[SPOILER ALERT] Netflix's Dark re:CinemaBlend Article

Netflix's Dark

Some of my posts are Spoiler-Free introductions and recommendations about shows.  This article is not that.  DO NOT continue reading unless you have completed all three seasons of the amazing Netflix time travel series DARK.

I have been wanting to write about Dark.  But where to begin?  There is soooooo much to unravel about this series, which is literally ABOUT unraveling a knot caused by the chaos of time travel in the fictional German town of Winden.  I do plan on discussing Dark in a broader sense at a future date. This post, however, will be in direct response to an article that I read today on CinemaBlend.

Today I stumbled upon this article on CinemaBlend by Britt Lawrence (@BrittLWriter). I LOVE reading these articles that get down to the nitty-gritty details about a series and really discussing them. I have so much to say on the topics that Lawrence presents here, that I decided to make an entire blog post as a response.

In the above-mentioned article, Britt Lawrence poses a series of questions/topics that she still has questions about, or that don't sit well with her after finishing watching Dark.  Now, I don't claim to have all of the answers. I have, however, spent countless hours pouring over the history of Winden and discussing this show with my loved ones.  (Like, it has literally kept me up at night.) So I feel I have some insights to share.  And let's be honest, this is NOT an easy show to follow.  If Britt, a professional entertainment writer, has these questions, I can only imagine how many viewers finished Dark feeling confused and alone and out of the loop!

So before you continue reading, please make sure you pop over to CinemaBlend and read:

Netflix's Dark Series Finale Ending: 9 Things I Can't Get Past which I will be directly answering to.  Also note that I will be addressing some of these questions/topics out of the order that they were presented by Lawrence, as they will flow better into each other that way.

"Viewers Still Do Not Know Who Regina’s Father Is" - Bitt Lawrence, 

Netflix's Dark Series Finale Ending: 9 Things I Can't Get Past, JUL. 12. 2020 12:00 PM

This is an important question to clear up before we go any further. Albeit very very subtle (arguably too subtle), Netflix DID answer this question.  If you look at the final scene of the series, when we are in the Origin World, we see six "survivers," if you will, whose ancestry was not dependent upon time-travel (and therefore their existences were not erased). The fact that Regina is there, confirms that Claudia was telling the truth when she said that Tronte was not Regina's father, even though he spent his life thinking that he was.

At the beginning of this scene, we see a close up of 1980s Claudia, teen Regina, and an older man.  At first glance, it wasn't quite clear who this man was, or why he was in a family photo.  Upon closer examination, one can see that the actor in this photo is Michael Mendl, who played the oldest version of Bernd Dobbler. (Yes, the man who first opened the power plant, and raised Helge as his son {he is not Helge's biological dad, but that is a whole separate discussion.})

Therefore, we can only believe from this loving family photo, that Bernd is, and always was in all three worlds, Regina's father.

(note that that origin photo, is meant to replace this photo of Claudia and Regina alone)







The revelation that Bernd was Regina's father, is, to me, one of the most disturbing ones from the series.  Rewatch that scene in season three where young Claudia goes to tutor the newly-returned young Helge, and grown-man Bernd gives her extra money and tells her how grown up and beautiful she has gotten... yep, a decade or so later they would go on to have a child together.

We know that in Adam's world, at least, Claudia regrets the uh, "relationship," that she had with Bernd, since she told Tronte that she always *wished* that he was Regina's father. One can theorize that it was rape or a regretful indiscretion on Claudia's part as she watched the true love of her life Tronte marry and start a family of his own in fathering Mads and Ulrich.  However, since in the Origin world (where Tronte was never there to be Claudia's long-time secret lover), this family photo is evidence that Claudia and Bernd ended up HAPPY together and raising Regina together in an actual family, makes me tend to believe it was more than that.

Although the thought of that little girl and that middle-aged man would go on to parent a child together skeeved me out a bit, this realization answered a LOT of questions that I had throughout the series.  Namely, I was always curious about how Alexander ended up being the one to run the plant after Claudia's "disappearance," and how he and Regina ended up owning the Doppler mansion (which they turned into the hotel).  The answer is, after Claudia left, Bernt (knowing that he was Regina's father) used his pull at the plant to make sure his son-in-law advanced the ranks in order to care for his daughter.  I also believe that he must have willed the mansion to her (after being killed by The Unknown). This whole thing also explains why he picked Claudia to be his successor at the plant, to begin with.

Which leads us to...



"Where is Regina's Husband?" - Bitt Lawrence, 

Netflix's Dark Series Finale Ending: 9 Things I Can't Get Past, JUL. 12. 2020 12:00 PM

It seems correct to assume that "Alexander" still exists in the origin world. Boris (who assumed the identity of Alexander in 1986 after being involved in the death of the real Alexander, Clausen's brother) presumably is not descended of any of the time-travelers. Since his back-story takes place outside of Winden and presumably does not involve any of our knot characters, I think it's safe to say that in the Origin world he still was a wounded teen in 1986 Winden.

But why did he not end up marrying Regina?  Let's take a look back at the circumstances in which they first met:  Regina had been bullied by Katharina and Ulrich, because they believed she is the one who told Tiedemann that Ulrich had raped Regina. Boris/Alexander stepped in, coming to Regina's aid.  {Since Ulrich would not exist in the Origin world, none of this course of events would happen. His absence led to Katharina being friends with both Regina and Hannah instead of having life-long feuds with them both respectively.}

Next, upon Regina's advice, Alexander sought work from Claudia at the power plant.  She would eventually hire him to help cover up the barrels in the tunnels.  {Even if Regina still met Alexander that day in the woods, which we have no way of knowing if that would have happened or not without the bullying happening, there would be no need for his work at the plant. Since Tannhaus never built the machine, "the incident" at the plant in Summer of 1986, which created the dark matter in the first place, never happened. There were no barrels to hide.}

After Claudia disappeared (to start her time-travel adventures and become The White Devil), Regina was abandoned. She married Alexander young and together (now we know with Bertd's influence) they became a power couple in Winden and ended up in a position where he was running the power plant and they owned the Doppler estate and turned it into a hotel. They had Bartosz and lived a happy comfortable life until the time when she was diagnosed with cancer, the hotel failed due to lack of tourism in a town where children keep disappearing, and Hannah blackmailed Alexander with the information of his true identity.
{So, even if Regina and Alexander did date in the Origin world, Regina's life was completely different. Not only didn't her mother abandon her in 1987, but she also had a loving father raising her as well. There would have been no reason for her to marry young.  Regardless of the details, it logically makes sense that her life would have turned out differently. Perhaps she never met Alexander at all. Perhaps he died from his gunshot wound since she wasn't there to help him treat it. Or perhaps they dated briefly as teenagers but the circumstances that kept them together in Adam's world did not exist in the Origin world and they went separate ways in their lives.  Either way, Bartosz was presumably never born, and Regina ended up living alone in what was once Ines Kahnwald's house [my guess is that since she never had a child in Michael to give the house to, in both Eve's world and in the Origin world, Ines ended up renting out or selling the house when she moved on to wherever she is living in 2019].  Yes, it's sad that the family of Regina, Alexander, and Bartosz never existed. But you can't feel TOO sorry for this Origin Regina - she had a MUCH happier upbringing; she was raised by two parents who were around, her mother did not abandon her, her grandfather wasn't killed in his apartment, her father wasn't murdered by The Unknown, and Claudia likely is living out her old age in the Doppler estate in this world.  Also, my personal theory is that this celebration dinner where they are toasting to Regina is because her cancer is in remission.




"Hannah Did Not Deserve Happiness" - Bitt Lawrence, 

Netflix's Dark Series Finale Ending: 9 Things I Can't Get Past, JUL. 12. 2020 12:00 PM

Yes, the Hannah that we saw did some pretty shifty things in her life. She lied about Ulrich raping Katharina which got Katharina beat up by her mother and Ulrich arrested (ohhhh that twisted life-long feud between Ulrich and Tiedemann!). She cheated on her husband on what would be the night he killed himself, and then continued to have an affair with a married Ulrich. She blackmailed Alexander. She left Ulrich stranded in time - and the asylum - all while she had the power to help him. So, she was far from perfect.  However, every one of these acts was because she was hopelessly in love her entire life with a man who did not love her back. Without Ulich ever existing in the Origin world, who's to say how this Origin Hannah lived her life. It is rather unfair to state that she does not deserve happiness, based solely on the actions of a different version of her. The thematic idea here, is that The Knot was to blame for most of the pain and suffering to the residents of Winden. 

As far as the Hannah and Torben Woller ending up together, it was foreshadowed that he was always interested in her. In season 2, when Torben and Clausen were in a car driving they were talking about Ulrich and Hannah's affair. Torben stated that Hannah was beautiful and could have gotten any man she wanted.

Any if you still think that Hannah doesn't deserve happiness with Torben, remember that the him we know in Adam's world has things to atone for as well - he was, after all, a cop on the take.

"Why Ulrich And Martha Should Have Never Existed Was Not Explained" - Bitt Lawrence, 

Netflix's Dark Series Finale Ending: 9 Things I Can't Get Past, JUL. 12. 2020 12:00 PM

I have to say I am a bit confused by the confusion here... the entire point of learning about the Origin world, is that MOST of the characters we know from Adam and Eve's respective worlds should not exist. Everyone whose ancestry revolved around a character who time-traveled should not exist, which is what caused The Knot in the first place.  This is what Adam didn't understand. His ambition was to untie the knot and end the cycle. At this point in his life, he knows that he shouldn't exist. He sends young Jonas to what the thought was the origin point, when Michael killed himself, to try and change things. He figured if Michael didn't die, then Mikkel would not go back in time (I'm a little confused on his logic there) and Jonas would never exist. He thought this would untie the knot and fix the timeline.  Obviously, what he didn't know was that Jonas' existence was FAR from the origin of the knot.  The White Devil foreshadowed that this was the case, by telling Jonas that she has seen a world in which he doesn't exist, and it's not what he thinks.

Which brings us to Eve's world.  In her Mirror-Reality, Mikkel never went to the caves and never time-traveled. This means Michael doesn't exist and Jonas was never born. (The basic reason for this change is because without Michael existing to marry Hannah, she ended up swooping in on Ulrich sooner and broke up his marriage to Katharina. Since the Neilsen kids are being raised by single-mom Katharina, Mikkel is less babied and deemed old enough to stay home alone without a babysitter when the older kids go to the caves.  But I digress...)  Eve has always had the upper hand against Adam. She simply has more knowledge. She bore The Unknown and raised him. She developed the technology to not only travel in time but between the two Mirror worlds and therefore has been influencing both worlds through the hand of her son. She sees a bigger picture than Adam ever did. She knows that her son, The Unknown, is the root of the genealogy web that is Winden.  Her child, The Unknown, father's Tronte and in turn the entire Neilsen line (which shouldn't exist at all - the name Neilsen only came to be because Martha's last name was Neilson so this is the name that The Unknown used to marry Agnes and pass onto Tronte).

Even though The Unknown is responsible for the existence of the Neilsen line, Bartosz is also a grand-father of Winden. (Who, remember, does not exist in the origin world, but certainly would never have existed in the 1800s without time travel).  Since Bartosz (along with Silja who also shouldn't have existed being the daughter of a time-traveling Hannah and a 1950s Tiedemann) fathered Noah and Agnes, then he is also responsible for the Neilsen line as well as Charlotte, Elisabeth, and Franziska who also should all not exist.

Finally, we learn that The White Devil, that is the older Claudia from Adam's world, becomes the ONLY character to really see the full picture. She does this by working as a double agent between Adam and Eve after killing, err...herself, (Mirror-Claudia) and then posing as... herself.  By learning all of the secrets of both Adam and Eve, and reading the journal written by The Unknown, The White Devil finally learns how to truly untie the knot.  She sends young and naive versions of both Jonas and Mirror-Martha (ones who had never before met each other and had yet to be influenced by Adam and Eve's ideas) to the Origin world to stop Tannhaus from ever building his machine, by saving his family from death.

Therefore, the dark matter never exists, time travel never exists, and all of the characters born from time travel never exist.  The six at the table at the end and their ancestors/relatives are the only characters who still exist.



"Old Ulrich Never Learned Katarina Was Killed" - Bitt Lawrence, 

Netflix's Dark Series Finale Ending: 9 Things I Can't Get Past, JUL. 12. 2020 12:00 PM

This, sadly, is true. The fate of the Neilsen family is, well, dark.  Poor Katharina, after losing Mikkel and her cheating husband, travels to 1987 to find them. She is unable to locate Mikkel, and ultimately gets killed by her own aways-abusive mother while trying to break Ulrich out of the hospital. She becomes the dead woman in the lake that her kids and their friends would tell stories about, the day that Martha and Jonas find the necklace.  Ulrich, who spends the entire series trying to atone for his mistakes, ends up spending decades locked up in the looney bin where he presumably will die from old age.  More tragedy brought on by the knot.




"No Bonding Moment Between Jonas And His Kid" - Bitt Lawrence, 

Netflix's Dark Series Finale Ending: 9 Things I Can't Get Past, JUL. 12. 2020 12:00 PM

There are a lot of holes to fill in, since we mostly see the story from the perspective of Adam and his world.  We only really get a glimpse of Eve's Mirror World and are told that although things happen differently, the results are pretty much the same - with Mirror Martha / Eve taking on the roles of Jonas/Adam in his world.

It's important to remember that adult Jonas "The Stranger" and Adam, never went to Eve's world during the natural progression of their own timeline. The Stranger only met Mirror-Martha when SHE traveled to Adam's world in 1888 to give them the substance that would be necessary to power the machine.  You could see his frustration there as he did not understand how she said that Jonas was the one who gave her information since he WAS Jonas and in his existence had done no such thing. He did not travel to her reality, and he did NOT father her child. In fact, I am fairly confident that Adam didn't even know about the existence of The Unknown until his very later years in life, after traveling forward from 1921 to 2053.

Right before the apocalypse in Adam's world (Season 2 Finale) Adam killed Martha and left.  At that moment, there was a split in reality and two separate timelines were created.

• In one, Mirror-Martha runs in and takes Jonas to her world, to the day that they first met (because, well, she brought him there). They sleep together and The Origin is conceived. Shortly thereafter, a slightly-future version of Mirror-Martha shoots and kills this Jonas (because she is told that she must).
• In the other, Mirror- Bartosz stops Martha from going into the house. That new split-off of Jonas does not meet Mirror-Martha, does not go to her world, and does not father The Unknown. He lives through the apocalypse and ages in time there along with the shelter survivors. We see him work closely with young Noah and adult Claudia, while he ages into The Stranger (and the other two age up as well). Together they all work to get the time portal in the post-apocalyptic power plant up and running. He leaves from there to go to 2019, when we first meet The Stranger in season 1 and carries out the actions we see of him traveling through time in seasons 1 and 2, before going with teen Bartosz, Franziska, and Magnus to 1888 where he would age into Adam and build his time portal.

Therefore, any version of Jonas that has aged to The Stranger or Adam is pretty far out of the loop. He only vaguely knows about the Mirror World or Mirror- Martha from her encounter with him in 1888.  He knows enough to know that he doesn't know everything.  Eventually, an older Adam would realize who The Unknown is and attempt to untie the knot by killing a pregnant Mirror-Martha.  However, since the time split created two Jonas', it also created two pregnant Mirror-Marthas (since she traveled to Adam's world after she was pregnant) and the one he didn't kill is who would go on to give birth to The Unknown and become Eve.

We could go on to discuss the finer points of this series probably forever in an endless time loop!  But I will end this post here.  I hope I have helped clear up some confusion for someone, anyone, who reads this.  Please COMMENT your thoughts and I'll be happy to follow up in future posts regarding anything at all DARK that you want to discuss!




Contact Me:

• Twitter:  @TVnCouponTalk and @NEJewelryParty
• Facebook: Great Deals and Discounts or Never Ending Jewelry Party
• Email: neverendingjewelryparty@yahoo.com
• Subscribe to me on YouTube: Susie'Q Never Ending Jewelry Party

Disclaimer: All articles are designed for entertainment purposes only. As these articles are not sourced, they are not intended for research purposes. It is entirely possible that I get something wrong. If you find that I have done so, please let me know so that I can correct it. All opinions in my articles are my own and are not backed by any other party, company, or organization. I am not paid to review or endorse any company or product. Some of the links found in my articles may contain affiliate links that will compensate me with commissions or referral rewards for sharing them with you. This is not the primary intention of any article, as my goal is to simply share and discuss these topics with you. Any proceeds do help pay for the entertainment sources necessary to continue watching, researching, and discussing new television shows with you.  Any images and trailers presented in my articles belong to their individual copyright holders. I am sharing them under Fair Use to discuss and educate about the works they are associated with.