Understanding Netflix’s Dark

For the Season 3 article, go here.

SPOILERS November 6, 2019 – I’ve seen Dark Seasons 1 and 2 multiple times. I could watch them again and still be perplexed. Being perplexed by a show can sometimes equal being entertained. With Dark, it definitely does. Along with Stranger Things, Dark has been hailed as Netflix’s best supernatural series.

This article covers Seasons 1 and 2 only, with a few notes after watching Season 3. The article is divided into two sections: BASIC PLOT and CHARACTERS. First, the basic yet complex plot of Dark.

BASIC PLOT

Summary: Several families deal with the repercussions of being able to travel in time.

How the time travel started

In the summer of 1986, just months after Chernobyl, the Winden Nuclear Power Plant created a huge explosion, the exact cause is yet unrevealed.

As a result of the explosion, a wormhole was created, along with an unusually high amount of Cs-137 (a radioactive element). Plant director Bernd Doppler stored the Cs-137 in yellow drums which he hid in a cave below the plant. The drums were later moved to an unused room in the plant, and buried in cement.

The Cs-137 is used in an apparatus, built by H.G. Tannhaus, that also creates a wormhole. Besides the apparatus, there are other forms of time travel, such as the caves in Winden, which house the original wormhole created by the plant explosion.

The door and tunnels in the caves were built in advance, many years earlier (1921), by those who foreknew that the Winden Nuclear Power Plant incident would create a wormhole.

the Stranger’s notes | cave door

The central conflict in Dark

Various characters have internal struggles, but the external conflict of the show is a war between two factions:

1. SIC MUNDUS, AKA THE TRAVELERS Led by Adam, Sic Mundus is a secret society that claims to want a new world free of time, death, and suffering. They believe this world can come about only if everything in the current world happens exactly the same. They do not want to change events of the past.

NOTE: Season 3 will reveal, however, that this is just a ruse. In reality, Adam only wants things to happen the same in order to insure his own existence as Adam. Adam sees himself as the required architect for his real goal: the destruction of his world. He wants this because he has come to believe that paradise is nothingness, darkness, non-existence.

This explains why Adam travels to 2020 and shoots Martha in front of young Jonas. Martha must die, because the pain over losing her is a main ingredient in Jonas becoming Adam. Had Martha lived, Jonas-Adam might never see the need for something different from his world as it is. And again, Season 3 makes it clear that his real goal is no world at all.

2. CLAUDIA AND JONAS Claudia Tiedemann and Jonas want to save the current world. They also want to change the past, at least initially. According to the Dark Netflix site, Claudia wants to prevent Mads and other children from dying. She also wants to prevent her daughter, Regina, from dying of cancer. And young Jonas traveled from 1921 to 1986 in an attempt to prevent his father from committing suicide.

It seems, however, at some point Claudia (older Claudia) and Jonas lighten up on wanting to change the past. For example, older Claudia tells Jonas it’s best for his dad’s suicide not to be undone. This aspect of the show is rather confusing, but the basic struggle remains: Claudia and Jonas want to save the current world, and Sic Mundus doesn’t.

Story Motifs

This is just speculation, but I think there are some equal signs in Dark. Namely these:

nuclear plant explosion = Mikkel-Michael’s suicide
barrels of Cs-137 = Jonas

When the series begins, Jonas has just come back from weeks of therapy – his dad’s suicide was a huge explosion in his life. And just as the plant incident produced an enormous amount of Cs-137, his dad’s suicide produced in Jonas an enormous amount of negative feelings.

Young Jonas automatically assumes that preventing his father’s suicide is the key. That’s what will make his life better and end all the pain. However, for older Jonas (Adam) and older Claudia, the answer is not so simple. A person actually needs suffering in life in order to become who they’re meant to be later in life.

The loss of loved ones is indeed a key theme. Sons, daughters, spouses, mates, fathers, and mothers either die or go missing. Whatever type of loved one they are, it’s devastating: Michael the deceased father is also Mikkel the missing son. Because of all this loss, the show’s few reunions are exceptionally gratifying. The best example is Mikkel and Ulrich. After all that they’d been through, they were eventually reunited.