Dark: Netflix's Time-Bending German Mystery Series {Spoilers from page 5}

[SpaceChampion]

On 6/14/2020 at 10:49 AM, Leofric said:

as at a minimum it would have erased Charlotte, Elizabeth and Franziska as well.

I suspect we're going to see that all four families have a few more connections since Hanna went back to the past, and Bartoz, Franciska and Magus did too, and undoing it all would probably wipe out all of them.

 

[SpaceChampion]

Gotta say, Ulrich's fate is the most tragic -- he's both an attempted murderer and a victim, getting locked up in a mental institution for 34+ years, and losing his whole family to the loop.

On some level old Egon must have recognized young Ulrich and that's why he was always suspicious of him, though he didn't know the older Ulrich's name.

[dog-days]

Egon's one of my favourite characters - both his actors are so good, and so well-cast. The episode in S2 when Claudia lets him die inter-cut with scenes of her father as a young man was amazing. 

[briantw]

Finishing up my re-watch of this and it occurred to me that it was a real dick move by Peter to literally not text anyone else except his daughter to warn them of the coming apocalypse and invite them into the bunker.  

[DaveSumm]

Way too many spoilers floating around for my liking, just totally ruined something for myself. Not gonna go on r/Dark till I’ve seen the third season now. To be fair, it was spoiler tagged (but not in a post marked spoilers) ... and that bizarre compulsion to click it just overrode my better judgement. What’s that all about anyway?

[SpaceChampion]

Final trailer:

 

Love it that Martha is going to save herself, instead of being a damsel in distress.  I wonder if that's the actual overall theme?  Handle your own problems and save yourself, which will save others?  The loop is you.

[Toth]

So the yellow jacket indicates protagonist status, huh?

[Annara Snow]

On 6/14/2020 at 4:49 PM, Leofric said:

So I finally had the time and Netflix access to with this series and it was as great as everyone said.     I finally got most of the family connections they've shown figured out by the middle of season 2.  They threw in Charlotte and Elizabeth after that, but that mother-daughter-grandmother relationship is straight forward in comparison to the some of the others.   Though it did show that Jonas' plan to stop his father's suicide would have had much larger ramifications that just his own erasure from existence, as at a minimum it would have erased Charlotte, Elizabeth and Franziska as well.

A few ideas bouncing in my head after watching this.

The time travel appears to have been made possible by the nuclear incident that happened off screen a year or so before Claudia took over as head of the nuclear power plant in 1986.   That incident created a natural time bridge as well as the supply of God particles in the radioactive drums that appear to power the portable time machines and somehow created the unstable bubbles in 1921 and 2052 (which appears to have been created on the day of the apocalypse in 2020).  

The natural time bridge existed below the bunker across all times, but was not accessible until Adam's men excavated the tunnels starting around 1921 and finishing sometime before 1953.   Jonas' closed the tunnels somehow in 2019, and then he and Claudia reopened them in 2020 just before the apocalypse, sending Katarina to another time or even another world on the day of the apocalypse.   The tunnels seem to locked on three times, the present, 33 years in the past, and 33 years in the future.   It makes sense that you couldn't go further back in time through the tunnels if you entered in 1953 because the tunnels didn't exist before that, but I wonder if the future 2052 was actually accessible in 2019, but our main characters seemed to only choose the path to 1986 when they entered in 2019.  Until Jonas got launched into the future when his older self closed the tunnels in 2019.

So I assume Adam knew alternate Martha would save his younger self on the Day of the apocalypse.  So not only would he have known about the alternate worlds, is it possible he is not our older Jonas, but an older Jonas from an alternate world?    This is why he doesn't care if he destroys this world, and can shoot Martha, because it is not his Martha.  The alternate world seem more technologically advanced than ours, based on Martha's device, which may explain one thing that bothered me.  If the world ends in 2020, where did the futuristic flashlight come from, but now it may have come from Alternate Martha's world.

How far back in time has Adam gone? He seemed to have had time to build a pretty elaborate bunker system below Winden that appears to be in place before 1921, and most of the technology for the different time travel devices appear to be more steampunk based than futuristic, except of course their power source, the God particle.  

Can't wait to see how they wrap everything up in Season 3.

How sure are we that Adam is Jonas at all? The only evidence is that he said so, and that he has a scar on his neck. From the trailer, it seems that there may not be a Jonas in the AU where AU Martha is.

I've always had trouble with the idea of Adam = Jonas since they are so different, not just physically but also in their worldview. And yes, I know people change.. but it's hard to see that as Jonas' possible endgame.

I've seen several theories about Adam's identity floating around. Some are really unlikely (Adam=Clausen? Nah), some are possible but I'm not buying it (Adam=Bartosz? I can't really see him as a mastermind) and some seem interesting (Adam=Mikkel? There are some issues there, it would make more sense if it's Mikkel, to be an AU Mikkel, but why would he have a neck scar? But  there ere are some things that feel like possible foreshadowing, like all the Houdini references, and one scene from 1x06, which I've just rewatched, kind of made me lean just a little bit more towards this theory (not that this is evidence, just may or may not be foreshadowing): 

Martha is playing Ariadne in the play, with a blond guy who kind of resembles Jonas, playing Theseus. The scene was intercut with the scenes of Jonas going into the cave (and finding the red thread). Ariadne's dialogue as she gives Theseus the thread and telling him how to go deep into the labyrinth to defeat Minotaur:. 

"Take this. It will guide you. You have to go deep inside, to the center. He is waiting there in the shadows, half-human, half-beast. You must be quick. Aim straight for the heart."
This descrption made me think of Adam.

Theseus' next line is: "But isn't he your brother?"

[DaveSumm]

16 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

How sure are we that Adam is Jonas at all? The only evidence is that he said so, and that he has a scar on his neck.  

I would say very. All official material has Adam as Jonas (family trees and such), he had a vision of Martha in (I think) S2E7 while he was holding the necklace, and it’s feel cheap for the show to do that. They only held out on his identity for one episode as they knew it was well trodden ground. Plus, the exact members of Sic Mundus used the time machine to escape the apocalypse, they’re perfectly placed to become the outfit that we see in 1921.

I do agree that the casting is a little odd (especially compared to all the other incredible casting), I’d have quite like to see Andreas Pietschmann (The Stranger) play him seeing as he’s under so much makeup anyway. But I don’t think that’s enough to conclude he isn’t Jonas.

[Astromech]

Damn it! Here I was thinking it was premiering June 23rd instead of the 27th. 

[Corvinus85]

Finished my re-watch of season 2. I've only watched the teaser for season 3, nothing else. Very excited for it.

When it comes to time travel theories, I mainly subscribe to the multiple timelines theory. When you go in the past and change something, a new timeline is created, and you can't really go back to your original timeline, or if you do, it's unchanged. I also agree that time loops are possible, and not mutually exclusive to multiple timelines, in fact dependent on that.

Even before Alt-Martha appeared at the end, there were clues that at one point we may deal with multiple timelines. Old Claudia tells Jonas that she saw a world where he isn't born, and it was bad. So she's been to other worlds, too.

We haven't really seen the greater conflict between Claudia and Adam. In all the years between their middle-age and their old age, we don't know how many things they tried to change what happens, and how. Adam may be disfigured because of using the dark matter sphere, and despite the protective suit, multiple uses leads to cancers caused by radiation. And maybe that's why he had Noah build the chair, so Noah could use it, instead of risking the same damage + the cave passage. (Or he could be lying and it was one event that caused his injuries). Claudia seems to have only used the portable machine, which doesn't expose the user to too much radiation.

[DaveSumm]

15 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Even before Alt-Martha appeared at the end, there were clues that at one point we may deal with multiple timelines. Old Claudia tells Jonas that she saw a world where he isn't born, and it was bad. So she's been to other worlds, too.

Not particularly related, but it occurred to me watching the finale of Season 2 that The Stranger was waiting to stop Adam killing Martha with absolutely no exit strategy, he had no time machine and knew full well the apocalypse was coming. So he must have experienced the alt-world as well, and his plan was to take both Jonas and reg-Martha (and himself) along with alt-Martha to her world. 

[red snow]

the last of us part II and coursework has screwed up my full rewatch so I'm trying to make do with season 2. I was shocked at how much I'd forgotten already! I think it's partly because the show is so dense and labyrinthine that while it's relatively easy to follow with short term memory, it's an absolute nightmare with a twelve month gap.

[Isis]

3 hours ago, red snow said:

the last of us part II and coursework has screwed up my full rewatch so I'm trying to make do with season 2. I was shocked at how much I'd forgotten already! I think it's partly because the show is so dense and labyrinthine that while it's relatively easy to follow with short term memory, it's an absolute nightmare with a twelve month gap.

I never do the rewatch thing before a new season. I think in this case I'll watch S3. Then maybe just rewatch all three seasons. I quite like everything being slightly confusing and intense. 

[red snow]

1 hour ago, Isis said:

I never do the rewatch thing before a new season. I think in this case I'll watch S3. Then maybe just rewatch all three seasons. I quite like everything being slightly confusing and intense. 

I think a whole rewatch is on the cards when they is finished - unless they do a "lost" and I wind up utterly disgusted and realise it didn't make any difference what happened in the first two seasons. This could be a possibility given the potential introduction of a multiverse at the end of season 2.

I think the main thing the show needs is an inforgraphic reminding us of who everyone is and how they are related (my impression is they are all related!). The show has pretty much 3-4 actors playing each character at various stages in their lives which adds to the confusion. There's a couple of attempts online that help.

[Leofric]

3 hours ago, red snow said:

I think a whole rewatch is on the cards when they is finished - unless they do a "lost" and I wind up utterly disgusted and realise it didn't make any difference what happened in the first two seasons. This could be a possibility given the potential introduction of a multiverse at the end of season 2.

I think the main thing the show needs is an inforgraphic reminding us of who everyone is and how they are related (my impression is they are all related!). The show has pretty much 3-4 actors playing each character at various stages in their lives which adds to the confusion. There's a couple of attempts online that help.

They may be all related, but we are missing some information to make the final connections.

Noah is brother to Agnes Nielsen, and father/grandfather/husband to the Charlotte/Franziska/Elizabeth Doppler.    Helgi Doppler is the son of Bernd Doppler, the man who built the nuclear power plant, and father of Peter Doppler husband of Charlotte.

Agnes is mother of Tronte Nielsen, grandmother of Ulrich Nielsen and great-grandmother of Magnus/Martha/Mikkel and great-great grandmother to Jonas.  Hannah was married to Michael (Mikkel) and is Jonas' mother.

The only major family without known blood ties to the others are the Tiedemann's, though Egon's wife Doris? and Agnes were very close.  Egon is father of Claudia. Claudia is mother to Regina. Regina is married to Alexsander and mother to Bartosk.    But I don't think we know who Regina's father is and we don't really know where or when Boris/Alexsander came from, so there may be some connection that way.  And there were hints at the end that Egon may have been interested in Hannah when she went back in time to 1953, which may have contributed to his marriage coming apart, besides the aforementioned Agnes/Doris attraction.

Then you have the siblings Benni and Torben Woller.   What happened to Torben's eye?!

 

[SpaceChampion]

2 minutes ago, Leofric said:

The only major family without known blood ties to the others are the Tiedemann's, though Egon's wife Doris? and Agnes were very close.  Egon is father of Claudia. Claudia is mother to Regina. Regina is married to Alexsander and mother to Bartosk.    But I don't think we know who Regina's father is and we don't really know where or when Boris/Alexsander came from, so there may be some connection that way.  And there were hints at the end that Egon may have been interested in Hannah when she went back in time to 1953, which may have contributed to his marriage coming apart, besides the aforementioned Agnes/Doris attraction.

 

Claudia has only been seen connected intimately with Tronte, who if is Regina's father makes Regina the half-sister of Ulrich/Martha/Mikkel, and aunt to Jonas.

[Leofric]

8 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Claudia has only been seen connected intimately with Tronte, who if is Regina's father makes Regina the half-sister of Ulrich/Martha/Mikkel, and aunt to Jonas.

If Tronte is Regina's father, she would be half sister to Ulrich/Mads and aunt of Martha/Magnus/Mikkel, and great-aunt of Jonas.

edit - Which would make both of Martha's boyfriends close family

[SpaceChampion]

Ugh, it was the right way in my head, I promise!   And yes, that conclusion -- Bartoz and Jonas are something like cousins and it was incest either way for Martha.

[red snow]

Torben's eye is the show's biggest mystery!