We’ve reached the end of our DARK journey. But the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. Let’s sort it all out!

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SPOILERS AHEAD!

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Episode 7: In Between Time

In the beginning of this episode, we are introduced to the Schrodinger’s Cat concept. A cat in a box exists in both states – alive and dead – until the actual state is observed/realized. There has to be a choice about which reality moves forward or they exist side by side. In DARK, we are continually reminded that reality moves forward because of choices – mainly the manipulations of Adam and Eva.

Episode 7 was largely about filling in the gaps between the 33 year cycles. There is a lot of jumping around and a few key things we learned. Shannon thinks episodes 6 and 7 were a lot of repetition and maybe not even needed since everything was revealed in the final episode. Fadra disagreed since we do learn a lot of details in this episode.

We learn that Tannhaus wants to figure out how to cheat death. We see him going into the bunker to build something. Why is he in the bunker? Isn’t that Helge’s bunker?

We see young Noah and Elisabeth in 2021 in the tunnel, clearing it out after the apocalypse. She asks him about paradise. Noah says all pain is erased and all the dead will live.

Back in 1890, we see middle-aged Jonas still working on stabilizing the God particle. We see his arm get burned and we know this is a sign of things to come. This explains that all his work on trying to get time travel to work results in all of his scars.

World A Jonas, post-apocalypse is frustrated trying to make the time machine work again. He visits his old house and tries to hangs himself in the same spot his father hung himself. Young Noah stops him, explaining that he can’t die – he cannot kill himself because his older self already exists. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense because several characters have been killed in this loop…

Back in 1904, Silja and Bartosz have a child and name him Hanno. This becomes Noah. Later, she has another baby – Agnes – and Silja dies here in childbirth.

In 2040, World A Claudia is meeting World B Claudia. World B Claudia (working under the guidance of Eva) wants World A Claudia to deliberately sabotage the God Particle machine to delay Jonas. But Claudia-A doesn’t think that her older self would choose to repeat the suffering. She kills Claudia-B and then goes to Eva pretending to be her other self. She doesn’t trust Adam or Eva. 

In 2040, older Charlotte and older Elisabeth travel to take baby Charlotte to Tannhaus. BUT WHY??? This is where we start to feel more sympathetic to Noah. We had always seen him as an evil character, but we see that he does what he does because of his quest to get his daughter back.

Meanwhile, back in 1911, Hannah comes to see older, scarred Jonas. She is with her daughter, Silja! We don’t really get enough info on where Hannah has been all this time while raising Silja. 

Jonas does not seem pleased or affected by seeing her. Maybe he has become the more “hardened” Jonas at this point? He gets a room ready for them, but then goes to them in the night. He suffocates Hannah with a pillow, then wakes Silja and tells her he has to show her something… presumably he takes her to the future.

Jumping ahead to 2052, Old Claudia is telling Jonas to lead everyone down the path again. She tells him he must destroy the passage. She rips out the final pages of the book. I think she believes this will be the final cycle.

Old Claudia comes to see Adam. He is surprised to see her because this is not how things have gone before…

Episode 8: The Paradise

This episode opens with Adam and Old Claudia. She tells him every action you take continues the existence of the loop – he still hasn’t figured it out. Adam doesn’t understand how things didn’t change after he killed the origin and Martha.

“Our thinking is shaped by dualities, but this is wrong. You need a third dimension to fulfill it all, ” says Claudia.

The Triquetra.

Three has been a significant number throughout all of the DARK series – the 33-year cycle, the 3 versions of each person, etc. – and that has been a clue all along that there are 3 worlds!

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We then go to a world where we see Tannhaus working on his machine in the bunker. This is the origin world! It’s much brighter and more colorful than we’ve seen in World A or B.

We learn that Tannhaus is the one who divided and destroyed his world and created the two worlds they know.

Claudia says this is the first time it has happened THIS way. Adam tried to destroy the origin an infinite number of times, and he keeps repeating the loop. But THIS TIME, Claudia has it all figured out and she’s coming to tell him.

Claudia tells Adam that Eva will do everything she can to keep her son alive – and they confirm that her son is the Lip Trio. “Everything you and Eva have done in this knot, and will do again and again, is done out of love. In the end, you have brought nothing but pain and suffering.”

Claudia tells Adam that he and Eva should never have existed.

We jump to World A, 2021-ish and see Tronte talking with Claudia. We discover that he in NOT Regina’s father. She isn’t part of the knot. Claudia has figured out that Regina can live if they fix the origin world!

I believe Claudia has been orchestrating the loop over and over so she could figure out how to save Regina. She lied to Adam and Eva and says, “I had to keep everyone in this knot in the dark.”

Finally, we learn how all this works: During the apocalypse, time stood still for a fraction of a second. This momentarily breaks the change of cause and effect. Eva knows about this, and sends her younger self off in one direction or another in order to maintain the cycle. This is how we have so many Marthas. Claudia used this fraction of time to get to Adam to tell him this right now – during the last cycle. She wants Adam to send Jonas & Martha to the origin world to finally put an end to this.

So we see Jonas-A standing over Martha-A’s dead body, as we did at the end of Season 2. But instead of Badass Martha coming in, Adam comes back. He takes Jonas to the World B. He says, “There is a way that you can avoid becoming me.”

Jonas & Martha are two parts of the same whole. Only together can they return to the origin world. Adam tells Jonas to get to Martha before Magnus does. “You two are our last hope.” Jonas sets the orb and wooshes Martha out before Magnus can.

The quote “What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean” is heard repeatedly in this series. It is from Sir Isaac Newton. He is the scientist known for concepts such as “an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force,” and “every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” Very cool that they would use a quote by him, since those concepts are so strongly woven throughout DARK.

Shout out to the musical and visual clues in this series. The vivid color of the origin world, the cool breathy music when Martha & Jonas finally get together for the final save, the little shake in the camera before they zoom out to another scene or world. Very well done!

Jonas and Martha arrive at June 21, 1986 – the day their two worlds were created by Tannhaus. We’re not sure if they are in World A or B, but it doesn’t really matter.

Jonas tells Martha, “We are the glitch in the Matrix.” He explains that they should never have existed, but they do because she can’t let go of what she wants (her son), and he can’t let go of what he wants (to fix everything and get back to the original Martha).

Adam comes to see Eva. She thinks he is there to shoot her, as always, but this time he took the bullets out of the gun. Eva says, “It never happened this way. You always have me killed.”

Adam explains to Eva that they most both give up – they never should have existed. “We are responsible for this never-ending deja vu and we’re the ones who have to end it. We are the mistake. You and I.”

Next we see Jonas & Martha crawl into the tunnels. Tannhaus fires up the machine and the passage opens. They find themselves in glittery tunnels, but can’t see one another at first.

Jonas sees a door open ahead and a little girl Martha is looking into her closet. She sees Jonas in the tunnel, but her mom tells her there is no one there. The same scene plays our with little Jonas (wearing his yellow raincoat!! – guess that was a staple for him for 10 years). He sees Martha in the closet but his dad tells him no one is there. This is a sign that they have been connected to one another all along.