burst.
Teenager Jonas was with Mikkel on the night of his disappearance
and resolves to try to find him.
The next morning we see Mikkel emerge from the cave in the woods
where he went missing. Only when he gets back into the town he realises it's
not 2019, in fact it's 1986.
That's the basic setup of a show focused on time-travel between
three eras: 1953, 1986 and 2019. The action is entirely set around Winden and
is focused on four families – the Kahnwalds, the Nielsens, the Dopplers and the
Tiedmanns, who have lived in the town for generations (which is convenient
since characters regularly encounter younger versions of themselves and their
relatives when they time-travel via the cave).
Unsurprisingly, it gets complicated. Here's what we think is going
on.
Time Travel
·
This centres around an underground cellar where Noah (more on him
later) has built a machine which opens wormholes in 33-year increments (it's 33
years because of a theory that because a year isn't actually exactly 365 days
it's only every 33 years where things are completely aligned and 'reset' –
apparently).
The missing kids are being used to test the time machine, which
currently doesn't work properly and just kills them and dumps them back in the
cellar in another era. At the same time it opens a wormhole in the caves so
Helge (more on him later too) can go through, find the bodies and move them out
of the cellar to be found. The boy found in episode one is Mads, brother of
Ulrich, who went missing as a teenager in 1986 and turns up in 2019.
The Stranger
·
We learn that the stranger is in fact Jonas Kahnwald as an adult.
The Stranger is a time-traveller who wants to destroy the time loop and plans
to do this with the help of a machine built by clockmaker and time-travel
expert Tannhaus. Noah claims that it's The Stranger's attempt to close the loop
that actually created it in the first place.
Noah
·
Noah is a murderous time-travelling priest, and he's at war with
Claudia (more later) to control time travel.
At the end of season one Noah's origins are still unclear, though
there are clues. While most of the other characters we meet at different ages,
we only ever see Noah as a middle-aged man – or at least we think so. His
priest's get-up is a massive advantage since his clothing doesn't tie him to
one era in particular.
·
There's an implication that Noah could be the estranged husband of
Agnes Nielsen and the father of Tronte – Tronte has cigar burns on his arms
which seem to have been inflicted by his father. His mother Agnes says she was
married to a priest.
In 1953, the farmer who has had 33 of his sheep turn up dead one
day also says: "There's a new priest at the church". Agnes and Tronte
are new in town (and rent a room from Claudia's mother).
Claudia
Claudia is an expert time-traveller – and at war with Noah to
control time travel.
In 1986, Claudia is the head of the nuclear power plant that's at
the centre of Winden. She learns that there's been a radioactive leak over the
summer. Barrels of nuclear waste are stored in the caves – these chemicals are
stolen by The Stranger and power the device made by Tannhaus which he uses to
destroy/create the time loop.
·
Claudia's dog goes missing in 1953 through the caves and turns up
again in 1986 where Claudia finds her. Claudia is aware of time travel (and in
1986 is given Tannhaus' book A Journey Through Time by Helge)
and seems to be the main opposition to Noah. Or is she? We're really not clear
if she's a goodie or a baddie by the end.
It's Claudia who gives the blueprints of the device to Tannhaus
and convinces The Stranger to fix it so that he can destroy the time loop. Noah
says she lied to The Stranger – but it's not like he's terribly trustworthy
anyway. There is a sense that the two sides we might follow in season two are
Helge and Noah vs Jonas (The Stranger) and Claudia.
Helge
Helge is the father of Peter and the father-in-law of Charlotte.
He's also the owner of the time-travel cellar (in 2019 and 1986 certainly).
Helge is a pawn of Noah, and works with him to abduct and then later cover up
the killings of the children.
Helge's time line is super complicated....
·
Helge is a child in 1953. Ulrich from 2019 goes back in time and
meets the young Helge and tries to kill him by hitting him in the head with a
rock and dumping him in the time-travel cellar. But Helge isn't dead. When
adult Jonas sets off the machine built by clockmaker and time-travel expert
Tannhaus (as ever, more on him later) with the intention of closing the
wormhole, instead it creates it, linking teenage Jonas and child-Helge who are
both in the time-travel cellar – Helge in 1953, Jonas in 1986.
They reach out for each other and in doing so, Jonas is catapulted
into the future (presumably 2052). It's not clear exactly what happens to Helge
at this point, but we'd imagine this is the point at which Noah would have gone
to recruit him – this is borne out by Helge's son Peter, who says his father
was kidnapped as a child in 1953.
·
Meanwhile in 2019, we also learn from Peter that Helge had an
accident in November 1986. Old Helge in 2019 has dementia, but begins to have
several attacks of conscience (partly brought on by Ulrich's realisation that
Helge was responsible for the killings). Old Helge claims he can fix things and
change the past and the future, and he leaves the care facility where he lives
to go back in time to 1986.
There, he attempts to talk middle-aged Helge out of working with
Noah. But middle-aged Helge won't listen to his older self and instead goes
back to Noah, prompting Old Helge to try to kill him in a car crash.
Old Helge only succeeds in killing his older self and injuring
middle-aged Helge, who consequently misses the scheduled interview he was
supposed to have with the police. An interview which might possibly have led
the police to realise he was involved in the child disappearances and could
have stopped the whole thing...
Causality
Throughout Dark there are paradoxes, such as the
above, where someone time-travelling actually ends up being the cause of the
thing they'd travelled back in time to prevent.
The Stranger creates the time loop by trying to destroy it. He's
only able to do so with the machine built by Tannhaus, but Tannhaus only knows
how to complete his machine because The Stranger brings him a completed (but
broken) version back from the future.
·
Noah has a book which seems to chart all of the events before
they've even happened (certainly up to 2019) which implies he might be from a
future further on – possibly 2052 – or just an expert time-traveller who has
studied the events of the different eras. This also implies that there's an
element of the idea of Fate here – that everything was always going to be
exactly as it is and it's impossible to change the past or the future.
Peter
·
Peter is Helge's son and the husband of Charlotte who's a
policewoman working with Ulrich. Peter is gay and occasionally visits a
transvestite male prostitute. He's roped into the time-travel thing in 2019
when he's in the cellar (which belongs to Helge) doing the 'Serenity Prayer' on
the night of Mikkel's disappearance when the body of Mads (Ulrich's brother who
disappeared in 1986) suddenly drops through the ceiling.
He calls Tronte (Mads' father) who turns up with Claudia, who says
they must take the body to where it will be found. It's likely therefore that
he is clued-in to the time-travel thing.
Mikkel and Jonas
·
Mikkel is revealed to be Jonas' father – aka Michael (who kills
himself in the prologue and leaves the note with instructions not to read it
until Mikkel has already travelled back in time). Mikkel travels back to 1986
and is unable to get back to his own time. Dejected and on his own, he's
eventually taken to hospital where he meets nurse Ines.
They form a bond and when it's time for him to be discharged, Ines
takes Mikkel in instead. Mikkel tells Ines he's from the future, though she
doesn't necessarily believe him initially. Later though, she realises (because
Mikkel is born and grows up in Winden to become the boy she first met, before
he disappears) but doesn't try to prevent his disappearing again.
Martha, Mikkel's sister and Jonas' love interest, is in fact
Jonas' aunt – which he realises and therefore rejects her.
Bartosz
·
He was a friend of Jonas in 2019 but because he finds out that
Jonas got together with Martha (before he knew she was his aunt) even though
she was Bartosz's girlfriend, he turns against Jonas.
Bartosz is contacted by Noah who makes various predictions about
things that will happen via his special book – all of which he gets correct –
and manages to convince Bartosz to trust him. Bartosz is therefore likely to
join TEAM NOAH. Claudia is actually Bartosz' grandmother – however, his parents
told him she was dead so they're very much estranged. Some people on Reddit reckon that Noah might actually BE Bartosz. We're
not sure, but it's plausible.
Aleksander and Regina
·
Aleksander is a young man who helps out young Regina (Claudia's
daughter) in 1986. Regina asks her mother if she'll give Aleks a job at the
power plant and Claudia eventually does, though it's a top secret job in the
cave.
Aleks has actually assumed the identity of another man. His real
name is Boris Niewman – we see him burying two passports (his own and that of
the real Aleksandr Köhler) along with a gun, in the forest. Young Hannah sees
him do this in 1986. In 2019, she uses this information to blackmail him so
he'll "ruin Ulrich's life" after Ulrich ends their affair.
The future
·
At the end of the finale, Jonas is in some sort of dystopian
future. He finds himself in a cabin with pictures of past, present and future
version of the townsfolk pinned to the wall with articles and links joining
them. As he ventures outside, he is hit in the head with the butt of a gun.
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