Unraveling the Dark mysteries: Dark TV series explained (spoilers ahead)
Dark is a German Sci-fi thriller released in December on Netflix. Its one of the best TV series showing the concept of time travel without creating new timelines. This blog post is for those who have watched the TV series and are wondering what just happened in the last episode. There are many questions which need to be answered like why Michael commits suicide in June, when he was coexisting with Mikkel for 11 years, and why 5 months before Mikkel’s disappearance? How he writes the exact date on the letter? Why the stranger dosen’t open the door of the bunker where Jonas was trapped? And many more. Questions like this will be answered in this post. So obviously there are massive spoilers ahead. Please watch the TV series before reading this post.
Let’s jump directly into understanding things. The best way to understand everything is to see things from a character’s perspective. There are 4 families which are involved in this TV series. Tiedemann, Doppler, Kahnwald and Nielsen. There are three main characters whose life is confusing in terms of events as they occur in their life, Mikkel/Michael, Helge and Jonas. This post is an explanation from each of their’s perspective. Let’s start understanding things more clearly.
Mikkel/Michael: A boy lives 11 years of his life in Winden, one day he was going into the forest with his brother, sister and Jonas, they hear some strange sound and start running to go back home, Mikkel falls down and suddenly disappears. Next morning he comes out of a cave in injured condition. He goes back to his home where he lived and finds out that his parents are teenagers, he visits many more places and eventually finds out that he has time travelled to 1986. He tries to go back to his time through the same cave but could not find the way. He is left with no choice but to live in 1986. At this point of time, he has his childhood memories from his birth to 2019. He also has the memories of the major events happened in the life of Kahnwald family. He continues to live a normal life for next 22 years. In those 22 years, with the course of events, he starts loving Hannah, gets married to her. By this time he has realised that he is the same Michael Kahnwald who used to live in Winden in 2019 and who is the father of Jonas. So he knows all the major events which are going to occur in Michael’s life, like, he is going to have a kid named Jonas, Jonas will date Martha, etc etc. When the birth year of Mikkel comes, Michael knows all the events which are going to happen in Mikkel’s life and also from his childhood memories about Michael he knows what is going to happen in his own life from there onwards. He should do all the events exactly how they have happened in order to keep the timeline intact. And he also knows that he had to commit suicide on 21st June 2019. He writes a letter which he specifically asks to open after 10:13pm on 4th November 2019 because he doesn’t want anyone to know about the event of Mikkel’s disappearance. If anyone will come to know that Mikkel will disappear on 4th November then they may change that event which will erase Michael’s existence and in turn Jonas’ existence.
Helge: As a kid, Helge’s parents have not been good to him. Suddenly one day a man comes and beats him to death without any cause. That man puts him in an underground bunker. He regains consciousness, wakes up in the bunker and finds out that there is a wormhole in front of him. He touches that wormhole and jumps into 1986. There he finds a priest(Noah) who saves him, tells him that the purpose of his life is bigger than he thinks and puts him back in his time in 1953. As a boy, he has a good perception of Noah and he is ready to do everything which Noah asks. Helge grows up to 1986, kidnaps Mads for Noah’s experiment, comes under police investigation, but Noah tells him that he is making a time machine and he will make everything right again. He takes that and goes home to find out an old man warning him that everything Noah says is a lie, he is using him. But Helge doesn’t buy that and continues to work for Noah. He asks Noah that who is the next, Noah says Jonas Khanwald. He kidnaps Jonas from the hospital and while going back home he was hit by a car which was being driven by the same old man. But in that accident the old man dies and Helge survives. But he is diagnosed with Dementia, he starts losing his memory(not completely). He continues to live for next 33 years and finds out that Noah was really using him. Till then he knows all about the cave and thinks that he can go back in time and stop young Helge to stop helping Noah. He waits for exact 33 years to go back from 2019 to 1986 right before the time of kidnaping Jonas. He tells young Helge not to do the things but young Helge doesn’t listen to him. He then tries to kill young Helge by doing a car accident but ultimately he himself dies. When he was having the conversation he realises that he was the same old man who came to warn his young self. But because of his Dementia and he might not remember the events which have happened with that old man who came to warn him in his younger time, and he unknowingly repeats the car accident event as it has happened in past.
Jonas: This teenage kid was living a normal life till 2019. In June 2019 his father commits suicide, he is mentally disturbed for next 4 months and in November he returns to his school. On 4th November he was going through the forest with his friends and Mikkel to find out Erik’s(another missing kid) drug stash. They hear a strange sound and starts running back to home, he falls down and in this Mikkel who was also running back with him, disappears. He calls for Mikkel but saw his dead father(he might be hallucinating as he returned from psychiatric treatment). He gets frightened and goes back to his friends but Mikkel was not there also. Meanwhile, he also finds out that Martha, his ex-girlfriend, started dating Bartosz. He gets many maps and notes about the caves in his home. He was going through all this and one day he receives a box from a stranger with a letter from his father and few equipments. In that letter, he finds out that Mikkel was Michael who has travelled back in time and became his father. The stranger leaves marks on the map, showing the correct route to go to 1986 through the cave. Jonas follows the path and visits 1986 to find out that Mikkel is actually stuck there. He doesn’t do anything this time and comes back. But as the time passes he could not take the fact that he made out with his aunt Martha and he wants to change the things and again goes back to 1986 with intentions to bring back Mikkel. There he was abducted by Helge and is kept in a bunker. In that bunker, he meets the same stranger. That stranger tells him that he cannot open the door as he knows what all is going to happen with him and that stranger is going to destroy the wormhole which is the cause of all this. After some time a wormhole opens in the bunker. On the other side of the wormhole, he sees a boy (Helge in 1953). He touches the wormhole and gets sucked into 2052 (in future, post apocalyptic era). From there he meets Claudia who tells him that he has to destroy the wormhole which is the cause of all this (This was told by Noah to Bartosz in last episode). Claudia probably gives him a brass time machine, which was broken and she asks him to go to the scientist Tannhaus to get this machine repaired. He gets that machine repaired, takes it back to 1986 and finds out a young Jonas trapped in the bunker. At this point, he knows that he doesn’t have to open the bunker because doing so will change the course of events and he won’t be able to meet Claudia, get the machine and destroy the wormhole. So he tells the young Jonas that he cannot open the door and he is going to destroy the wormhole. Then he goes into the cave which is exactly below that bunker and starts the machine. But here, instead of destroying the wormhole, he creates one (same wormhole which took him from 1986 to 2052 and Helge from 1953 to 1986). At this point, TV series ends.
Combining all these major events in each character’s life, starting from 2019, makes up the TV series Dark.
Concluding this, Dark is a TV series which shows that the events which are occurring currently are the cause of the tasks done by people who went to the past. But the people who went to the past don’t know that the task they are going to do is the cause of the events occurring in their present life. There are many more characters who knows everything, like the psychiatrist Peter, Ulrich’s father Tronte. Claudia and Noah are apparently fighting to get hold of time travel. They all know about the events which are going to happen in the lives of Mikkel, Jonas, Helge, Ulrich, etc. The best part about this TV series is that they have shown the cause and effect of the events in the same timeline. Many TV series which are based on time travel has shown this by creating new timelines with a new story in the alternate timeline.
Do tell about your experience after watching Dark in the response section below. Give lots of claps if you find this article clearing the air about Dark.
