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

[Heartofice]

17 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Just a warning to avoid the wiki with the family tree that was linked to on the previous page, or at least fix the settings not to spoil the final episode reveal.   The episode gives evidence indirectly, the wiki explicitly confirms it.

It asks you at the start how far you are so it doesn’t spoil anything

[Gertrude]

OK, so this was pretty fucking good.

And the casting *chef's kiss*

Spoiler

In the previous seasons, I was not seeing middle Claudia as an analogue to young or old. I could see young and old connecting, but not the middle. Turns out 80's fashions was masking it for me. Post apocalyptic Claudia sold it for me - and then the transitioning to old Claudis - honestly, one of the better casting choices. And old Marta absolutely looked like old Ulrich, convincing casting. 

I don't have anything to really say right now, I just want to absorb it and probably re-watch at some point without the NEED to know what the hell is happening?!

[Mexal]

I just finished as well. Really well done. Like Gertrude, need to marinate on it all but I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of it all and it pretty much makes sense. To pull that off is impressive, especially with something this complicated.

[Gertrude]

Yeah - I don't feel like I have gaps in my understanding. It's just a lot to take in and I want to  think about some of the implications I may have overlooked and revel in the feels of it all.

spoilers all:

Spoiler

There are so many character moments and I keep coming back to a few. Ulrich sadly looking at the clock. Adam and Eve holding hands at the end. Bartosz letting his son violently kill him. Seriously - Bartosz can't catch a break and he's not even a Nielsen. And while Claudia is the MVP, she completely erases her own grandson. Not saying she's wrong, it's just - honestly, I feel pretty bad for the guy. His misery kind of happened to him rather than him making choices like so many others. Just lots of things to savor and ponder.

 

[briantw]

Finished it.  Wow.  That was fantastic.  Really surprised at how well they tied everything together.

The second to last episode is one of the greatest hours of television I have ever watched.  

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Also, I laughed at how we never did find out what happened to that dude's eye.  

 

[Corvinus85]

Finished it. Well done, but I'm not sure I buy what happened at the end, will have to think about it more.

Spoiler

They pretty much had a grandfather paradox. Jonas and Martha stopped the tragedy that leads to Tannhaus creating two new worlds, then they wink out of existence. But if they wink out of existence...

I wonder what Katharina's name was at the end. Her mother clearly was inspired to name her thus by Hannah, but if the original world never happened, her mother may have given her a different name. Anyway, Katharina's death at the hands of her own mother, and her becoming the legend of the woman in the lake + the medallion ending up on the shore was one of the most tragic moments of the series for me. 

I will have to investigate the convoluted family tree to determine who exists and who doesn't. Curious that Bartosz doesn't. My guess is that is has to do with the fact that his descendants don't exist, and thus Regina doesn't find herself bullied in the woods by Ulrich and Katharina, where she meets Aleksander/Boris.

By the way this show doesn't have any genuine laughter until that last scene at the dinner table. 

 

[SpaceChampion]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

Finished it. Well done, but I'm not sure I buy what happened at the end, will have to think about it more.

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I wonder what Katharina's name was at the end.

Her mother clearly was inspired to name her thus by Hannah, but if the original world never happened, her mother may have given her a different name. Anyway, Katharina's death at the hands of her own mother, and her becoming the legend of the woman in the lake + the medallion ending up on the shore was one of the most tragic moments of the series for me. 

I will have to investigate the convoluted family tree to determine who exists and who doesn't. Curious that Bartosz doesn't. My guess is that is has to do with the fact that his descendants don't exist, and thus Regina doesn't find herself bullied in the woods by Ulrich and Katharina, where she meets Aleksander/Boris.

By the way this show doesn't have any genuine laughter until that last scene at the dinner table. 

 

 

Spoiler

I read Katerina's origin world name is Phyllis, but I don't know if the person who said that was joking or not.

Anyway, I don't know if any caught this, but Bern Doppler groomed Claudia from a young age, and he was Regina's father.  You see a photo of all of them together in the end.

 

[Gertrude]

2 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Finished it. Well done, but I'm not sure I buy what happened at the end, will have to think about it more.

  Hide contents

They pretty much had a grandfather paradox. Jonas and Martha stopped the tragedy that leads to Tannhaus creating two new worlds, then they wink out of existence. But if they wink out of existence...

I wonder what Katharina's name was at the end. Her mother clearly was inspired to name her thus by Hannah, but if the original world never happened, her mother may have given her a different name. Anyway, Katharina's death at the hands of her own mother, and her becoming the legend of the woman in the lake + the medallion ending up on the shore was one of the most tragic moments of the series for me. 

I will have to investigate the convoluted family tree to determine who exists and who doesn't. Curious that Bartosz doesn't. My guess is that is has to do with the fact that his descendants don't exist, and thus Regina doesn't find herself bullied in the woods by Ulrich and Katharina, where she meets Aleksander/Boris.

By the way this show doesn't have any genuine laughter until that last scene at the dinner table. 

Spoiler

 

The way they've set this up, I don't think Jonas and Marta created a paradox. This original world has the potential to create the split and endless loop, but the moment passed and Tannhaus' motivation is nullified, so things will just continue on in a straight line. Marek and Sonja will only ever meet their angels once.

I'm not bothered by Katerina's name. Maybe some other random stranger mentioned the name and it stuck with her because it's a pretty name. Or maybe it's just Phyllis :p

Helene killing Kat was - ugh - yeah. It was awful, but it didn't hit me as hard - I think because I was thinking of the story of the lady in the lake and the medallion and how that all ties in so I wasn't quite in the moment. The scene after that where Helene smacks Kat and calls her a slut and that she should have aborted her hit me waaaay harder. Young Kat still has years of this to endure.

 

 

 

[DaveSumm]

Complete Season 3 spoilers:

Spoiler

Overall, I’m very happy and it keeps up the quality of previous seasons. Episode 7 was incredible. The trailer scene with Elisabeth and Peter was one of the most intense the show has done. 
 

I don’t know how I feel about the episode 5 ending and episode 6. What I’m struggling with is, what does the layered realities ultimately bring to the plot? It gives us a shocking twist, and a very complicated Martha storyline for ep6. But I really don’t think it was necessary. You could have fairly easily had a world where Jonas did exist, but an old Martha kills him exactly as Adam did in the original world. Why do we need a reality-branched Martha? What does that even look like; when did basement Jonas appear after Martha rescued the other? And what does ‘exploiting the time freeze’ actually look like in practise, what did Adam actually have to do to get to Jonas again after he’d killed Martha?

On the one hand, it wouldn’t be fitting for Dark not to up the ante and confuse us all one last time. And it was a fun ride, so I respect it for that. But I feel like the idea I had in my head after the trailer has more resonance. Adam’s world leads to a situation where Jonas doesn’t exist, which leads to a situation where Martha gets shot, so Jonas does exist, and the two loops alternate infinitely. Adam and Eve’s ultimate motivation could be simply that they love one another, and they know both worlds can’t exist, and so they both aim to end their own universe so the other survives. As it stands, it started to damage the relationship between them that we ultimately saw them torture and murder the other far more than we actually saw them happy. 
 

The ultimate origin world and Tannhaus seems satisfying enough, although it’s a shame they couldn’t figure out a way for it to involve characters we’ve spent time with. A good chunk of the closing portion of the whole show was spent with characters we either don’t know at all or have barely seen, and I’m not sure what we gained from seeing Marek and Sonja in such detail. It would’ve been enough to know they survived. Or even better, seeing as the obviously existed and were killed in the Adam world at least, we could’ve known about them way back in season 1 and seen Tannhaus mourn them. Borrowing a little from Westworld, you could even show Tannhaus building that device and have us assume that he’s doing that alongside raising Charlotte and dealing with Stranger and Claudia. Then it turns out it was a different world all along. 
 

I’d love to have my mind changed on the branching realities if anyone knows why it was so important?

Oh, and also:

Spoiler

It was really odd how little we saw of Agnes. Considering how crucial the cleft lip guy was to the entire family tree, I really expected to see how he managed to impregnate two different Agnes’s, or even some info on how Martha raised him. Could he have been given a name? It looks like Martha raised him to be an evil and emotionless minion to do nothing but ensure the timeline did what it was supposed to.

 

[Nictarion]

That was so good. The last couple episodes were top tier tv. 

[Corvinus85]

6 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

 

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Anyway, I don't know if any caught this, but Bern Doppler groomed Claudia from a young age, and he was Regina's father.  You see a photo of all of them together in the end.

 

Spoiler

Yeah, I didn't quite make the connection, but recalling a creepy moment between child-Claudia and Bern when he gave her some life advice, it makes sense. Given the picture, one hopes it was a happy relationship. 

 

5 hours ago, Gertrude said:

Spoiler

The way they've set this up, I don't think Jonas and Marta created a paradox. This original world has the potential to create the split and endless loop, but the moment passed and Tannhaus' motivation is nullified, so things will just continue on in a straight line. Marek and Sonja will only ever meet their angels once.

 

Spoiler

From the Tannhaus's perspective, sure, but the "angels" appeared because of a different outcome. I think the show could have given a more detailed explanation on how exactly Tannhaus's machine split the world. From a technical perspective, he wasn't using dark matter because likely that didn't exist. His experiment produced the accident at the plant, but more than that I can't quite wrap my head around just yet.

So in the end

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Adam technically won. His world and Eva's ceased to exist, but the difference was that it was done through an act of saving lives and rekindling love, instead of going Terminator on Martha.

 

[Corvinus85]

Another question

Spoiler

How did old Tronte survive the apocalypse? I re-watched only season 2 and he wasn't in it. So he wasn't in the bunker. According to I forget who, only the people in the bunker survived in Winden + the travelers.

 

[briantw]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

Another question

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How did old Tronte survive the apocalypse? I re-watched only season 2 and he wasn't in it. So he wasn't in the bunker. According to I forget who, only the people in the bunker survived in Winden + the travelers.

 

Spoiler

Jonas survived by hiding in his basement in the timeline where alt-Martha didn't show up to save him.  Maybe something similar happened with Tronte?  

 

[Heartofice]

Ok finished up. I guess I am going against the grain, but I don't think the show landed the ending. Overall I found this season to be rather weak, a bit jumbled and.. well...

Spoiler

I had to go back and try to remember what it was about the show I really loved. I thought back to S1, and all those incredible moments that stuck with me. They mostly revolved around the tragic pointlessness of trying to 'break' time, and all those clever moments when characters were trying to make a difference but inadvertently ended up creating the thing they wanted to destroy. Ulrich for instance.  It was just such a powerful idea, being trapped by time in this way, living in the wrong time and being resigned to it. 

Even in the first season though, there were bits I was worried by, because they bordered on mainstream sci fi. My least favourite bits were those elements with Noah, wandering around trying to change time, acting like some stereotypical baddie. I didn't like the idea of someone going around manipulating events in that way, it didn't seem very exceptional as an idea.

So really my issues with S3, and maybe the way the show has gone for a little while, is that it became more about the elements I was never fond of, and less about the bits I liked. 

S3 is really a rather standard struggle of 2 people (actually a lot more) battling against each other to win in the time wars. That to me wasn't especially interesting. The show very much lost the human touch it had, and became more fantastical. I really liked how S1 showed how time travel could really affect peoples lives, the show felt grounded in reality despite having a bridge through time. 

S2 introduced the post apocalyptic Mad Max timezone, which didn't massively bother me, because they didn't dwell on it, but I didn't love it. 

S3 then added other dimensions. I said earlier I wasn't a fan of that idea, because it seems like an easy out for the writers. But it did more than that, it made the show more classicly sci fi, it became a little more fantastical, but mostly it reduced the sense of importance of every character, when you know there are other versions. 

But the biggest flaw of the whole show for me was Adam and Eva. Those two characters never really felt like real people, especially Eva who I don't think was ever truly explained. Jonas and Marthas romance.. just felt corny to me at times, not the way it was written or acted, but as the central concept pinning the show together, it felt pretty weak.. blah blah blah, love conquers all... I was hoping for more than that.

The show became about a series of very convoluted events all orchestrated by a small set of people, to make sure that everything stayed the same. I'm still confused as to why this would be necessary as it seems that time appears to make sure everything stays the same anyway and it's impossible to mess things about, except for the loophole during the time stop.
This season became almost incomprehensible due to the back and forth, each character forcing the events elsewhere, and it wasn't all that compelling. 

Then there are the origin triplets, who don't really seem to have any sort of role at all, they were just there to make stuff happen and for Martha to be protective. Very odd story element there. 

I guess I almost missed a few things because I never worked out how they learnt to travel through dimensions, and who was creating the orbs that allow that. 

I also still don't understand how Eva wasn't shot that time by Adam, how could that be possible. 

I probably have a lot of other questions too. 

So overall.. a bit disappointed, it is still a fantastic show, but compared to the show it promised to be, I can't say it really delivered on that promise.

Also.. did they really do the whole interstellar cupboard thing at the end?!





 

 

[DaveSumm]

FYI they’ve updated the official website and it’s awesome:

http://darknetflix.io

[DaveSumm]

9 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Ok finished up. I guess I am going against the grain, but I don't think the show landed the ending. Overall I found this season to be rather weak, a bit jumbled and.. well...

  Hide contents

I had to go back and try to remember what it was about the show I really loved. I thought back to S1, and all those incredible moments that stuck with me. They mostly revolved around the tragic pointlessness of trying to 'break' time, and all those clever moments when characters were trying to make a difference but inadvertently ended up creating the thing they wanted to destroy. Ulrich for instance.  It was just such a powerful idea, being trapped by time in this way, living in the wrong time and being resigned to it. 

Even in the first season though, there were bits I was worried by, because they bordered on mainstream sci fi. My least favourite bits were those elements with Noah, wandering around trying to change time, acting like some stereotypical baddie. I didn't like the idea of someone going around manipulating events in that way, it didn't seem very exceptional as an idea.

So really my issues with S3, and maybe the way the show has gone for a little while, is that it became more about the elements I was never fond of, and less about the bits I liked. 

S3 is really a rather standard struggle of 2 people (actually a lot more) battling against each other to win in the time wars. That to me wasn't especially interesting. The show very much lost the human touch it had, and became more fantastical. I really liked how S1 showed how time travel could really affect peoples lives, the show felt grounded in reality despite having a bridge through time. 

S2 introduced the post apocalyptic Mad Max timezone, which didn't massively bother me, because they didn't dwell on it, but I didn't love it. 

S3 then added other dimensions. I said earlier I wasn't a fan of that idea, because it seems like an easy out for the writers. But it did more than that, it made the show more classicly sci fi, it became a little more fantastical, but mostly it reduced the sense of importance of every character, when you know there are other versions. 

But the biggest flaw of the whole show for me was Adam and Eva. Those two characters never really felt like real people, especially Eva who I don't think was ever truly explained. Jonas and Marthas romance.. just felt corny to me at times, not the way it was written or acted, but as the central concept pinning the show together, it felt pretty weak.. blah blah blah, love conquers all... I was hoping for more than that.

The show became about a series of very convoluted events all orchestrated by a small set of people, to make sure that everything stayed the same. I'm still confused as to why this would be necessary as it seems that time appears to make sure everything stays the same anyway and it's impossible to mess things about, except for the loophole during the time stop.
This season became almost incomprehensible due to the back and forth, each character forcing the events elsewhere, and it wasn't all that compelling. 

Then there are the origin triplets, who don't really seem to have any sort of role at all, they were just there to make stuff happen and for Martha to be protective. Very odd story element there. 

I guess I almost missed a few things because I never worked out how they learnt to travel through dimensions, and who was creating the orbs that allow that. 

I also still don't understand how Eva wasn't shot that time by Adam, how could that be possible. 

I probably have a lot of other questions too. 

So overall.. a bit disappointed, it is still a fantastic show, but compared to the show it promised to be, I can't say it really delivered on that promise.

Also.. did they really do the whole interstellar cupboard thing at the end?!





 

 

I’ll respond in more detail tomorrow but I agree with a lot of that. Particular the human element part, I long for the days when questions had human answers (to protect others, to survive, out of love) rather than “he/she is now with Adam/Eve/Claudia and so is working to keep the loop the same”. It felt like you may as well just tell everyone that, so they’re all just actors working to a script and going through the motions, nobody actually cares about their actions anymore.

[karaddin]

I thought it stuck the landing as well. Some of the late developments were quite well foreshadowed, particularly

Spoiler

that there would be a 3rd world. Also that something was different with Tannhaus in the timeline that showed him building the machine in the original world - it doesn't make sense that he'd be using such a dramatically different design when he'd already been handed one that he knows will work. Also the book that he had never written.

Speaking of his design - since he didn't have the God particle I guess he was using a different approach, I was wondering if he was doing something with anti matter with all the things sticking out being magnetic bottles?

I think the scene with Peter getting killed was the most a scene has disturbed me since Sacking Private Ryan. Something about the knife slowly sinking in really gets me, too much time for anticipation and pain.

My take from back in season 2 was that this time loop was too dysfunctional, looping back on itself too much, to actually be part of the real world timeline, that it must be a reality marble of some kind, but that it may have broken the main timeline so I was pretty satisfied with that turning out to be the case. I also appreciated that it didn't shy away from the obvious consequence to our main characters of writing themselves out of existence when they can only exist due to the time loops.

 

[DaveSumm]

Spoiler

OK I can’t figure out if quoting within a spoiler is a thing... @Heartofice

But the biggest flaw of the whole show for me was Adam and Eva. Those two characters never really felt like real people, especially Eva who I don't think was ever truly explained. Jonas and Marthas romance.. just felt corny to me at times, not the way it was written or acted, but as the central concept pinning the show together, it felt pretty weak.. blah blah blah, love conquers all... I was hoping for more than that.

Totally. When Adam shot Martha, we all assumed he must have one hell of a plan if it led him to this moment. There really needed to be a beautiful, Shakespearian resonance to why these two characters perpetuate the loop in the way that they do. I would have preferred that they simply love one another and want the other universe to be the one that survives, and they keep cancelling one another out. But the answer apparently is that Adam has no idea about the loophole that Eva exploits to create a second Martha (despite knowing about the second Jonas who impregnated Martha...? What?) and thus thinks killing his own child will solve things. Why on earth does he think the standard rule of determinism doesn’t apply here? And to add insult to injury, his method has the weakest, most Doctor Who style logic to it: “it’s created of two worlds so we need the energy of both worlds to kill it”. What? Why? Can’t you just abort it? And if the answer is no for the usual reasons it’s no, why doesn’t that logic apply to strapping her into the chair?

Their whole relationship is that they banged once as kids, and have spent the rest of their lives finding reasons to shoot one another.

The show became about a series of very convoluted events all orchestrated by a small set of people, to make sure that everything stayed the same. I'm still confused as to why this would be necessary as it seems that time appears to make sure everything stays the same anyway and it's impossible to mess things about, except for the loophole during the time stop. This season became almost incomprehensible due to the back and forth, each character forcing the events elsewhere, and it wasn't all that compelling. 

Yea, we needed a very convincing reason why the apocalypse had to happen in both worlds. Adam has a reason that turned out to bullshit, Eva ... wanted to keep the loop? So that meant the apocalypse as well? And Claudia has no reason at all, other than that she told us she did.

Then there are the origin triplets, who don't really seem to have any sort of role at all, they were just there to make stuff happen and for Martha to be protective. Very odd story element there. 

That was a weird bit of story telling wasn’t it? Everything up to and including the trailer for this season pointed to the huge importance of this. And it turns out to be? An emotionless minion. His entire function, to have two Trontes with two Agneses, got completely ignored. Was the Agnes actress not available much or something? The only scene that touched on it was him handing Tronte the bracelet, if there was a point to that then I missed it. He gives it to Jana but that’s about it.

 

[Heartofice]

Quoting does work it seems @DaveSumm

Spoiler

One of the problems I have with the show is that it's hard to see characters 'workings out', like how did they come to the conclusions they came to which drives their behaviour? In many cases it's simply a matter of 'oh well Claudia told him that so now he believes it'. This isn't especially compelling as a framing device, especially when it seemed to descend into a 'he said / she said' game of back and forth lies. 

But it also means that I just never really got a strong sense of the emotional underpinnings of main characters motivations. Adam REALLY wants to destroy both worlds and Eva REALLY wants to keep them, but I never understood why they were both so committed to those points of view. 

How did Adam come to the conclusion that he can destroy the knot by killing Marthas baby? How did he validate those assumptions?

As you mentioned, if Adam wanted to keep both worlds because of his love for Martha then that would feel more grounded. 

I'm disappointed the entire show ended up being about Martha and Jonas' relationship, because it wasn't a very interesting one. I respect the show for clearly having a plan, their relationship was shown to be key from the first scenes, but it didn't manage to do much to flesh that out. Maybe if there were more scenes of these two characters interacting through time, but that didn't happen. Instead they operated through proxies and rarely met each other. 

 

 

[RhaenysBee]

I wanted to like this so badly. And there’s so much to appreciate and respect and like. Several elements. Just not the whole. I’m not saying I disliked the final season, it was... okay. Overall it felt like Harry Potter. The last installment wasn’t great, wasn’t bad, it was okay. And mostly, contrived, over complicated and retconned. Throughout the entire season, the thought that it suffers from the deathly hallows syndrome just couldn’t leave me. See Harry Potter was perfect and whole until the deathly hallows were introduced to create the ultimate duality between Harry and Voldemort, to lose the audience in freshly introduced details that add nothing to the larger story or the existing characters and to add another blob of whipped cream on top of the cherry that’s already on the sundae and suffocating it. 
Right, so enough about Harry Potter. 

All the great things 

Spoiler

Episode 7 in itself served the purpose of the entire season. It was absolutely beautiful, powerful, incredibly acted and it delivered in every aspect one could possibly expect it. For quite a while I was worried that Dark would gloss over the human transformation and miss to explain how the younger versions of characters turned into their older selves. It worked in nearly every case, but one (which I’ll touch on later). The perfect amount of time and detail was spent on the transformations (or history, motive, layers). 

I also found it beautiful that at the end of the day everybody was driven by Tannhaus’s original motive - to save their child/family. Katharina, Ulrich, Noah, Claudia, this Eva persona all worked to save their children.

I did like that Tannhaus was given significance, it was suspicious from the beginning that he would play a larger role in the story. (I however have very conflicted feelings about the kind of role he ended up having) 

I also liked the Adam and Eve, creation, paradise etc symbolism which they remained faithful to throughout the series. It was a nice and consistent metaphoric framework, which, for the most part, aligned with literal events in the story.  Man plays God. God creates Adam and Eve, their love, the apple, the forbidden fruit ends paradise, punishment, pain, pursuit of paradise, sacrifices to God, etc...There was a serpent bracelet too, which was cool to be serpent shaped, but I didn’t quite catch any significance in its placement in the story. 

I enjoyed the acting especially from the older cast, they just killed it in every scene.

I have huge respect for the effort they put into tying up most lose ends and explaining details (the Saint Christopher pendant, the coins, the family relations, certain actions, characteristics, etc) 

I’m glad that Claudia deservingly got to be the main player who was smarter than everybody. 

And hats off to whoever didn’t go mad writing this story. I bet three quarters of the cast has no idea what’s the story they worked to bring to life, I wouldn’t either.

All the not so great things 

Spoiler

I spent the first 5 episodes not understanding anything. Then things fell into place during the last 2-3 episodes and I thought, Ah right, of course! However, since then, the more I think about it, the less I understand what actually happened. In fact there are so many intertwining time and dimension lines that my brain just can’t process and keep up with all of them simultaneously, so I have no idea how we got to the conclusion. I understand the it, but I don’t understand why that’s the conclusion. Tannhaus in the 70s(?) lost his family and worked to build a machine to go back in time and save them because that was a hereditary obsession in his family. So HOW did he do that? Where did he go back in time? Or did he not? Did he accidentally (or purposely?) crack the space-time continuum and created two parallel words? How in the hell did that bring about the existence of any of the Nielsens? Even if we say Hannah was alive and Regina was alive we don’t know if there was a Bartosz so there’d be an Agnes, and let’s not even talk about the random menacing dude who allegedly impregnated her (why, when and how that would happen is beyond me). But all right, let’s say he did. Why does Jonas exist in one and why does he not exist in the other? 

Nevermind. My inability to grasp the sci fi logic is hardly the biggest problem with the season. 

So we spend two entire season in one world with a set of characters and events. And then season 3, instead of beginning to resolve the timelines and making sense of the first two, introduces a second, parallel world. And then a THIRD, original world. In the one season that’s supposed to CONCLUDE an existing story, not build two more on top that we wouldn’t really care about anyway. And since we must follow through the previous events in this alternate world as well, the pace is insane. Oddly enough while I had no idea what, when and where is going on, I was still bored because I was watching roughly the same thing I watched in season 1, a bit differently here and there, but essentially the same exact pattern. I don’t care about these versions of the characters as I met them and connected with them in the Jonas edition of the world. I don’t care what happens here, I want it to be over to know what happens in the world that I care about. I didn’t even want to understand who said what to whom and why, and what that made whom to do and why. 

Conceptually, I think that three worlds is too much, the alternate world was a completely unnecessary complication that added nothing to the preexisting story yet took away valuable time from concluding the Jonas world. Just one time-bent world and one original world seems like the better idea to me, especially that we never found out how the two time-bent versions came to be. But if we are going with three worlds, structurally I would have preferred the introduction of the alter world in season two and spent season three untying the storylines. That way I might have cared about Or understood what’s going on in the alternate world. 
 

Smaller things: 

this random menacing dude had literally no purpose, function, personality or anything at all in the story. He was essentially a stand in. It is beyond me why had to be in the story at all. That really really bothered me. 

And so Alexander Tiedemann was just one big fat red herring all the while. Who accidentally killed someone and took a false identity to start over and then... died? Vanished? Was forgotten about? Did he know what the substance was? Did he remain oblivious and thought I was merely covering up a nuclear accident? What did Wöller report to him? What did he do with that information? Was Boris Niewald truly more random than the menacing dude? Was his sole purpose to father Bartosz and finance Hannah? So what was ever the point of his having a false identity? I can’t help but think that he was a brutally and mercilessly abandoned plotline which would actually have been better than what we ended up with. 

Eva was a pale shadow of Adam. She never had the time or the plot building to come across half as serious, threatening, dangerous or powerful as her other-world counterpart. This is essentially true for every aspect and character of the alternate world. 

I’m also not a fan of the entire loophole and the two worlds revolving around Jonas and Martha’s romance. I mean I personally never bought into their love story. And the whole time-crossed lovers ending felt forced and over played. There were several other relationships in the story that felt more real and powerful to me (Alexander and Regina, Franziska and Magnus, most parent-child relationships), and the ultimate romantic union that stretched through time and hardship was, is and will always be Ulrich and Katharina. 

Well that felt great to get off my mind. 
 

wait, one more thing 

Spoiler

So how does all this translate to the labyrinth symbolism? Why is Martha Ariadne, who’s the Minotaur and why does the reaching the middle of the labyrinth mean there’s another alternate labyrinth, or is it a mirror labyrinth? But the alter world wasn’t strictly speaking an opposite of the other one. I’m not sure where that was going but it met the same fate as Alexander.